The Ultimate Ending Discussion (SPOILERS)

@ch3burashka: Pretty sure that most of those trailers are red herrings. Twins in a helicopter, leading you to think that you'd see both Solid and Liquid? Big Boss in a field of bodies, yelling into the air? Deliberate model changes, like Venom Snake on the motorcycle instead of Big Boss? All of it designed to lead us astray in some way.

Kojima loves to show us exactly what is in the game, without context, and often out-of-order or remixed in some way. No, I don't think we were ever supposed to see Big Boss go evil at all.

1. I forget exactly but it is explained in one Paz's interrogation tape, i think he claimed he had no beef with Boss or Zero but their deaths were necessary to his plans.

2.Because Kojima's female characters have gotten worse and worse, also to answer Otacons famous question "Can love bloom on the battlefield"

3.I think it's clear that Big Boss/ Venom were never "evil" just on the wrong side of Patriots, who i believe were already controlled by AI's by then.

Great write up on the True Ending.

This may have already been discussed but I don't really want to read 300+ posts. I guess I kind of want to say my peace at least a little.

I suppose the two biggest threads before heading into MGSV was:

1. When and how was Outer Heaven created?
2. How did Big Boss fall back in good graces with the US government so he could be part of FOXHOUND?

While we don't "see" both of those, I think it provides closure on #2. We see Zero is still involved with the remains of MSF and at that moment, it works out for both of them. MSF/Mother Base is destroyed and Zero saves Big Boss's life. In return, Zero can have another shot at using Big Boss's image as a symbol/meme/whatever to unite everyone together. We see Zero begin his push for information control, which puts an end to things like the vocal cord parasite research and beings the development of the Patriot system. At that point, the rest of what we know as as The Patriots runs on autopilot while Zero basically turns into a vegetable. It is probably a stretch, but I think this detail helps put in context how Big Boss ends up back at the US.

You could say Big Boss wanted to be closer to his ultimate enemy or put extra distance between himself and Outer Heaven. To me, part of my biggest question going into MGSV was why would Big Boss go back to the United States, when that would mean he was basically going back to Zero, who would eventually take control of everything? Well at that point, Zero is out of the picture. Members of Diamond Dogs get random bits of context over the years. How Zero is dying. How Strangelove built the AI network. How Anderson and DARPA are going to finish building the Patriots. How there are so many pieces to Cipher, but Zero is basically the only one with the full context.

By the time Big Boss would go back to the US, the founding members of The Patriots are:

• Zero: Basically brain dead.
• Paramedic: Doing Dr. Clark stuff, beside Les Enfants Terribles, since Diamond Dogs found out the project was shelved early on.
• Sigint: Working at DARPA, finishing up/keeping the Patriots system running in the early days
• Ocelot: Still working for Big Boss
• EVA: Doing a few random things here and there, but will more or less working towards Big Mama stuff.

The human threat isn't really there anymore. What remains is Zero building his information network which he'll use to unite the world together (something Big Boss at that point obviously is opposed to). And you got a sense of how Cipher was operated through the Truth cassettes. A lot of people knew somebody was doing something so this thing can happen, but the way he built his network, nobody really had any context of the big picture. Especially with XOF gone, Zero being so secretive (and ending up basically dead by the time 1984 roles around), you can see how Big Boss would have enough power and influence through the legend of Big Boss and the work he ended up doing fighting in the Cold War in South America and Afghanistan.

I don't want to retcon the story (but let's face it, you kind of have to with this fucking timeline. Like how the fuck is Psycho Mantis ever going to leave Eli/Liquid and work for FOXHOUND!?!), but I guess in my mind by the time MGSV finishes up, there isn't any real opposition where people are trying to still kill Big Boss or don't want him to come back to the United States. His legend continues to span decades and nobody gets a full picture of his figurative and actual phantom. And how many people in the US government or army would know all of the background drama between Zero, Big Boss, XOF, etc. And I haven't played Portable Ops, but I know Campbell is introduced in that game. So Big Boss would in theory have a contact to go back to FOXHOUND if he really wanted to.

Ok I'm going to stop typing now before I'm here for the rest of the day talking about this fucking game.

Is there really no way to get quiet back, and was there really a way to prevent her from leaving and still be able to play mission 46 (ign secrets page says that there is)?

I can't say for sure how I did it but I finished the game without losing Quiet and without even unlocking mission 45. My guess is that it might have something to do with your bond level? I didn't have full bond with her, I think it was only around halfway. The whole thing is extremely confusing.

@thefantasticfillip: Wow, thank you for writing that whole big essay. I had watched a Lets Play of Peace Walker but it didn't entirely register with me that Big Boss' loss of faith at the end there is essentially the moment he "turned". (I guess I was pretty bored and not entirely paying attention at that point.)

Man, the Metal Gear saga is such a big, beautiful mess. Its not at all what I wanted it to become, but there's some real brilliance to it here and there.

Apparently not having max bond works, but I just put a butterfly on the front bit of my emblem and it froze her story (the missions just don't appear). 46 popped up just fine without 45.

@sarx: I think the Quiet-Venom Snake relationship revolved around the languages of revenge and compassion. Venom snake, after rescuing and bringing Miller back to mother base, reminds Miller that Diamond Dogs is not about revenge, but about the future. Quiet's motivations were originally also of revenge, as evidenced by her cassette tapes. Venom snakes shows her compassion by sparing her life after beating her in the sniping duel, exiling Huey instead of executing him, bringing her the boots she tosses aside before playing in the rain, etc. After learning about how quickly the vocal chord parasite mutated, she sought revenge against the players that infected her with it because it meant that keeping her silence was not a sure-fire way to stay by Venom Snake's side. She refuses the Wolbachia treatment because in her mind she can't forgive Venom Snake for foiling her assassination of Big Boss in the hospital, and keeps it as her ace in the hole until the end.

The next bit is me personifying the character, but I feel like by the end of the story, she regrets that she only speaks revenge (hence the line of the tape that says, "I wish we had a common tongue."). She regrets that revenge led her to become infected with the vocal chord parasites, to refuse the Wolbachia treatment, and to exact revenge on the soviet army troops that has left them in this do or die situation. After learning compassion, she realized the best choice was to save Venom Snake's life and leave to protect Diamond Dogs from infection.

@sarx I had the same question initially about Skullface hitting Motherbase. After listening to the last batch of tapes you get the feeling that theres no real emotional reason for Skullface to do that to Big Boss. But don't forget that Skullface was interested being the sole supplier of metal gears with nuclear capabilities to everyone who needed it. (with a nice failsafe on his end to decide if the nuke should proceed or cancel)

And here you have this PMC in the middle of the ocean , with their own nuclear metal gear, who take joboffers as well. That was the reason for Skullface to hit motherbase.

@colorbrandon: Nothing to add except that you nailed it.

This helped a ton, great writeup! What I can't explain is that my Venom Snake was black and he had a white arm before the plastic surgery cut....

@kasaioni@artisanbreads I'm not sure if you still need/want this, but I just finished the game yesterday, took some screens of the timelines, and OCRed them into plain text.

@bane: Thank you for doing that. I eventually just went to youtube for the full ending and found it that way because there was no screen shot I could find at the time. This is useful to have though.

@bane: Very helpful. Thank you very much.

@chumm: same here! with attention to detail everywhere else this was a weird thing

@colorbrandon:Some of my own additional thoughts on Venom-Quiet:

Code Talker at one point talks about how when translating one word in English to Navajo, it loses the meaning of the original word as the two words are not exactly the same. As someone who used to work on subtitling Japanese, the truth is you can't perfectly translate Japanese to English. There are so many idiosyncrasies in the language that what the best translators end up trying to do is actually rewrite dialogue in such a way that you capture the original spirit of the Japanese conversation. There used to be endless debates out there (and I suspect there still are) whether it is better to offer a more exact translation or if it is better to take some liberties to preserve the original intent.

I would love to know whether one of the inspirations for MGS V's story was in fact Kojima's frustration with the loss of meaning in translating Japanese to English. Since he's such a big movie buff and all, I could see that as a possibility. Not to mention in Japanese public education, English is a much bigger deal than say learning Spanish or French is in the U.S.

Anyway, the story was definitely intriguing even if it was a bit of a mess. It certainly ended up a lot better than I originally though it would after how awful Ground Zeroes was. But then again, I'm a huge Orwell fan, so I'm a sucker for that type of stuff.

@thefantasticfillip: Thank you for writing this I loved reading it

Just finished the story last night and one thing really stood out to me, the Phantom Cigar. Does anyone else see any relevance in the fact that Venom has a cigar vape-rig and Big Boss smokes real cigars?

That always stood out to me during the play through.

Also, what did you guys name Venom? I completely forgot that I named him Sports Johnson, so it made the picture reveal completely hilarious.

@ballsleon: I'm not sure why but I laughed so much at that final line :D

I accidentally called my guy F because I can't get used to R2 on the PS4 being the "accept" button instead of the caps button.

Made the reveal an underwhelming reminder.

It's gets even better. There's a tape in Peace Walker where Big Boss specifically talks about how he'd never smoke e-cigs over the real deal.

I named Venom "Hideo" which I also had forgotten, so I did a full "what in the fuck?" before realizing I was the one who had caused it to say Hideo.

I wonder if Kojima swapping out David Hayter for this game was the most meta commentary on languages and voices and phantom pain. (Probably not because they kept the same voice actor for the Japanese version but still)

...David Hayter has the vocal chord parasites. That is the only explanation.

I was secretly hoping that during the truth mission when we first hear the real Big Boss talk that it was Hayter again with Keifer voicing Venom.

Trust me, a LOT of us were hoping for this. You're definitely not alone.

The thing that always amazes me about the Metal Gear series is that a typical 80s action game enemy name: "Big Boss" has been twisted into this ridiculously amazing storyline, in which, the least confusing and almost most believable aspect is that the name "Big Boss" is perfectly acceptable.

I had thought this too, but then having Keifer's voice in Ground Zeroes wouldn't make sense.

I wonder how the reaction would differ if Hayter had done the voice in Ground Zeroes then Keifer took over in Phantom Pain only to have Hayter come back in the truth mission. It would probably make the twist too obvious.

What I had been hoping for was an appearance by Solid Snake, voiced by Hayter.

@melgin: yeah, I thought the same. I figured the whole point of quiet being so reticent to speak English is that it was effectively a death sentence for her, but that didn't seem to be the case. Also it's pretty annoying that post-ending Quiet becomes unavailable for deployment as that massively impacts my desire to keep playing the game (given that her + silenced sleep dart rifle is overwhelmingly the most powerful thing in the game).

It was a satisfying ending, only thing I would I change is have you play from 'Big Bosses' perspective in the last hospital sequence, I feel like that was the original plan, but got cut along the way, I actually think that would aided the reveal, which I think I had pegged from the 1st scene, still it was well handled and no less awesome.

Just saw someone refer to Kojima as The Man Who Trolled the World lol

Do they explain how venom snake takes the appearance of big boss? Is it just some face/off surgery? I was thinking it could just be nobody knows what Big Boss looks like- they have all heard the exaggerated legend but never saw him. That would seem to fit with the series theme of memes and ideology. Only Ocelot would know, and hes in on it. Someone posted earlier in this thread that Miller may be blind so maybe he couldn't tell either

Alright, the OP's clued me in on some of the finer points. Zero likes the Big Boss mystique so commissioning the Phantom offers them an option should Big Boss never awaken. Of course, it goes sour if neither awakens but whatever. The Venom face is the result of plastic surgery. It can't be face off because Big Boss needs his face for Big Boss things. If he had a new face, the bandages would not be necessary to keep XOF from shooting him on sight.

Venom's unmasked at the wrong moment in time and then it all kicks off.

You could have easily made the argument that Ground Zeroes was the mission as brainwashed Medic Boss remembers it. Would simultaneously explain the medic's pitch shifted voice in Ground Zeroes, because his brain is disguising the fact that that was actually him.

I would have loved for Hayter to return just for The Truth and the tapes you unlock post game in order to neatly tie everything together, and I wouldn't be surprised if that was the idea at some point but Hayter burned all his bridges before they got far enough in production to contact him for it.

I'd argue you don't need to brainwash the Medic if he's already loyal. Almost like its just there to make Ocelot's later shenanigans less nuts.

So here's the thing... when asked to input my name and birthday I used my real name and real birthday. I made my avatar look as much like me as I could. So when I turned over that photograph it had my name on the back. It was my face in that mirror. It adds a whole other level of fan service to consider myself the last boss of Metal Gear 1. And I think that was enough to really win me over.

@shindig: I think it's more just so that he doesn't know and can't let it slip ever. Imagine if the medic was captured and tortured, how long would his loyalty last then and would he crack and revel that Big Boss is actually someone else? It was important for him not to know he wasn't really Big Boss.

I did the same thing, and it was fucking great.

That kinda depends on how long they wanted the ruse to go on for. Part of me wonders if Big Boss would've just sneaked out the backdoor if Quiet looked at the medic, offed him and then walked right out. That said, they were wasting everyone left and right so getting them both out might've been the Plan B.

@thefantasticfillip: I'll mirror the sentiments of many in this forum - but this write up was fantastic. Thank you!

I just finished the game myself - as a huge fan of the franchise i'm sad to consider this might be the last game we get - especially when the gameplay was as perfected as it was in this. Overall though I loved the time I spent playing the game and the experiences I had.

After having just finished all the story missions here, I very much appreciate the entire post as well as some of the discussion here. I already came away from experiencing the ending liking it, but now I'm firmly in the camp of being absolutely impressed with it and its implications on the overarching narrative of the series and on the character of Big Boss.

I have to say I was expecting something on the hallucination side, and the fact that I knew everyone was upset about an upcoming twist I started to wonder if Big Boss was going to realise that he was mis-interpreting events.

It's all very Metal Gear, and all very cool, even if it is a bit of a punch to the gut.