Character creation!? Keifers voicing both of us!!! WHATS GOING ON!!!!!

Hideo you... Crafty sucker

EDIT: hey guys, let's try to keep the spoilers confined to the prologue and speculation based on that.

I saw a good portion of this section through trailers and I was still pleasantly surprised.

That fucking switcheroo.

Never in a million years would I imagine myself sitting at a character creation screen in a Metal Gear game.

Yeah that one got me good. Well played, Kojima

This section is going into my" moments to experience for the first time again " category. My brother was watching me play it and he was intrigued ( he's not a videogame person at all)

Y'all are assuming it's all a joke. I figured it was a character creator for the multiplayer.

Now that I think about it, I guess I was hoodwinked.

Still don't know what's going on. I mean in pretty sure I'm playing as Big Boss but... Who knows lol

@ch3burashka: Nah, you're probably right, given that later on in the game you can go back and make changes to this Avatar.

That said, i was geniunely caught off guard by that and spent way to much time trying to find a set of presets that makes me look at least close to Big Boss. Clever Guy, that Hideo.

That said, yeah. Two Kiefers? (un)Quiet trying to kill BB? Probably-Psycho-Mantis trying to help AND kill BB? Awuh?

"Your new name is Ahab, do you understand?"
KOJIMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

That opening was probably one of the most WTF openings to a game ever, I'm extremely excited to find out what's going on.

I feel bad for the nurse and doctor who got choked out with the garrote. That was brutal. I mean, dozens of people getting massacred in a hallway was fucking brutal too, but damn.

@adequatelyprepared: Yeah, yeah, the protagonist of Moby Dick, a mad man chasing a big white whale.

I'm kind of happy that my theory of possibly dozens of more BB clones might be right... Or it might be wrong?

So Ishmael died from the POV of BB right?

Multiple times.

But at the same time Ishmael cannot be explained away by him being just a hallucination because of what he does and how he interacts with the world, especially when it comes to the ambulance rescue and fighting Quiet.

So BB is hallucinating, but in a really, really weird way.

You sure those interactions weren't partly hallucinations, too? How much of that scene was actually real?

I hope they return to that in some way.

I've never been more hyped to play a game. What a ride that was already my jaw dropped multiple times.

So do you guys think we're playing as the real BIg Boss? I think Im starting to doubt it. Just from stuff Ocelot is saying at the start. I thought maybe Ishmael was BB but he seems to have both eyes, when even after being reassembled in mgs4 BB still had the eyepatch...

I do hope if we're not BB that we do get control of him at some point. Lol it's MGS2 all over again!!

Can we all agree to keep spoilers in this thread confined to just the opening hour of the game?

I'm getting major "I'm not playing as Big Boss" vibes. The character creator, the doctor holding up that picture of Big Boss, Kaz and Morpho makes me kind think I'm actually Morpho? Keifer voicing Ishmael... I don't know what the fuck is going on.

About that character creator... I don't remember, but did they not show your new face you just created in the mirror? And then a minute later it was back to regular Big Boss face? Or did it not change and I didn't notice because the face I made was so similar to Big Boss? And that was just implying that's how you will look after surgery, but obviously got interrupted? I was confused.

Part of me was thinking Ishmael was basically a Tyler Durden situation. When BB asks him who are you he says something to the affect of "I'm you" now a lot of people also said that that couldn't be because of how he interacts with the world but lets not forget in Fight Club the Narrator IS Tyler sometimes the actions of Tyler in Fight Club ARE the Narrator and he is imagining Tyler doing things that he is actually doing. Same goes for BB and Ishmael. I think the big hole in that theory is though that Ishmael seems way to informed of the goings on for it to just be BB.

@demoskinos: I like this explanation. Maybe Ishmael was the more assertive and motivated part of Big Bosses personality trying to pull him through this situation. We also see Ishmael pull off a pretty impressive headshot peeking around the corner super quickly. Very professional like

I think the line was "You're talking to yourself"

Pretty amazing opening.

@mode7: Yep now that you say it that was the line.

@mechakirby: So it did happen! When I finished the character creator I knew that I saw my avatars face in the mirror! But because it was only for a second before it switched back to BB's face, I thought I was seeing things.

Surgery was clearly interrupted, we know that. The doctor showed us BB and told us "this is how you've looked your whole life, but tomorrow will be different" (paraphrasing) but listen to what Ocelot's saying. "Get used to your new body" and his talk with you at the start of the first mission.

The whole "return as Big Boss" and "that's how Kaz would want it" sounds like your taking on BB's persona.

Now that I think of it, assuming that most of that stuff was hallucinations. Why would someone other than BB see Volgin? There's no way that wasn't volgin

It's all very conflicting. Can't wait

to get off work and play!!

@pompouspizza: Very confusing. Maybe that should have been handled in a more "video gamey" kind of way than it was. Unless the story is going to explain that whole thing, I'm assuming that's for MGO.

Later (but still very early on) on one of the tapes they are talking about Big Boss being a hero to soldiers around the world but that they won't know your face. I don't know if that was just a throwaway line or if they are suggesting that you aren't Big Boss. Maybe you don't look the way you think you look. Still very early in the game, most likely wrong.

I think the question of if the Avatar is real/was ever there can be explained by Big Boss hallucinating because of the shrapnel. Ishmael I think gets mentioned by Ocelot too, so I don't think he's also just a figment of Big Boss's imagination.

Anyway it's a great and well done opening scene and it's full on Metal Gear with close-ups of breasts, a dude peeing his pants and attacking guards acting like morons. (They never see him in the crowd? They take forever to find him hiding in the corpses and stop shooting the corpses just when they arrive at his hiding spot? What?)

@mechakirby: It definitely changed to resemble what you had picked. I'd picked one of the greyed out eyes and it stuck.

I feel like Ishmael is a hallucination (maybe a form of split personality) particularly because in the scene where you hide under the bed and you see the dude get shot in the head. Ishmael tackles you and pulls you under the bed, its VERY loud and like 6 feet away from the guard, no way he didn't see or hear that.

@jinoru: that's supposed to be BB's blind eye from what I can tell. He never lost it, just damaged it in MGS3, I imagine that's why its like that.

Actually the doctor never mentions a blind eye from the crash, and it would be a dumb coincidence if morpho or maybe that medic was blind too... Hmm

As for not looking the way we think we do, Kaz recognizes BB, they do talk about his eyes for a second but I think he can see. I haven't played far enough past that to know if it's later addressed, and that's getting out of the prologue stuff anyway

I kind of assumed they literally changed your face.. and now you have a different one, but for the benefit of the player and the game you keep seeing Big Boss while everyone else sees the new face.

it might be nothing but later on in the game you rescue a certain character who doesn't recognize you but when you start speaking and they hear your voice they suddenly say "Snake..?!" Like you would assume that he would recognize your face even though 9 years have gone by.

Also I just naturally assumed the man in the face bandages is Ocelot all the time because he says "you're pretty good" when you first start to shoot, and when the ambulance crashes and you come to he's gone so the wounds can't have been fatal.

@humanity: The thing with "You're pretty good" is that Big Boss is the one who said it first to Ocelot, back in Tselinoyarsk

I've lived in Dhekelia and can confirm that the hospital had plenty of fire horses.

Seriously though, it's super awesome that a place I lived is the opening to the game! Hopefully more will be revealed about this area later on but it's definitely got my hooked already!

i'm so confused about the prologue. is the fire dude supposed to be Volgin? is the child psycho mantis? what's with the giant fiery whale and the other Moby Dick references like "Ahab" and "Ishmael"? Also the out of place character creator that seems to go nowhere. I love it but i'm so confused by it all at the same time.

I love the fact that the most normal part of that prologue was the explanation of the horn in venom snake's head.

I ran into not one but two glitches in the opening, this one was my favorite:

Also what's Kevin Bacon from X Men First Class doing in my Metal Gear game?

The idea that the Big Boss from Metal Gear isn't the real BB doesn't sit right. That would be a massive retcon and also be super lame. I guess it's possible, but we shall see.

Oops misread that. There's the pilot as well.

@suntoria: Why would it have to be someone from the chopper?

I think you play as Big Boss and Ahab and Ishmael are two parts of his personality. That's as far as my theory goes! :)

I think the photos the doctor shows you of your old life both have Big Boss, Kaz, and a helicopter pilot. And one photo has another MSF dude as well.

@geraltitude: I like the idea of that. Ahab wanting revenge and eventually becoming the villain of the MSX games. Ishmael, the noble side of BB we know from Snake Eater and Peace walker.

I don't know that I believe that to be the case but it matches the Moby Dick symbolism pretty well.

Anybody who says there aren't enough cutscenes in this game deserves a smack to the head. The goddamn game starts with a fucking 30 minute cutscene. LET ME PLAY THE GAME

Ishmael is also from Moby Dick and Kojima Productions went under the name Moby Dick Games in the first teaser trailer. Also Firey Space Wales.

I assumed it was a Fight Club like hallucination.

Redid the opening just now and when you go to create a character the doctor says "what you look like, however..." And cuts off. Also quiet says "the patient in the next bed saw my face" before trying to kill you. I think it's worth pointing out that our character does not have the snake shaped scar that Big Boss had in Peacewalker

Judging from that I can assume we are not BB, but for whatever reason we see ourselves that way, probably form the debris in the brain. Quiet was there to kill Ishmael who is the real Big Boss.

Maybe it's Morpho and BB was the last face he saw before the debris or coma hit.... I don't know. this is nuts.

So who gave their actual name and birthdate? I did, as I figured it will tie into some late game weirdness a la MGS2.