Mirado

@immaneuel_kanter: Of that, I have no doubt. But I'm riding on such a Metal Gear high right now, that I have no reason to deflate that (fulton) balloon hoping for something that we may not get. We already have hundreds of hours of game laid out in front of us; hoping for more so soon is pure greed.

Greed I can get behind, mind you, but unnecessary.

As of right now, I am treating this the same way I treated the Fallout 4/Survivor 2299 hoax as that, a hoax. The Phantom Pain is an amazing game, and although it has some minor flaws that mar the ending, overall it is a triumph and one I can see myself putting hundreds of hours into. I do not need any more.

If it is true, I'mma go absolutely nuclear.

@brotherbran:If you don't care about getting seen, grenade and rocket launchers mess up any and all staff with one shot. I've yet to encounter a guard that can take a 40mm grenade, and it also works wonders against invaders.

As for the nuke, I'd argue against building one. Preventing only really advanced players (I'm 80 hours in and less than a thousand heroism away) from invading you doesn't sound like fun, as you get a fuckton of stuff for defending yourself:

And you get even more if you defend other people. More invasions are actually great (there's some sort of cooldown between invasions that is removed if you invade someone) for generating GMP, and whatever few troops you lose is relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Keep in mind that the security team is made up of people who aren't good enough to be on any other platform, and once you get pretty deep into the game, you'll be rolling in A++ and S rank troops.

Not only are they explained, but you can actually (spoilers for what you can do once you finish Episode 29) capture them (in order to use their parasites in your Parasite armor) and visit them on the Quarantine platform.

@sarx: Hey there! Can you give me a link to your Steam Profile? Quite a few Sarx out there, and I want the Sarx, no imposters. :D

I'm not going to bother detailing my interpretation of the ending; I just finished the game about two hours ago, and if the older titles are any indication, it's going to take some time for me to convalesce after the battery of cutscenes, tapes, and after credit conversations.

What I will talk about, however, is what the ending left out. And there's a lot of it!

1. The Battle Gear! You can't possibly tell me that we had all that build up for something that's reduced to filling a deployment mission checkbox. It was obviously cut, so why leave the other scenes in at all?
2. Eli and the magical floating Metal Gear! I went and watched the cut episode 51, which is all well and good, but that stuff was cut for a reason. I don't know if that was time, or if the underlying idea was rejected, but as it stands, we have no canonical in-game resolution to that plot thread.
3. Quiet! She's gone, but she should also be barfing up larva right now. Hell, Venom should be barfing up larva right now as well, since the entire reason for her staying "Quiet" was to keep from unleashing the English plague on him. She gave a ton of instructions in English to the chopper, after all. And even if those few words weren't enough to activate the parasites and spread them to Snake, she's a walking bio-weapon (in more ways than one). They really just let that one go unresolved.
4. Miller's eyes! They were obviously playing that one up ("Did they do something to your eyes?" "It's just bright, that's all."), what with Code Talker's warning and the similarity to his eyes, amongst other references. Again, totally absent.
5. Eli and Baby Mantis' red scarves! If you look on the shoulder of both Eli and Baby Mantis, they have the same red pieces of cloth in their epaulettes. Before the game came out, many speculated that this tied them together in some sort of unit. Given the fact that Mantis spent most of the game running around with Skull Face (and didn't meet Eli until the midway point), it seems odd that they'd share this feature.
6. Code Talker! I'd like to think he opened up a burger joint with Miller and spent the rest of his days chowing down, but, again, completely unresolved.
7. Minor things! Why did Chico have a headphone jack implanted in his chest in GZ? Why did Huey insist on putting Hal in a Metal Gear? (Hell, how did Huey go from basically just Otacon in Peace Walker to ultra-scumbag here?) What happens to Sahelanthropus? Why does Kaz abandon his quest for vengeance against both Zero and Big Boss to go back to the US? He works under FOXHOUND before the Zanzibar Land disturbance, meaning he was both on Zero's territory and in Big Boss' unit.

There's a ton more but my head is already spinning. I'll try and codify my thoughts on the ending later, but if anyone can help fill in some of those plot holes in the meantime, I'd be thrilled. As it stands, MGSV is one of my favorite games, but the story isn't without its flaws.

Even if you kill her in the post-battle scene, you can replay the mission to bring her back to Mother Base.

Just a tip in case someone thought they missed their chance at recruiting her.

@lanechanger: Sadly, with the FOB feature set up as peer-to-peer and without VAC support, cheats will probably be a problem until (if) Konami decides to implement some sort of solution. As of now, the same single player Cheat Engine hacks will work for FOB mode, which just isn't cool at all.

The balance is also a bit off: Grenade launchers just tear apart troops, and without the ability to customize the exact loadout of your guards, it's hard to counteract people that just go loud right from the start. An entire platform filled with grenade launcher armed guards sounds like a tough nut to crack, and would reward actual stealth vs just turning a corner and popping whoever you see with a rocket. This obviously goes out the window when you are actually there to defend, but every time I've tried to connect to stop my goats from getting lifted, it just boots me out. Which is odd, as I can invade just fine.

It's as if the game is telling me to stop extracting absolutely every animal I see. "You have enough stuff! Spread the wealth!"

@borklund said:

You can be attacked while you are offline, and I'm pretty sure they keep mining. I don't know about the research, but if takes something like 16 hours, it'll continue while you are logged out, while any normal research time (18 minutes to a few hours) only happens while you are playing. As for allying specific PFs, we don't have a way to do that yet. Given how many times they talked about defending your friends, I assume that'll be integrated once everything is stable.

I've mainly played offline myself due to the menu lag.

@apollodynamo: Sorry! I'll edit that ASAP.