Hi guys,
Ok, so first of all, I'm at Mission 38 or thereabouts so no spoilers past "Extraordinary" please but basically, I accidentally spoiled something for myself... Apparently I'll lose Quiet soon!?

Man, I'm loving this game and it's in no small thanks to Quiet. She's so awesome. Sometimes I just want to go fultoning and she's great at taking out a whole base while I just go in picking out the stragglers. I really think the game will be less fun without her. Anyways, I've heard there's some way to keep her involving her bond level and some emblem part. I don't really want to "break" the game though so I'm just wondering; did anyone else have issues with this and when does it happen? Will I even miss her as maybe the whole game is over at that point but I think there's a chance I might want to keep messing around with the sandbox after this. I'll probably not go for 100% if that involves all side *objectives* and S-ranking everything but maybe I'll do all side missions instead.

I'm finding that her usefulness *is* going down a bit as everyone seems to have riot suits or helmets on anyway but I'd still like to have her for clearing outposts etc.

The flip side is that if she does leave, I'm guessing that's a pretty big cutscene that I think I'd like to see although I guess I could YouTube it. She just spoke for the first time to Code Talker and the storyline that she was sent in to spread the English parasite strain and that's why she doesn't talk is a pretty interesting story thread to me.

What do I do guys!? Any thoughts or tips on this would be really appreciated.

Hope you're all enjoying the game,
Dave

I appreciate you signing your name at the bottom of this here forum thread. That is an odd thing to do that I'm weirdly into.

You will lose Quiet, and unless you're willing to go to certain lengths to prevent that from happening, such as modding the game or purposefully keeping her bond level down, there is little you can do about it. After mission 43, if I recall correctly, she will disappear from mother base, leaving you with a new prioritized side-op that leads into a full mission. Said mission concludes her character arc, and is one of the strongest scenes in the entire game.

The fact that you treasure her presence, be it solely due to a practical approach to game-play, or a personal fondness for her is very much part of what makes her leaving so powerful. You're supposed to feel empty in the aftermath, as if something's missing. It's a very unique feeling in modern games, and I honestly don't think you should cheapen it by reducing the experience to a Youtube video.

Post her leaving, little happens in the campaign itself, there is one last story mission, which you cannot bring any buddy into, and a couple of older missions presented in a higher difficulty. As such, you won't find yourself missing her much from a game-play perspective unless you're going to go out of your way to do a bunch of side-ops. Even then, I think you should let things develop naturally, and allow the game to do what is set out to, and maybe just affect you a bit in the process. And hey, if everything else fails, D-Dog is still a hell of a buddy.

The mission where you lose quiet is optional (but still a main mission, not a side op) and you can delay it from triggering by putting the butterfly in your emblem (or by keeping the Quiet bond below the max leve, I think). But by the time that mission triggers you`re pretty much done with the main missions. The story parts of that mission is really good so I would recommend to see them for yourself.

Just leave mission 45 til you're ready to wrap up. It's a real piece of work and the last mission (46) unlocks before it, usually.

Worth noting: When Quiet leaves, you get a Side Op to find her. As soon as you do that Side Op, it forces you into Mission 45, with no way of backing out back to the ACC. Seriously, you're locked into that mission until you beat it. It's also easily the hardest and worst mission in the game. Like, seriously. It's not worth playing unless you're trying to S-Rank the game or something.

Keep her bond level down and i hear something about using the butterfly emblem in your logo or something, i'm not 100% sure about that. Once that side mission unlocks she's gone, so you don't want that to unlock (although the mission/story part involved is pretty cool and since i had no real attachment to quiet losing her didn't bother me).

Yeah before I actually did that mission I was a big proponent of just doing it and getting it over with because D-Dog is just as good(in different ways) as a buddy anyway. But that mission is so terrible that I've switched sides now and heartily recommend avoiding it if you can.

Thanks for the replies guys. So I've decided to just let the game play out the way it wants. I think I'll lose her but am quite willing to just go along for the ride and yes, although D-Dog has been neglected a bit recently, I think he'll be really good too when I get his bond up. I mostly just like having everyone marked for me and he does that well.

I've just finished 43 where I had to kill all the infected soldiers at Mother Base. It was an oddly emotional scene, especially Boss putting the ashes on his face and the idea to turn them into diamonds. It's a nice touch to now have a sparkling diamond on my shoulder. Emmerich has some nerve, going on at me when he's lied through his teeth so much!

Since the "higher difficulty versions of previous levels" section of this game has started, it's been weird. I don't know how I feel about that (probably I think it's pretty lazy) but I just want to get them out of the way and so I've found myself playing the game quite differently. Some missions I've just been calling in bombardment strikes which is pretty cool and, unless somebody's S-rank, the antimaterial sniper rifle has been very satisfying in blowing away riot suit-clad soldiers. In one way, that's kinda cool but maybe, in another way, my gun-ho approach to the game now has made me take it less seriously and potentially detracted me from the climatic feel of the game.

Either way, nonsense aside I have loved this game. 32 years old now, I don't have so much time for games and most, I don't finish, especially when they present the "there's a shitload to do here" moment like Far Cry 4 (or most open world games) but MGS5 has kept me hooked. It's been a really good example of "what games can be in 2015" given a ridiculous budget and complete freedom. Nothing's felt as ambitious, grand or more polished aside from something like GTA5 (Witcher 3 maybe falls into this category too but I've not played it). Easily my GOTY and I'm looking forward to finally being able to listen to that GB Spoilercast!

Can't wait to take that little shit Eli down...

@mooseymcman said:

I managed to get back to the ACC in that mission by fultoning one of the nearby resource containers and riding on it back to Mother Base. Only that time, though because when I started the mission again, the container wasn't there. I probably would have never finished that mission if I didn't find that.

Well, fuck. I actually deleted my save after I lost her because I thought I missed some cutscene; I had already missed some status-specific ones like the fight when morale is low. I had finished the game, but I enjoyed it so much I don't mind going through all that all over again. It gave me an excuse to go back to Ground Zeroes - for whatever reason I never imported my save.

Regards,

Octavius

If you have the butterfly in your emblem, she'll never leave and you can watch it on Youtube.

If you're playing it on PC, you can probably mod her back in even after you do her mission.

The above posts already mention about how to do to avoid Quiet leaving the game. I would say people should experience Quiet's exist for themselves, even if they don't want to see her leave. By the time that arc wrapped up I was finished with all of the story elements of the game, with the exception of seeing the True Ending.

I wrote a blog post about this aspect of the game, and Quiet overall: http://www.giantbomb.com/metal-gear-solid-v-the-phantom-pain/3030-40796/forums/why-the-ending-to-mgsv-the-phantom-pain-made-me-fe-1783212/

There are spoilers regarding the how and why she leaves and talks about the ending to the game, so I wouldn't read it until you saw that portion of the game. I'm mainly posting a link to the blog because you can see other people's perspectives on Quiet. I wrote it just to get what I was feeling out there, but it was also nice to hear what other people had to say about it.

The Butterfly emblem thing works. In my current playthrough, I have the Butterfly symbol as my emblem's "Front" part and Quiet is still with me long after she would have left.

What is does is it suppresses certain missions from appearing. This includes a side-op or two, as well as the story mission that concludes with her departure. It also suppresses the "True Ending" story mission, so you'll have to look that up if you want to see it.

That's not true! I got that mission without any of the Quiet stuff happening, and was kind of confused. All the emblem does is keep the "Quiet is missing" cutscene from happening. Everything else afterwards is tied to that cutscene.

I thing Quiet is the best New character introoduced in V. I loved playing with. But as a person who appreciates story telling her leaving is the closest gameplay has to losing a limb. She is super useful and you can't imagine going on without her. Why are we still here? Just to suffer?

Good show Mr Kojima.

Also I am about done with chapter 1 in my second playthrough where I killed her instead of recruiting her. I need to know what happens, how the game handles a couple of story beats without her. I miss her.

I considered adding Quiet back in on PC but eventually decided against it. There was actually a feeling of loss for a bit after she left, not something I ever really get from a game.

What I didn't like was having the pictures removed from the ACC as well. Taking her out of my running crew was an impactful design decision with an explanation in the story, wiping her from existence just kind of sucks.

I wouldn't mind a Quiet mod if it came with the actual consequences.

I know, it's terrible. I was pondering the nominees for this year's "Character We'd Like to Party With" (I know that was only the category name once) and Quiet is topping that list and not just because I barely played anything this year.

God I miss her so much. Mission 42 is dreadful even with the Battle Dress and the high powered rifle. She would at least make it bearable. Ugh. I'm never finishing that or 50 probably. Too annoying.

@dan_citi said:

Just use D-Walker with the Minigun and a shield on your back.
After the fight starts move behind the hangar in the north-west, that way you evade the "zombie guards" and the hangar offers protection from most of the flying rocks.
From that point on it's only a matter of being patient and evading the mist, while shooting the Skulls closest to you. Getting too close to the mist will disable D-Walker permanently, so either get gud and avoid that or bring some C-4 along to blow up the disabled D-Walker, that way you can call in a new one. Most important thing being that you keep on moving to evade their meele attacks and the "exploding ground spikes".

The patterns of the Skulls are pretty easy to memorize after a while: Two of them will teleport close to you and start misting (shoot those), while the other two will stay back and throw rocks. When one of them gets low on health another one will teleport in and spawn a "rock wall" to protect his buddy, just strafe around it and keep shooting the Skull.

Are you sure? Because I'm at 80%+ completion and the "True Ending" mission hasn't appeared. It 100% should have by now.

I am all the way sure. I had the emblem set up since, like, mission 20 or something when I had read it was somehow tied to this, and didn't think about it much. 40 hours later, I've completed mission 46 and all that it implies, but still wondering how you unlock mission 45. Then, I remembered the emblem thing and took it off. Almost immediately, I got the cutscene of Quiet leaving.

I don't know what triggers mission 46, but I bet it's something like:

• Do all the important dispatches
• Do all the wandering MB soldier side ops (and the resulting things you do from there)
• Listen to all the important tapes

It was the damn tapes. This is my second playthrough, so I didn't put much time into listening to the tapes as I'd heard them all already. Only after clicking through the yellow ones, and then running a mission, did 46 pop. Thanks.

That's not entirely true. There are some containers you can use to get back to the ACC.

My helicopter now plays her theme in honour of her many hours of service Quite haunting it is too to have that echo across the landscape as it flies in.