TheFantasticFillip

@gornogorno: Well, they didn't have exactly the same voice in GZ, bit they sounded really similar, so it's reasonable they sound similar in Phantom Pain.

I think the real reason is that they didn't want to fuck up and make the twist too obvious by having Big Boss in GZ have a different voice actor. Even if I think the ideal is for Hayter to voice BB and Kiefer to voice Venom.

@dom_catz: Ironically, Solidus was created to be a Big Boss replacement. Solid and Liquid weren't exact offshoots; Zero was trying to breed a 'superior' Big Boss, so he made a clone with only Big Boss's good traits (Liquid/Eli) and one with his shitty traits (Solid/David). Solidus is an exact copy created with advanced aging so he could grow into a full adult Big Boss in a short amount of time; in this game, Solidus is slightly younger than Eli, but he probably looks like an 18 or 19 year old Big Boss.

I think Kojima just doesn't care much for Solidus and considers him a one game character. He is still in the hands of the Patriots during this game, but it isn't long (maybe 4 years) before he is in Africa himself, leading Raiden and some other child soldiers in the Liberian Civil War in 1989.

There's no good story reason, really, except that Solidus is really a one game type of character. He appeared in 4, but he was more of a plot device than a character.

@princepeach: Salenthropus is not REX. Metal Gear Rex is considerably more armored. All the Metal Gears until REX are based off of designs created by Granin from MGS3. It makes sense they all share similar construction philosophies.

Also, REX was much more advanced then Salenthropous. For one, Salenthropus was a hunk of shit without kid Mantis. The thing literally couldn't function. But more importantly, Metal Gears aren't created to be mobile weapons platforms, at least, not until Gecko, Excelsius, etc... They are mobile nuclear missile delivery systems. REX was advanced not because of its weapons or armor, but because of the rail gun tech it employed. It could launch an untraceable, invisible nuke to any target on Earth. It could destroy a city without anyone knowing who the fuck did it. That's what the power of Metal Gear Rex was. ST-84 was unable to deliver nukes to that extent; it was itself a nuke, what with its uraniam armor or whatever, but it couldn't deliver long-range, invisible nukes like REX could.

@mast: I'll be happy to answer any questions you have on Metal Gear.

You should just play the games. If you own a PS3 you can play them all. Metal Gear Scanlon is fun, but at many points I think it isn't ideal for newcomers since Dan is not great at explaining the stories of any game other than 1. I actually think his explanations of MGS2 make it sound more confusing than it needs to be.

Metal Gear Scanlon is lots of fun. I just don't think it's an ideal introduction to the series.

@MonkeyKing1969: I disagree. Metal Gear Scanlon was supposed to be an introduction to Metal Gear for Drew with an "expert" as his copilot. At the end of the show Dan says Metal Gears story is his favorite piece of fiction ever.

Also, Metal Gear has a lot of stupid bullshit on the outright plot level, but every game has a pretty intellectual philosophical and thematic message.

@johnnyspectre:I think the disappoint stems from two places. For one, Kojima knew full and well we were expecting a game about Big Boss losing his humanity in his quest for revenge and then slipping into villainy. He marketed the game like that to subvert our expectations here, and that understandably leaves a poor taste in some people's mouths.

I also suspect Kojima and co didn't really know how to apply the Metal Gear narrative style to an open world 100 hour game. The story builds all funny and lacks the huge impact of other entries. Having to redo a ton of stuff in part two then getting this out of almost nowhere is jarring, though there is tons of clever foreshadowing about this ending (seriously, look it up. Everything from Venom Snake's reflection in the helicopter window to the title of the game itself)

@sgtexo: He knew of Psycho Mantis and vaguely knew how he worked. It's evident when Liquid takes over Metal Gear that Skullface is shocked that someone can have more anger than him. He knows how powerful emotions can channel Mantis's energy. Plus, Mantis was a test subject for the soviets so Skullface would be aware of that as well.

@pedrofausto: The reflection has the horn and he also has the three string eyepatch and robot arm. I actually preferred this when I thought it was Big Boss because that was a much more ominous image, but alas, it is Venom Snake.

But you're right in the context. I think Venom punches the mirror to escape this cage he's in as Big Boss's phantom, but all he sees is himself as Big Boss on the otherside and realizes he can never escape the fate given to him. Or something like that. It's a visually stunning and ambiguous shot and I think it's a great place to leave the game at.

I was off with a few things in my original post. I made some edits, so check those out if you're interested! I'm trying to make this something of an assimilation of all that we know regarding the ending.

This is due warning: this thread is for people who have either finished the game or spoiled themselves beyond saving. If you want to keep your mind untainted, go no further.

As people dig through the files we are finding more and more cut content from the game, including what appears to be the title screen for an entire third chapter. I'll post the pictures below and link to the thread where they can be found:

In addition to this we also know that Kiefer had many lines cut:

https://soundcloud.com/gboon/sets/removed-venom-snake-sutherland-dialogue

Including one important post-game monologue: https://a.pomf.cat/abcyrl.mp4

There's also the cut Liquid Snake mission that's been going around:

Loading Video...

This is what we know of so far, and we will undoubtedly get more. Cuts are standard, and I'm actually in a camp to believe that Keifers lines were intentionally cut so that Snake could work better as a self-insert. But stuff like old Snake and that chapter 3 heading send some bad messages. I wonder how much the Kojima-Konami meltdown affected this game's development; I wonder how much this game's development affected the Kojima-Konami meltdown.

I always found the game's structure odd. For one, MGS4 and PW both have 5 chapters and an epilogue. This has two chapters, which is a non-standard set-up for any medium. Chapter 2 mostly being a retread of chapter 1 also raises questions about cuts. I think its undeniable that the game we got was fantastic, but I wonder if Kojima and his team were faced with a time crunch by Konami and had to either sacrifice narrative or sacrifice gameplay quality and went for gameplay.

We will probably never know what this game was supposed to be, but I hope one day they release a "grand gameplan" for it like they did for MGS2 (which is a really interesting read btw if you're a fan of the series, it's basically the outline of MGS2 before it went through radical changes to become its current form: http://junkerhq.net/MGS2gameplan.pdf)

It's also true that Kojima wanted to structure this game more like a television show. I wonder if future chapters will come out as DLC and act like "seasons". Either way, it's a little fishy/sad to see and wonder about all that is gone.

@berserker976: I agree with the underlying message of the post; MGSV does not pull off this trick as well as MGS2 did. Big Boss is certainly never really portrayed as much of a mastermind or manipulator in a way that he was portrayed here. He was always shown to be a legendary soldier gone awry, a fearsome warrior. I think Kojima played off of our expectations of Big Boss and what we know of him using all the implications of this ending and the metanarrative layer. Maybe I'm not explaining myself particularly well, but I think there's a big moment here where we realize (or are supposed to realize) how much Big Boss has changed; we expected him to come out of a coma and go on a rampage against Cipher while building up a new MSF that will become Outer Heaven. What he did instead was send a double to do his dirty work and keep the heat off his back so that he can fully dedicate himself to the realization of his lofty ideology: Outer Heaven, the soldier nation. This is something we'd expect out of say, Zero, but not BB. I think we're intentionally supposed to see how his character has changed in that way and the game does this through that metanarrative layer as well as at a strictly narrative layer.

I think the bigger problem is we get tiny little morsels of information about this change. We see him heading in this trajectory at the end of PW when he rejects the Boss, accepts the title of Big Boss, and beats forward on his dream of establishing Outer Heaven. It's understandably jarring to see him at this current endpoint we see at the end of Phantom Pain. It's making a comment on just the kind of turn he takes, one that we did not expect, but does so in a way that is jarring. I think the game would have benefited from some more Big Boss, or perhaps a meatier story. But we have what we have. It's enough to suss out what was going on in the background, but I think it relies on the 30 years of mythology it's working with to fully connect all of the dots, rather than as a particularly effective work in its own right. In that way, I think MGS2 handled its lofty thematic goals better. I still really appreciate what Kojima did here, and I'll take this over a more conventional narrative any day.

@zabant: My apologies. Admittedly, Zero's characterization in PW was extremely limited. TPP is indeed revisionist, as I think PW leaves off sending us in a rather different direction than we ended up going in regards to the Zero/Big Boss stuff. However, I don't think he was so strongly characterized in PW that his actions in this game seem completely out of character. For one, you tend to act differently when you're dying than when you are alive and at the top of your game. Kind of like when you and a friend get into a fight and someone ends up hitting someone else too hard, more often than not you end up apologizing. Big Boss was in a coma and Zero was dying. For a moment, he gave up the hate.

But yeah I'm not saying it isn't revisionist, but Kojima has always taken this series one game at a time. They've been pretty damn revisionist the whole time, and that's fine with me because I think taking risks like this makes for more interesting stories so long as the changes aren't egregious. In my opinion, the changes here aren't, especially in relation to Zero/Big Boss, especially since he's still very much a megalomaniac asshole in this game outside of that moment with Big Boss.

But I can also see the other side.

This is almost certainly nothing. For one thing, the countdown timer is set by reading your local time on your computer. Go ahead and try it; set your date and time at the control panel then go and search the site. That alone is very amateurish.

Also, the countdown ends at 4:20 on 9/11. I think this is a bush-league impostor that has been catapulted to stardom by coincidences.

@pompouspizza: Same voice... I wish they didn't. The real answer is so the twist wouldn't be spoiled by all of a sudden having a different VO in TPP. Somewhere inside I wish Hayter voiced Big Boss while Keifer voiced Venom Snake, but we weren't so lucky. That would have been perfect. It doesn't exactly fit story reasons, but moreso was done to protect the twist.

Also why would zero want to help big boss? Just to carry on the legend?

Zero and Big Boss may have been ideological enemies to the end, but they were personal friends, and despite their animosity, cared for one another somewhere inside. Killing Big Boss would have been an excellent opportunity for Zero, but he couldn't bring himself to do it because he is human. His intention was always for Big Boss to come back to the Patriots, never to kill him, because of their emotional connection. The AI, the inheritors of his will, would not be so forgiving to Big Boss. Zero was also contending with parts of his organization going out of his control (XOF). He made a memetic copy of Big Boss so that BB's legend may live, but also so BB can live to one day return to the Patriots, which he ultimately does (though he is only doing it to spy on them). Also, Big Boss's genetic clones were not yet old enough to assume his place on the world stage.

Basically, when Zero said "Join Cipher or die" at the end of PW, it was a bluff. He could never bring himself to kill Big Boss. But the AI would totally fucking kill him or enslave him for their own desires, which is exactly what they ultimately do.

why does Skull Face want to kill big boss? That's never been clear to me.

That plays into the whole notion of legacies and legends. Big Boss completes Snake Eater, becomes a world reknown soldier through many heroic battle adventures, joins the Patriots, and skyrockets to international recognition. I'd imagine Big Boss is something like Che Guavera in the Metal Gear universe.

Skull face on the other hand is his janitor. XOF is a clean-up crew for Big Boss's missions; they do the behind-the-scenes work that make it possible for him to complete his missions. I like to think of it like XOF are the ones who are behind improbable things that are in Snake Eater for gameplay's sake; they dug little holes under fences, cleaned up bullet casings and corpses after you leave an area, leave food and guns in improbable places, drop off equipment and camoflague around the jungle.

Despite Skull face's help in establishing not only Big Boss's survival, but also in fueling his legend, no one knows who he is. He isn't invited to the Patriots, he isn't ever known by the public, his deeds are never recognized. He remains forever invisible, Big Boss's shadow. After decades of this, he grows resentful of Zero for giving him this job, and he grows resentful of Big Boss for stealing the spotlight.

In Ground Zeroes he starts down his own path. He wants to be recognized, he wants to leave his mark on the world. He destroys MSF and attacks Big Boss against Zero's will, and he personally infects Zero with a neural parasite. If Zero is the director and Big Boss the lead actor, Skull face is a stage hand, but he wants to be the star of the show.

I'm ashamed of my words and deeds.