There are a lot of video games I have not played. It is impossible to play everything that comes out today and I certainly didn't play (or even know about) all of the games that came out when I was growing up in the Nineties. In 2014, between having a PlayStation Vita, a PS4, and a new-ish PC, I felt like I was pretty much done with the PS3, that generation, and playing old games on old platforms. At the time, I was dabbling with a few random PS3 games like Tales of Xillia, but I wasn't that motivated to finish it. My original backwards compatible PS3 also died not that long ago, so I also accepted that I would probably never play or finish those random physical PS1 and PS2 games I have, like Persona 2: Eternal Punishment or Indigo Prophecy. It was all of these events combined which made me say things like "I'm never hooking up my PS3 again" and "I've accepted that I'm never going to play <Insert Random Older Game>".

However, something over the past few months changed my attitude towards playing old games. Maybe it's because I really enjoyed seeing the gang play through older games between Unprofessional Fridays, Metal Gear Scanlon, and random features like BioForge. Maybe it's because my brother and I have been talking way too much about Persona lately and I keep thinking "Man, I really should see what happens in Persona 4: Arena Ultimax." Maybe Jeff is rubbing off on me. Whatever the reason, I feel like there are more and more old games I would like to play, despite the inconvenience of hooking up older consoles or messing around with dated mechanics or systems, or at the very least know more about.

With that in mind, I have built a list. Or, I guess, three lists, since I couldn't make up my mind when I had to narrow everything down to one short list. This is The Old Games, a way for me to keep track of the games that have slipped through the cracks or games I always wanted to play, but never did. It is both a backlog and gaps in my gaming knowledge I would like to flesh out. Some of the games are not that old, but I added the newer games too so I wouldn't forget about some of the games I missed in 2013 and 2014.

The idea behind this project is I would like to try to play, or at least sample, some of these games I wish I had played. For the record, this isn't a Steam or PSN backlog of shame. In fact, some of the games listed below I have never purchased. And when it comes to things like Steam, I have come to accept the fact that I have made some not so smart purchases over the years. I know I will never play every single game I bought, so I'm not going to even try that. I can just look at my game library, roll my eyes, and move on.

If all goes according to plan, I would like to write reviews on the site for the games I have finished, or at least update my progress with another blog every few months to say how things are coming along (mostly for my own record, more than anything else). I'm also going to be a little loosey-goosey in the sense I am not going to force myself to play some game over another. (For example, when something like Night in the Woods, No Man's Sky, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, or Persona 5 finally comes out, there's very little that is going to stop me from playing them as soon as I can) In other words, this is probably going to go on for...forever. And while I would like to ideally play everything, I'm not against the idea of watching some play throughs or let's plays. (Especially for FFVI. The one time I tried playing that game..uh...it didn't go so great.) For a lot of these games, the main driving force is this sense that "I have to know" more so than I need to play every second of this game.

With all of that out of the way, here are the lists. The lists are ranked by priority, based on my own personal interest. (All lists are in alphabetical order)

The Old Games I Have To Play (Top Priority):

1. 80 Days
2. 999: 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors
3. Bastion
4. Bayonetta
5. Clannad
6. Persona 4: Arena Ultimax
7. Saints Row: The Third
8. Shovel Knight
9. Steins;Gate
10. Super Mario Bros. 2

The Old Games I Would Like To Play (Middle Priority):

1. Crusader Kings II (Thanks Austin for showing this game off in that Playdate. It looks rad.)
2. Descent
3. EarthBound
4. Endless Legend
5. Final Fantasy VI
6. Indigo Prophecy (Yeah, I know...But still...I have to know. Even if it's nonsense, I have to know.)
7. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD
8. Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch
9. Sonic CD
10. Xenogears

The Old Games I Probably Should Play (Lower Priority):

1. Amnesia: The Dark Descent
2. Borderlands 2
3. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (Might just watch the VinnyVania of this, if the GBeast plays through that game.)
4. Fez
5. Mass Effect (FYI, I did play through Mass Effect 2 and 3. I just haven't seen the first game)
6. Ōkami
7. Quake II (I haven't played any Quake game actually, but it sounds like this is the one, right?)
8. Star Wars: TIE Fighter
9. Suikoden II
10. System Shock 2

So there it is. 30 old-ish games I would to play at some point in my life. Oh boy....

In terms of my strategy on how I am going to tackle all of these games, I'm going to get some of the biggest games for me out of the way first. This includes two visual novels, 999 and Steins;Gate. (Especially with Zero Time Dilemma, the third Zero Escape game, is coming out sometime in 2016) I will also like to finish Persona 4: Arena Ultimax sometime before Persona 5 comes out. At that point, I will probably keep my PS3 plugged in and try out some other PS3 games like Ni No Kuni and Okami.

The Next Old Games I Plan On Playing:

1. Steins;Gate
2. Persona 4: Arena Ultimax
3. 999: 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors

[Just a FYI, I don't spell out what actually happens in these games, but I specifically talk about the story changes and the impact some decisions have on the following games: Life is Strange, Mass Effect 3, Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Until Dawn. I do not say how these games end, what are the main choices you make, or even what these games are really about. So not really a spoiler warning, since there are no spoilers here, but if you're super sensitive about these games, there's a heads up for you.]

The past two weeks I have been playing through each episode of DONTNOD Entertainment's episodic narrative focused game Life Is Strange, a game that could very well be my Game of the Year. It is at times touching, emotional, quirky, heartbreaking, and unnerving. The core of the game is centered around Max Caulfield's manipulation of time to solve puzzles and make, undo, and remake decisions that will have a ripple effect throughout Arcadia Bay. The interesting thing about this mechanic from a story perspective is you generally know the consequences of your actions before it becomes final. As an example, with the very first decision like this you make, you are given the option of telling the school principal something or not. Both outcomes are not exactly ideal. It's not like Option A is the smart, moral decision, while Option B is the bad decision for people who want to watch the world burn. You can see the reactions to the characters and make a judgement call based on what you feel is best for Max as a character.

Throughout the game, these little decisions and the major choices Max has to make are reflected throughout the game: from subtle changes in the scenery, to offhand references characters make while talking about something more important, to what feels like the pinnacle of all video game choices--choose if somebody lives or dies. Now I am not going to talk about what are these choices--you should play this great, weird, beautiful game for yourself if you haven't--but I want to talk about these types of games in general, the impact your player choices has over the narrative, and why a game like Life is Strange succeeds while other games are less successful.

(For the record, this is just stuff I've been thinking about lately. If you don't agree with my opinions on any of these games or my thoughts on game narrative and design, that's a-Ok!)

So without saying what those decisions are or talking about what the hell happens in the game...what's with the choices you have in Life is Strange and how much does it affect the story? Does it impact how the game plays out? Well, I will say the game doesn't have 29 different endings. There isn't some algorithm running in the background calculating how Decision A + (Decision C + J) - Decision D (if the player picks Option B in Chapter 3) + Is Supporting Character #2 Still Alive = Ending #5. The way Life is Strange actually ends is pretty cut and dry, even for a game that starts each chapter with a reminder saying "This is a narrative driven game and your actions will affect the past, present, and future".This isn't to say the decisions don't mean anything. All of your decisions accumulate from episode to episode and impact the game as a whole. All it really means is there are only a handful of ways Max and Chloe Price's story could end.

In my mind, Life is Strange is one of the most (if not the most) successful narrative driven games of this type I have played. I say this within the context of my own personal enjoyment (what I got out of it, which may be different than what you will take away from it), the sense of player agency, and as a piece of interactive fiction. Over the past few years, we have seen plenty of examples of this type of game done well and poorly. If I would have to give a random example of both the good and the not-so-good, the good representation of this would be Telltale Games's The Walking Dead, while a poor representation of this would be BioWare's Mass Effect 3. Of course, you are more than welcome to disagree with how successful you think games like Life is Strange are or defend a game I am less favorable of. I'm not here to defend or tear down any one game. Even though I am going to compare and contrast some of these games, the main reason why I'm doing this is because I have played number of these types of games before, and I have various opinions on all of them, yet they aren't that radically different from each other.

Life is Strange, The Walking Dead, Mass Effect 3, Beyond: Two Souls, Until Dawn, these are all games that have character choices that impact the story. There are a few twists here and there to the formula: in Mass Effect you can Left Trigger or Right Trigger something in a cut scene; in Until Dawn sometimes it's better to not interact with something and continue the scene as is; in Life is Strange you can time travel and undo a decision and try something else. But you are still talking to people and choosing between more or less two critical decisions. Are you going to try and help So-and-So? Are you going to kill So-and-So? Are you just going to be an asshole? And like all of these games, you only have so much input into how the games actually end and what happens in the story.

Granted there are exceptions and games that do this better than others. There are visual novels that have completely different "paths" depending on which character you befriend or romanced. While it isn't beloved by everyone, Quantic Dream's Heavy Rain doesn't exactly have an ending to the overall story, but rather a number of different character specific endings that mix and match for each of the four main characters. But these feel like the exception. More or less the rule is we have games that offer and often publicize player choice, but only a set number of ways these decisions and actions impact the game's overall story and ending. Recently I even had some complaints about Until Dawn. While I wholeheartedly recommend that game, I was disappointed in how Until Dawn follows a critical path and some things are just bound to happen, no matter what you do. (If you look hard enough you can find me in a comments section of a certain Giant Bomb East Playdate making this case)

With that in mind, the question I've been asking is this: With games that are focused on player choice and consequences, what's the difference between a game where the lack of choices or number of consequences doesn't matter and the game is overall a success, while a similar game with similar types of endings and consequences is considered unsuccessful? Why do some games get a pass, while others do not? Generally speaking I think you can say it all depends on the quality of the game. Some games are simply better than others, or one grabs you more than another. If you dislike Until Dawn as a game, you aren't exactly going to praise its narrative and interactive qualities, right? Same thing if you can't stand Max and Chloe as characters in Life is Strange. However, since I almost always have a strong opinion on games like this--whether it is successful or not--I started to think that there might be more to it than that--at least for me if nothing else. My theory is a large part of this has to deal with how a game presents itself and how the player reacts to it.

These types of narrative driven games are unique for a lot of reasons. But one that sticks out to me is the fact most of them start off by saying "This story is interactive and driven by player choice. Every action you make will be reflected in the story." That's more or less the game pitching itself to you. How many first person shooters have you played where it opened up saying "This is a game where you run around with a machine gun. You're going to kill a lot of people, and it's going to be an entertaining experience"? Understandable, games like Until Dawn and Life is Strange are new-ish and it's just a heads up for the player. To me, I think that this type of logic doesn't need to be articulated and it can actually hurt a game.

Since games are inherently an interactive medium, if you sell the story based on that interaction, people are going to anticipate it. Before Heavy Rain came out, there was talk that you could have the four main characters killed off and the game would end. (Well, that doesn't happen. All of those characters could die, but the game isn't designed to work like that.) Before Mass Effect 3 came out, there was talk about how there would be wildly different endings and it wouldn't end with you picking an ending from a couple of different options. (The game ends with you picking between a couple of different options) The difference between the promotion and execution isn't the developers being deceitful to try and set up a twist to surprise the players. They just described their game how it isn't. That said, I think it only really matters if it affected your enjoyment of the game. This by itself is not necessarily the end of the world.

To give an example, I played through Heavy Rain a few too many times, experimenting with completely random things to see how the game ticked. There are times where the game can't let you fail, because that specific failure will break the critical path. (Sort of like how future events X, Y, and Z depend on this happening. Therefore that thing you assume you can do in the game is actually impossible) The game also doesn't have a scenario where all four of the main characters are killed and the game comes to an early end. However, almost every scene has multiple ways it could end. The climax of Heavy Rain can be radically different based on the actions you have taken earlier in the game. There isn't one single way to find out who the Origami Killer is.

A good example of me trying to figure out how Heavy Rain ticked is one throwaway scene where you cook eggs. You can cook them perfectly. You can undercook them. You can overcook them. Or you can stand around for a minute, have the other person walk back in the room and say, "Hey, I thought you were going to cook some eggs?!" Heavy Rain is by no means a perfect game and there are limitations to what the game promises. At the end of the day, in order to see most of those limitations you would need to try and break the game. Even if you did, I think there is plenty of variety between alternate dialogue options, scenes, and character interactions you would not see otherwise to make the game feel like your own.

In contrast, Quantic Dream's followup Beyond: Two Souls never felt like it had this balance. There are some memorable moments in the game--probably one of the most cited sequences is the party scene towards the beginning of the game. Large portions of the game had elements of interactivity, but lacked depth and felt limited. One chase scene where Jodie Holmes has to run from the police could end with her escaping freely or getting arrested. By the way, if she is arrested, she escapes somehow in the next cut scene. You can mind control people and manipulate objects. But only in the one way the programmers and designers told it to. In fact, I'm having a hard time thinking about the negative things that could happen to Jodie. There simply aren't that many of these events in the grand scheme of things, which is kind of odd in a game that is largely about the trials and tribulations she goes through. At that point, I just have to ask "What's the point of all of this anyway? Why didn't they just make a different game if they weren't going to go all of the way from an interaction standpoint?" When I look over the game, I think more about how the game is lacking in interactivity than anything else. Even with the game's final decision, it didn't feel deserved. Yes you have the freedom and player choice to pick your ending literally from a list that appear out of nowhere, but the importance of your choice needs to be felt through the story, not from a button prompt and a two minute cut scene at the end. Then again, this might be a different conversation if I actually liked the overall story in Beyond: Two Souls.

So what about something like Mass Effect? In that game, you can romance a handful of different people. The second game is basically all about you determining who lives and dies. The promise and the potential of the Mass Effect trilogy is something that hasn't really been attempted before and that's probably why it didn't live up to a lot of people's expectations. There have been plenty of crazy ideas for video games before and the idea behind the Mass Effect trilogy is kinda nuts. In fact, it makes more sense that Mass Effect 3 didn't live up to people's expectations than it actually succeeding. The more I think about it, the more I think that this problem really happened because of the promise of what the trilogy could be. I know I'm not the only one who replayed a previous Mass Effect game to import a save into ME3. If you search on YouTube, you can find videos of people creating a character to import in order to receive the worst ending possible. People like me didn't want to have one story. They wanted to see all of the stories. In the end, the people who went crazy for this kind of thing took the ending a lot harder than people who didn't.

As insane as it sounds, what I realized was the way I was playing Mass Effect was similar to how I played Heavy Rain. I replayed Heavy Rain over and over again to see what that game could do. When people talk about the gameplay in Heavy Rain, it is often about the Quick Time Events and the unconventional controls like how you open doors or even take a step forward. To me what sticks out most about "playing" Heavy Rain isn't those types of inputs, but rather toying with the story. It was me thinking, "What would happen if I did this to one character" or "How would the game change if this character never found out about something". I think with this mentality, you are also expecting more drastic changes with the story and the endings. If you are going to run an experiment, you want to see different results.

Even if other people don't feel this way, I believe this is why I and other people feel disappointed over a lack of choice in some games. Even for people who don't replay a game multiple times and want to see the flip side of their decisions from a previous play through, there is a sense that your primary action deserves an equal reaction. For me Beyond: Two Souls didn't do this. Until Dawn could have done it a little bit more with a few more consequences, but it is still a great game. Heavy Rain is very successful at letting you play as the game's director and do just that. But at the end of the day, it feels like most games simply aren't designed for this type of interaction.

Even if a game claims you can do this, sometimes there are either not enough paths, not enough choices, and not enough endings to live up to those types of expectations. Until Dawn opens with a cinematic talking about what the Butterfly Effect is. Mass Effect is literally called "mass effect" (get it). It's easy just to put the blame on the developers and say "They shouldn't do that", but maybe players should just expect something different from a lot of these types of games?

So, with all of that said and all of those other games out of the way, why is Life is Strange my favorite game of this type? One of the reasons is because I didn't care about any of that stuff.

Between Episodes 4 and 5, I briefly thought about hastily playing through Life is Strange again to have two save files ready for the Series Finale, so I could see "the other side of the story". I'm glad I didn't. I remember reading David Cage say that he wanted people to have one play through of Heavy Rain, in the sense that what you get during that play through is your Heavy Rain story. Playing through Life is Strange, I definitely have that feeling. In large part, this is because of the main character Max.

Between the voice acting, the journal entries, her internal monologue (when the option appears, always sit down for a second), looking at all of the objects inside her dorm room, reading text messages, and talking to the other characters, I don't think I have ever been in a character's shoes more than Max Caulfield's. I always felt like I was looking through her eyes and I never felt like Max was a blank slate for me or wondered off and thought about this side character more than the protagonist. Life is Strange goes out of its way to put you in Max's world. That's not to say it is exactly the most authentic of teenage minds. However, since everything is so realized with the surround characters and a richly populated world, it felt believable, even when it clearly isn't.

I don't care what anybody says, but "Splish Splash" is the best and realist line in that game. Hella Splish Splash!

The connection I had towards Max transferred over to the story as well. With these types of games, I usually play through the game making the decisions I would if I was in that situation. And while I did play Life is Strange in this way in the beginning, I started to play through the game as if I was Max. She isn't a traditional video game character in the sense that she is a blank slate or has an ambiguous past. I know who she is and what her thought process is. That lead me to have more and more empathy for her and her situation, which then lead me to agonize over everything other decision over the course of the series. I wanted the best for Max and Chloe, but the game doesn't give you that many great options to "Do the right thing". Max's story is about somebody who is a shy and reserved who has to step up and take action in order to deal with the extraordinary things around her, and when I walked away from my computer, pacing around wondering what the hell I was going to do, I felt that as a person.

When I finished Life is Strange, I didn't have endless possibilities laid out in front of me. Before the end came, I knew the ways this story was going to end. I still looked back over everything Max had to go through. From the carefree and funny to the dangerous and deathly serious. When I was approaching the end, there were situations that could have had a "better" outcome, but I was at peace. I played through the game as I saw it. I cared about so many of those characters that I wanted to do what I thought was right. Life is Strange isn't a game about going Paragon or Renegade and it is all the better for it. It doesn't matter that each choice you make adds up to a unique, one of a kind final act. If you connect with a story and its characters enough, if you have ownership over your actions, if you feel like you are creating your own path, you don't need any of that.

I enjoyed Life is Strange so much, I will absolutely play through it again someday. The thing is I don't know when. Maybe a year from now, so I can go back to Arcadia Bay and to interact with those characters again. If I ever had the opportunity, I would love to watch somebody else I know play through the game. Whatever the reason or whenever it happens, I can tell you this much: I'm not going to play through the game just to pick every alternate conversation option or to get another ending. Even if there were 29 different endings all processed by some line of code, I don't need to play through the game just to see it. I already had my Life is Strange experience and I loved it to death. <3

SPOILER WARNING: This blog post is about what I felt like after I finished the story to Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Although this blog is an analysis focused on one character, I do talk about and reference a lot of events, plot twists, the ending throughout the game. So yeah, spoilers!

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is a hell of a video game. It is without a doubt the best playing Metal Gear Solid game and I might even say it is one of my favorite playing games period. I've put in over 100 hours so far, which is more than the amount of time it took me to finish the four previous games combined. It is a game I want to go outside and yell about how much fun it is to play. On top of all of that, it is in the context of one of the craziest stories I've ever encountered in my life. The Phantom Pain is without a doubt in my mind the most and best Metal Gear Solid game from top to bottom. Which is why I'm struggling with the fact that I feel empty after I finished the story.

Yes, I am only at 63% completion after spending some like 105 hours with the game, so I can still play the game and do stuff if I want to. Yes, the reveal with Venom Snake is nuts and my head was swirling around yesterday for like 4 hours trying to process that big revelation, and dealing with questions like what does this mean and was this type of reveal called for, but at the end of the day, I think I do like that twist and at best embrace it and at worst live with it and accept it. None of that stuff bothers me. What bothers me isn't actually any of the stuff involving the True Ending (Truth: The Man Who Sold the World). My issue is actually the mission before this. The one with Quiet.

First let me acknowledge, The Phantom Pain is not perfect. There are a few questionable things in both Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain. With seeing the game in it's full context, some of those criticisms have fallen away (Like I don't really feel as disgusted by the vagina bomb anymore). One of the more talked about, questionable elements going to MGSV proper was Quiet. Hideo Kojima at various points said stuff like we will feel ashamed for talking about Quiet's, uh, attire when we learn the full backstory behind her character. Well...her full backstory is Big Boss lit her on fire, large portions of her body were replaced by parasites, so she has to wear less clothes so her skin can breathe and she can get more sunlight for photosynthesis. So, no, she doesn't wear less clothes due to a some Beauty and the Beast Unit like traumatic event or anything else we would feel ashamed of for asking "Hey, why is she only wearing a bra?" She wears less clothes, because she is a super plant lady soldier. Also because Kojima said he wanted to create a character who was hot and to have a good character for people to cosplay as. Not to dwell on too much of that aspect, but I just find it weird this is coming from the same main who created EVA, who unzips her jacket every other scene in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater for no reason, and had an entire squad of villains crawl around in latex suits who moan after you shoot them to death. Like isn't this Kojima's fourth attempt to create somebody super hot? Like he's done this before, so why base an entire character off of this concept? ANYWAY!!!

I guess what I'm getting at is I went into The Phantom Pain with a raised eyebrow towards Quiet. I wasn't outraged over her appearance and I didn't feel uncomfortable or anything like that. At the same time, I wasn't super thrilled to see promotional images with her half naked splattered with blood, and video games certainly don't need to put in breasts in front of me to sell me on their game.

And then I played the game. I was riding on Diamond Horse on my way to rescue Huey Emmerich, and then out of nowhere I went into Reflex Mode. Oh no...She found me! The battle with Quiet is only one of the game's few boss fights, but it was a great moment. I know you can find her earlier in the game if you go and look for her at the power plant, but the reveal with how it happened to me--just running around on my horse in a big open world, and then something surprising like that happened--is one of my more favorite character reveals in the Metal Gear Solid series. It also lead to a great conversation with a friend of mine about how we both fought the boss, something that I feel like only the previous games capitalize on. ("Did you know you could shoot some of the archs and have them fall on top of Quiet?" "Did you know you can summon a supply drop and have it land on top of her?")

Quiet quickly became my favorite Buddy in the game. If you are using Quiet as a Buddy, you are literally charging into battle with a Metal Gear boss backing you up. (How cool is that?!) She was already a legend talked about the Russian soldiers before you even see her, she can snipe jets out of the sky, she can take on just about anybody and win. Quiet is a character who doesn't need to speak and can let her actions speak for her, which I feel makes her a good partner to Big Boss/Venom Snake, who is also someone who can get things done. It feels a little simplistic just to call Quiet a bad ass, but that is the most appropriate descriptive I know. And since I played through large portions of an incredibly long game with her, she grew on me more and more. (We're not talking about her being in the game for a couple of hours. We're talking about her being there for dozens of hours)

Yeah, the game has an upgrade tree where you can paint her body gold or silver. Yeah, in the ACC she "stretches" in front of you. There's still some weird things with her character. Half of it you can shrug off and say "Well, that's Metal Gear", while the other half just feels like they are doing all of this stuff because she is a pretty lady and the young gentlemen love pretty ladies. But at the end of the day, none of that stuff really bothered me. It's still weird and some of that could/should have been taken out of the game though.

With The Phantom Pain my time and enjoyment were both tied to my time with Quiet. Yes, you can use D-Horse for horse stealth and command him to defecate. Yes, D.D. is the game's best radar equivalent and he can jump on enemies with an electric knife and stun them. The other Buddies are fun to play around with, but they always felt like a tool to me. On the other hand, Quiet felt more like a companion. Maybe it's because her character had more development than say D.D. With Quiet, she is one of the more distinct characters who had an arc: from finding her, recruiting her, and her appearance in subsequent cutscenes. Compare her to Huey or Revolver Ocelot, who were established characters with a history, so their story hits the ground running and is only focused on one or two things. I would argue Quiet is one of the few characters who has a more complex narrative, helped by the fact that her story is contained in this one game and everything is backed by the intrigue regarding who she really is. (Wait, isn't she the same person who tried to kill me in the hospital?)

The Phantom Pain is great for many, many reasons, so I don't mean to say this game is good because of her. However, Quiet continued to grow on me, both from a story perspective and running around the open world doing Metal Gear things. I wouldn't say I was exactly surprised by any of this, but I started the game with some reservations in terms of who she was and what impact she was going to have to the overall experience. I mention all of this because I wanted to provide context for where my head was at for what came after I killed Skull Face. One of the interesting things about The Phantom Pain is how characters started to exit the story. Skull Face is dead. Colonel Volgin dies...uh, again. Huey is exiled. Young Liquid Snake and Psycho Mantis literally fly away. And then Quiet leaves.

I assume you have to max out her bond to level 100, but I'm not sure exactly what triggers this mission. At some point, Quiet just leaves and ends up turning herself over to the Russian soldiers in Afghanistan. So you have one last mission to go get her back, where it seems like you have to fight every single last Russian left in the country. The mission started with you trying to bring her back, but in the end she goes into exile. She is forced to speak English in order to save Snake's life. And as a result, she's gone.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is an enormous, crazy game about a ton of different ideas all mixing together. At the core, it always felt like you were building and creating something. You are rebuilding a military base to replace the one that was taken away from you 9 years ago. You are strapping balloons to prisoners, enemies, tanks, shipping containers, and goats to help build your private army. You are researching gadgets, weapons, costumes, and cardboard boxes to help you in the field. You slowly bring in more people and relics from the past Metal Gear Solid games. And then at the very end, you lose someone. I don't want to sound overly dramatic, but dammit that's what I felt after I finished the game's story. I felt like I lost someone.

The next day I played the final mission and got the "True Ending" and learned a lot of crazy things about the two MGSV games, what the hell Major Zero was doing, and a little more about how all of these games connect together. But then I kept going back to Quiet.

First she showed up as M.I.A. on my Staff Management list. But then she was gone; not even listed anymore. I was flying in the ACC after learning everything about Zero, Big Boss, and Venom Snake, and then I panned the camera over and saw all of the photographs of Quiet in my helicopter were gone. I went to her holding cell, and saw all of the graffiti and signs warning people about Quiet were gone. I went down in the cell and saw nothing in there. "Gloria" wasn't playing. I deployed to Africa and saw I couldn't select her from the mission screen. I loaded up earlier missions and saw she was still unavailable there.

To me this is the closest I've felt to a character dying in a video game. Granted, we don't actually see Quiet die, but it's close enough. Characters die in video games all the time, but it rarely packs a punch. I tried to think of the closest example to compare how I feel about Quiet, and the only thing I could think of is Mass Effect 2. The first time I played through the suicide mission, Thane Krios and Zaeed Messani died. I also made the mistake of taking my time before starting the mission, so Kelly Chambers and Gabriella Daniels were also dead. I remember walking through the Normandy and saw a few empty posts and missing crew members. I would go up to the map and Kelly wouldn't be there. I walked down to engineering and when Kenneth Donnelly, the other engineer, saw me, he commented on how Daniels was gone. But at the end of the day, I already finished the story and all of the side missions I cared about, and just did a New Game+. There was no reason for me to keep playing that save and before I knew it I had a save file where all of those people were alive and well. They weren't dead anymore.

The problem with The Phantom Pain is just how fun that game is. This isn't a Mass Effect 2 situation for me, where something big happened, but I was quickly done with the game or able to flip a reset switch on the story. I want to go through the rest of the Side Ops. I want to finish building out Mother Base. I want to research all of the weapons and tools. I want to see how much of that game I can complete before I have to throw in the towel.

The two times I jumped back into The Phantom Pain after "finishing the game", I still go back to Quiet. It's not like I only think about her on Mother Base. I fly away in the helicopter and I only see Venom Snake looking out from Pequod. I don't see her in the ACC. I don't hear her humming when I sneak up to an enemy base. When I go through various menus, I don't see any mention of her equipment, Buddy support options, or the option to deploy her.

So now I run around with D.D. and this game is still insanely fun to play. Everything I said in my opening paragraph is still true. In my opinion, this is still the best Metal Gear Solid game and is one of the best games I have ever played. But then I would randomly remember how she walked away and she isn't coming back. The second chapter of The Phantom Pain is definitely a roller coaster with plenty of unexpected twists that take the game into some dark and interesting places (Especially that damn ending). After I processed everything that happened in this game, that's where my head is at. I'm stuck thinking about how Quiet as a character exited the story like that and also how my favorite Buddy can't be used anymore.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain isn't a perfect game. Hell, it's not even perfect with how it treats Quiet. But at the end of the day, it's still one of the best video games out there and it gave me a feeling no other video game has before. It's one thing to show a character being killed off. There are effective death scenes out there, (I'll admit it, I got teary eyed when Joel mourns over Sarah's death in The Last of Us) but sometimes a character just dies and that's that. It's another thing to show how that character isn't in those people's lives anymore. Honestly, this feeling is making me doubt how much longer I'm going to play this game, despite how much fun I'm having with it.

I doubt a majority of the people will feel the same way I do and there will be plenty of people who will just say, "Who cares, D.D. is the best. Quiet sucks." But that's still what I feel like after finishing this game, and if that isn't impressive I don't know what is.

Edit: Originally the full title of this blog post was, "Character Deaths in Video Games and Why The Ending to MGSV: The Phantom Pain Made Me Feel Empty <Spoilers>". It was changed per the request of a user on the site, who has not finished the game yet. I feel kind of in a weird position since this blog is mainly about Quiet and what it felt like after she walked away, and the game doesn't actually end with somebody dying. Still, I kinda feel bad even giving the perception of spoiling the game for somebody and I can't really say "No, no, nobody dies" or try to justify it to him because that would be an actual spoiler. Obviously not my intention, but I still feel bad about it.

Sorry if anybody else felt that way. :(