LavenzaVantas
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Just as impactful as mgs 3.
Just as cinematic as mgs 4.
But more fun to play than any mgs before.
It feels like the game is missing a final chapter in the story, it hurts almost. This phantom pain of something that is missing.
Just as cinematic as mgs 4.
But more fun to play than any mgs before.
It feels like the game is missing a final chapter in the story, it hurts almost. This phantom pain of something that is missing.
Metal Gear Solid V sucks so much if it wasn't one of my favorite games ever in terms of gameplay I'd give it 2 stars.
To go through positives: it has absolutely stunning gameplay. Missions that I feel like would be boring and uneventful in other games are fun and exciting due to the masterful controls and style that only falters in terms of cqc which has been reduced to practically just a punch/kick button. I honestly loved the open world but I fully believe it's no where as good as it should or could be.
The prologue and first mission are treasures. The opening of the game is one of my favorites it's just such a wonderfully nightmarish experience of horrible stressful events one after another with shocking moments around every corner. In a way the prologue being so good was almost a detriment to the rest of the game. The whole world clearly "wants me dead" there, but the rest of the game has no where near the same tension.
Overall the best missions in the game are the ones that are straight up just horror. The hospital mission, the quarantine center mission. I'm also quite fond of the introduction to Sahelanthropus. i can criticize MGSV for days but I could never be mad at Sahelanthropus. I think its just worthless to complain that a 2015 game doesn't hold up to 1987s tx-55. Sahelanthropus is just so massive on scale that when it's hovering over you and stalking you it truly feels like a scary opposing threat.
MGSV when its at is best is just so incredible that I can never be truly upset with it, but it has its long list of drawbacks.
Kojima has made many many of my favorite games, and he has created games I'd call near masterpieces, but I would never call him a great writer. He wrote quiet in 2015, which is frankly embarrassing. I think he was able to avoid plenty of MGSV criticism due to all the issues with Konami, when his writing should have been targeted a lot more. Like everyone else I have gripes with Konami and I'd love to see the game MGSV could have been but there were so many issues at it's core.
MGS3 worked as a game since it understood it was a prequel and provided context to the games before it. That context being what lead to big boss becoming a horrible war mongering man, but as these prequels continued on this introspective shifted from looking back on a horrible person to idolizing him and giving him unneeded tragic backstories one after another. It's no wonder people walk out of Metal Gear games wanting to join the military and view Big Boss as a hero when Kojima paints him in such a light.
The villains are so weak in the phantom pain because Big Boss and his entourage are already so bad. Skull face as a concept is laughable, hes so ridiculous, but comes out to be one of the most boring villains including main villains and side villains in all of Metal Gear, and Eli, although Liquid is a great and funny edition, is literally twelve and he never even got his moment to do anything because the second half of the game never gets its moment to do anything.
MGSV is just so disconnected as a game. It has a promising beginning and honestly a twist I would have liked if it had more work put into it, but the middle is a mess. It's one half a weak but completed story and then just nothing for the rest of its run time. It's a shame to see where MGSV ended up when it had so much to work with. It could have focused on the Patriots, it could have shown the falling out of Big Boss and Kazuhira, it could have been the connecting piece between the Big Boss and Solid Snake games and focused on Outer Heaven or Zanzibarland. Instead its about the most ridiculous bland man you will ever see, a horrible person who we are pretending is tragic, a 12 year old, literally one of the worst written female characters ever, and Huey
There is a shopping list of other issues I wont even bother to get into MGSV is a game I like rambling about, but I feel like I give it too much time for what it is. It's a shame to see this game, from a series known for its intricate and well thought out narratives, be so painfully sloppy and regressive. I hate it. It'shorrible. 4 stars out of 5. I played it multiple times a week for months.
To go through positives: it has absolutely stunning gameplay. Missions that I feel like would be boring and uneventful in other games are fun and exciting due to the masterful controls and style that only falters in terms of cqc which has been reduced to practically just a punch/kick button. I honestly loved the open world but I fully believe it's no where as good as it should or could be.
The prologue and first mission are treasures. The opening of the game is one of my favorites it's just such a wonderfully nightmarish experience of horrible stressful events one after another with shocking moments around every corner. In a way the prologue being so good was almost a detriment to the rest of the game. The whole world clearly "wants me dead" there, but the rest of the game has no where near the same tension.
Overall the best missions in the game are the ones that are straight up just horror. The hospital mission, the quarantine center mission. I'm also quite fond of the introduction to Sahelanthropus. i can criticize MGSV for days but I could never be mad at Sahelanthropus. I think its just worthless to complain that a 2015 game doesn't hold up to 1987s tx-55. Sahelanthropus is just so massive on scale that when it's hovering over you and stalking you it truly feels like a scary opposing threat.
MGSV when its at is best is just so incredible that I can never be truly upset with it, but it has its long list of drawbacks.
Kojima has made many many of my favorite games, and he has created games I'd call near masterpieces, but I would never call him a great writer. He wrote quiet in 2015, which is frankly embarrassing. I think he was able to avoid plenty of MGSV criticism due to all the issues with Konami, when his writing should have been targeted a lot more. Like everyone else I have gripes with Konami and I'd love to see the game MGSV could have been but there were so many issues at it's core.
MGS3 worked as a game since it understood it was a prequel and provided context to the games before it. That context being what lead to big boss becoming a horrible war mongering man, but as these prequels continued on this introspective shifted from looking back on a horrible person to idolizing him and giving him unneeded tragic backstories one after another. It's no wonder people walk out of Metal Gear games wanting to join the military and view Big Boss as a hero when Kojima paints him in such a light.
The villains are so weak in the phantom pain because Big Boss and his entourage are already so bad. Skull face as a concept is laughable, hes so ridiculous, but comes out to be one of the most boring villains including main villains and side villains in all of Metal Gear, and Eli, although Liquid is a great and funny edition, is literally twelve and he never even got his moment to do anything because the second half of the game never gets its moment to do anything.
MGSV is just so disconnected as a game. It has a promising beginning and honestly a twist I would have liked if it had more work put into it, but the middle is a mess. It's one half a weak but completed story and then just nothing for the rest of its run time. It's a shame to see where MGSV ended up when it had so much to work with. It could have focused on the Patriots, it could have shown the falling out of Big Boss and Kazuhira, it could have been the connecting piece between the Big Boss and Solid Snake games and focused on Outer Heaven or Zanzibarland. Instead its about the most ridiculous bland man you will ever see, a horrible person who we are pretending is tragic, a 12 year old, literally one of the worst written female characters ever, and Huey
There is a shopping list of other issues I wont even bother to get into MGSV is a game I like rambling about, but I feel like I give it too much time for what it is. It's a shame to see this game, from a series known for its intricate and well thought out narratives, be so painfully sloppy and regressive. I hate it. It'shorrible. 4 stars out of 5. I played it multiple times a week for months.
An absolute masterpiece tragically assaulted on all sides by myths of having no story and being incomplete.
I had to play the Sins of the Father-jeep scene with people in the room with me.
This review contains spoilers
“You're still happy now. Changing your lies to suit the listener, and getting by on slipping through the cracks. Building layer upon layer of convenient stories until nothing means anything to you anymore. You're happy all the time, because you don't even notice you're doing it. Think hard. Who are you really? You're not a victim, and you're not the silent majority. You're a perpetrator. And a petty hypocrite. The real world doesn't make you suffer. It's the other way around!”
You most likely have already heard just how much of a technical marvel this game is and yeah, that indeed is the case and many would probably agree that the gameplay is treated quite fairly at least when compared to the games of its time. Now where the game is not being treated fairly, I think, is its story-telling and even if I do not mind players not caring about narratives in video games, I will still try to appreciate it here, since I consider MGSV’s plot to be at least as good as the rest of the series and quite frankly I do not have much else to talk about.
That being said, this will be a mini-review and I won’t really be talking about a wide variety of things that can be discussed about it and won’t really bring many examples.
I think people mostly not click with Phantom Pain because it connects to the entire series in an overly subtle manner but otherwise has very grounded and small scale conflict and its not as expressive as the rest and also it requires from the player to take it into account that its moreso a prologue (you could overthinking as it coming back to the very first Metal Gear game to form an ouroboros from various angles) to the rest of the series and thus they should not be expecting a cathartic ending - which is also highlighted by how it fundamentally mirrors Sons of Liberty - but the way its using the entire series for its own good is what makes it the best
How well do MGS2 and MGSV contrast one another is already elaborated here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV4wY2rjAWY and to put it shortly, we have two cases of identity crisis being born by the influences of the Snakes and how the reaction (or lack of thereof) by these people (re)shapes the MGS world. A spontaneous descent into ‘evil’. Many might have been disappointed by how said promised descent was not really directly focused in long-winded sequences and instead we have not even played as Big Boss as he was absent for the whole game, but that is exactly what makes it more natural and plausible to me. We did not have to witness the change in Big Boss, we only needed one big reality check to realize that he has always been one, come make the point sounds. As a result, we get a room to sense the noticeable (unless you are Venom) change in Big Boss after the events of Ground Zeroes as the ‘ideological clash’ - of what kind of a person everyone (by the most closest one, The Medic) thought Naked Snake was in the romanticized lenses and what kind of a person he actually turned out - is born between his current self and his present self, or rather what Venom (We) understood of him in Snake Eater and Peace Walker. Vices come from short-sightedness, after all…
... the 'evil' of Big Boss being, of course, doing the very thing that was done to The Boss to his comrade, essentially becomin whatever he sought to fight against...
… in 1984 Metal Gear universe is full of aimless proxy wars and impending apocalypse of information.
Everything is a lie to establish another lie.
Everything is a trap to establish another trap.
Everything is a gambit to establish another gambit.
And then we have ten thousand peoploids split into small tribes, the Diamond Dogs - on the surface, a group seeking to appease their loss and establish a place gathering people regardless of their age, ethnicity and gender (diamonds are a girl’s best friend, and a dog is a man’s) all while letting them learn to use their skills for good and leave whenever they please, as well as building separate territory to the ones not indulging in warmongership and educating them in civil manner.
Beneath the surface, we have good old manipulators, accomplices, puppets, rapists, war-criminals, victims, perpetrators, traitors, torturers and whatnot, all keeping the 'Outer Heaven' grounded to the existing reality.
Contrary to the RPG nerds' beliefs, MGSV's pseudo open-world is doing exactly what it should be doing - we are not getting a talking simulator full of lousily connected (if at all) side-quests detracting from the main plot, but the aspect exists with the sole reason to immerse as in the freedom of espionage. It may feel bland, sure, but it is 'an official' war-zone between people with a thick language barrier, all that is left to them is to kill and manipulate and be killed and manipulated. Not to mention how emptying the environment (to safety) is also a part of their job and that's a refreshing thing about Phantom Pain's world, it is not about what quests you are taking and what is the extra context that characters are telling you about their lives, but what you yourself are doing and how are you doing it (the world having to adapt to your legendary status) every bit of task and mechanic further drives that point, with no unnecessary content to be found.
All in all, we get a game completely focused on (in)direct progression of its mechanics and narrative. Although, side-ops would have benefited if the locations had missions with different contexts instead of repeating the same thing over and over again, especially when, say, you are supposed to rescue someone in a certain location, they will always be at one fixed location. And if I mention another issue I have with the game, it is the boss battles - Now unlike others, I do not think we got the small amount of boss and battles with them, in fact there is a very good amount of fights and part of them are simply more than just fights-to-death like in other MGS games, showing clear maturity, but that very maturity and realism gets a bit too much when these boss fights are not getting their own 'stage' of sort, to give them their own unique flamboyance to them, as the boss fights get influenced too much by the game being open-world to the point that they feel like engaging in average MMORPG type action with them and there really is not much to do against them, they come off as very easy, be it you getting free missile launchers, airplane help or just blatantly run away from them easily without you being affected in any negative form because it does not even affect your mission rank.
The game would also massively benefit from more indoor sequences/set-pieces and whatnot. Prologue showcased a fantastic example of what could have been achieved, but unfortunately it is never repeated.
What I appreciate a lot in MGSV is that it is up to the players to decide whether story content gets in their way or not. Or we can just get the minimal amount of information or just dig in the cassettes and interpret various things in various ways. We can take the name of the series as an example. Hell, we can take one letter from the name as an example - V - and take connections such as… it is not a proper number because the game is some sort of a spin-off… it being two lines mirroring one another… it represents peace or victory… or maybe it is Vendetta... or it could also be used by the villain to give a hint with double meaning as to where the bomb is located…
… there is a mission in MSGV where Venom Snake is being bit by venomous snake so funny and full of meaning he biting himself and generally Snakes and clones all die by other snakes' hands… and this is basically how MGSV manages to be a free resident of my mind, you can connect to one another as much as you like.
Sure there are a lot of questionable plot development and connections to the lore established in the previous installments… for example, how the final mission with Skull Face starts, our veteran Venom Snake almost announcing to Skull Face that he was indeed approaching him for the kill, in the open field, which seems very weird at first, but then we can look at the mask of the Third Child (who is in fact Psycho Mantis, but never gets named for exactly the lore reasons) and it becomes clear that he was manipulating Venom through his bloodlust, given the visible horn on him, the detail that keeps changing according to who the child is manipulating at the moment. So yeah, slowly and surely, thinking about such satisfying details and making sense out of the game is exactly what makes it age so well for me.
Basically, you could even skip all of these cutscenes and just play the missions, indulging in the mechanics as you please, the story won’t get in your way, aside from explaining some mechanics here and there. What’s more, gameplay itself plays a vital part in the development of at least one narrative point. You can see Automata’s Ending E being praised by anyone and anything and it is quite easy to do so, given how blatant and shoved down your throat it is (not to say that I do not like the ending), but barely anyone appreciates MGSV doing the same thing with its nuclear disarmament, but in much more subtle manner.
I know, I know… having to listen to cassettes is the gravest sin towards writing and all… but on one hand they are not really necessary and on the other hand, video games are not advanced enough (if they will ever be) to hold such high standards for them in this very medium, so I really do not see the reason to be so unforgivable and harsh towards MGSV.
Of course, there are other interesting mechanics… one of the memorable ones being how the soldiers you recruit learn to speak more and more languages, which then gets directly revealed as a theme, language’s power, that which was very well elaborated in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8EJyHh2xfM
"Your favorite song... Nicola, Bart — immigrants, wrongly executed... But their deaths served as a message to others: that ours is a society that murders the innocent. Do you, too, believe that your sacrifice will change the world?"
(says the guy who basically proudly delivered everything catastrophic that was about to happen in the MGS-verse before he himself - or should I say, got turned into a phantom pain to the world? Alright, sorry for the lame joke… and he is as much of a shadow to Big Boss as much Venom Snake is… foreshadowing, foreshadowing…)
what I love about Phantom Pain, aside of its relatable language power theme that serves as clear message in comparison to pure emotions that other series are trying to convey via vague resolutions that are not really saying anything, is that even if characters are doing questionable things in a harsh world, it's not a 'necessary evil' propaganda, but Venom Snake's squad is constantly improvising and questioning the missions they are provided to complete. Were they vaguely asked to kill and it turns out they were asked to kill children? They just record fake video and if it works it works, if it does not work then they won't care about the mission and when they take children back, they don't turn them into soldiers, but make separate space for them to get educated. it starts as a seemingly random band but it grows and shapes as an interesting system in itself
And then all of it crumbles… the final nail being put by Big Boss himself… making Venom realize that the point of no return has been crossed by not only himself, but his present environment too, and it's too late for him to fight for his own good, so he should do it for the next generation.
Well I love the whole cast - even Ocelot, who is seemingly ‘not himself’, but actually cleverly plays with the expectations once again and Huey who I find as a fantastic subversion to the expectations built by his son (in addition to the proofless and self-(un)aware bickering between Huey, Ocelot and Miller that makes the matter unreadable and unpredictable through the various possible outcomes) - but I will solely focus on Venom here. The shadow of Big Boss that still remained as the expendable shadow even after literally turning himself into the Big Boss himself. Or on meta level, us, the players, towards whom the Venom is looking as we break the mirror and there remains nothing to reflect on.
The way he was given the most freedom and agency out of the protagonists and at the same time he was the least person you would call 'free', the way he can bond with the system he built and various individuals and commit atrocities towards enemies and his own people alike, all with their own consequences and having psychological issues of his own on top of that, while also make poor choices both in how he judges people and how convincing he is - in just a single game - makes me appreciate him on quite a high level, as it is an achievement that none of the protagonists have achieved (and Sutherland nails it the way I do not see Hayter being able to do, for this particular character)
I also liked how it does not really feel like the game is making a 'twist' out of his identity and it is only a fault of main character's identity crisis/twisted perception and maybe player not giving much attention to A LOT of details telling you that he is not the real Snake (heard people already knew he was not Big Boss, from the original trailer alone... with very simple and natural details like what they are smoking and etc). But then again, all of the Snakes and 'clones' in general are very close, so I don't really care about their ranking. He kinda lacks catharsis and is probably the most brooding of them all in how silent he is, that downplays him a bit, but at least he is not pushing people away like you would expect from such an archetype and its also done with its own interesting purpose (as he is supposed to be the self-insert, in comparison to Raiden who was supposed to have his own life and it could not have been suppressed in favor of Snake's role machinations)
Venom might be ‘mute’, but he still an individual, making his own choices that can go against his surroundings, not being influenced by them, as seen in his judgment of releasing Huey and most definitely not using nuclear weapons in action, but just as a symbol, to completely negate Naked Snake in him. He is, of course, also capable of going with reasonable suggestions and change his mind, as seen by him changing his mind about the kids once Miller affirmed his stance to treat them well and put them outside the warfare. And, of course, he could be forced to commit things he does not want to commit or not commit just for the satisfaction’s sake, which can be seen in Skull Face’s final moments, Miller forcing his hand… and Miller himself is the one who respect Venom for not indulging in vengeance as his character progresses. After all, he has always been a medic and the role he is forced into is the complete anti-thesis to him.
See, everyone but Venom Snake desires revenge in the game. One might think that expressing the desire to vengeance is what would define someone and thus Venom Snake does not really have personality, but one thing is clear, that very specific desire is made universal in the game and not admitting to it can only be defined as the trait.
I love how Venom has memory problems and only retains romanticized view of Big Boss and then is trying to uphold it, thinking it's him and he feels more and more comfortable in it but at the same time feels guilty and pessimistic about his previous identity, self-unaware as he can’t even recollect in objective manner the most crucial event in his life, the one he feels guilty about. That he was unable to locate the bomb and got Paz killed. Or so he thinks, to not shift the blame to someone else, like Eli, but to himself. It was his fault. He should have been better… and that’s the transformation that occurs to Venom, he embraced his fate to weaponize in favor of the Boss’ wish.
Everything comes and culminates together in the final scene in front of the mirror. In the mirror. Which is in itself mirroring. It's his 'phantom self’ looking at what he has become on the one hand and despising, but another (something that is presented as ‘reflection’ to us, as the Phantom is reflecting on his life) probably is his gradual change looking at his 'phantom' self at every change and despising himself even more on top of that, as it is drifting further and further away.
I don’t feel like I have unpacked all of the scene myself, so bear with my rambling.
As the game starts by the view going into the tape and ends out of the tape too, the whole game is indeed what Venom was reflecting into.
That scene does not take place in one fixed time, but throughout the whole ‘Venom’s Life’ (you have heard of the life flashing in eyes before one is about to die). Blue color is about it happening in his gaslighted mind (the whole room is in blue and it is moreso when he is playing the second recording and we heard the noises, likely placed by Ocelot, who was also brainwashing even his own self), red is being influenced by emotions of vengeance (of the real Big Boss, that does not belong him so it is on the outside and not being accepted as part of Venom identity, he does not care about vengeance throughout the whole MGSV, but about himself. That is, up until the MGSV ends and MG1 starts) and then breaking the mirror (his face neither red nor blue, but moreso green/yellow, color of peace) seeing the general picture, sorta absorbing the blood, coming clean AND then starting uprising at Outer Heaven on his own from thereon to ruin the reputation of 'Big Boss' (lashing out, as that was the sole purpose that Big Boss reduced his life to) and maybe sacrifice himself to Solid Snake, to do with Solid what the Boss did to Big Boss and just like Skull Face leaving his phantom pain, he would leave one through Solid Snake... while OG Big Boss was doing MG1 plot to catch two birds by sending Solid Snake for them to kill Venom or/and die trying and freely continue the rest of his goals in Zanzibar.
Also, Venom is colorblind, so he mixes red and blue (as we see at the start of the game, blue bloodbath in the hospital) and that might symbolize his unawareness and confusion in the grand scheme of things as well. Red and Blue is also basically a subversion of Red Oni and Blue Oni tale that I need to research a bit, but the game was called Project Ogre initially (ogre = oni), the intent is present. Also how Ocelot is dressed yellow-ish, while having red scarf on the surface (probably symbolising how he does not really care about the revenge and is just there to help out OG Big Boss), to contrast Miller who is dressed yellow-ish on the surface but beneath its all red (and not forgiving OG Big Boss for what he did in MGSV, because revenge is important to him. Of course there were many other examples in the game (such as Huey’s judgment - between red and yellow) as the color symbolism is quite prevalent there.
Venom smiling after hearing how he too is a Big Boss would basically be something like 'you are telling me this now, huh' and then shifting the expression immediately, making his mind up about ruining Big Boss because his whole existence in basically Big Boss reputation at this point and by looking at the mirror, its him realizing what exactly going on and negating the attempts of brainwash and then breaking the mirror on his own, embracing what he is right now and making it unable for himself to reflect on himself ever again and stepping into the mist, being wiped not only from the history but from his mind as well (foil to Skull Face - who ironically dresses and acts as over-the-top American ideal chad while taking revenge on America... and like Venom, he understood the Boss' will (or lack of thereof) too... but when SF satisfied his personal desires despite failing at his goals, Venom achieved his goals, all of it to go in an exact opposite way as he would have wished) and that would at least give meaning to his and his fallen comrades forgotten lives, who would all have been already lost as the sacrifices to Big Boss’ grander plan.
There never was neither ‘You’ nor your idea of Big Boss. Nor did anyone have any proof of consent to do something so horrible, to rob someone of his life, to Venom Snake. That very idea of Big Boss has fled away in the mist with us. Venom Snake never needed the title of Big Boss to exist, but it is all to late now, no matter what he will try to do about it - he is Big Boss and will always be one, he sees himself as Big Boss and will always see himself as one, everyone sees him as Big Boss and will always view him as such, he has commited sins and there is neither redemption nor heaven awaiting for him, but at least there is future for Solid Snake, but for that he has to embrace embrace what he was made into.
As one of the tapes goes: “It is just a dream. It is all a dream. I am in it, and you are in it too. I am the dreamer, but you are having my dream. Do you get it now? You do, don’t you? Peace Day never came … Our wishes do not come true. We just cling on to our dreams, our phantoms. Mine and yours.”
Naturally, there is room for the head-canon in this interpretation (considering we only had revealed the connection between Venom Snake and the final boss of MG1, but not the answers as to how it all could have happened) and they all would be connected to Miller purposely going to Solid Snake and training him for this exact plot development, as he wishes ever since it was revealed to him as to what Big Boss did (likely after he was rescued by Big Boss at the start of the game - which would explain why would he be opposing Ocelot’s (towards which we were naturally catering) decisions throughout the game… it has always been interesting as to why would he be presented as someone so bickering despite how everything he was advocating for was in the framework of rational decision-making, so we had a nice ‘little’ pay-off to that)
Implications towards this can be found once achieving the unachievable, getting rid of every single nuclear in the online gameplay of MGSV and we get Venom talking to ‘the phantom that the Boss has left behind’: “I haven’t forgotten what you told me Boss. We have no tomorrow, but there is still hope for the future. In our struggle to survive the present, we push the future further away. Will I see it in my lifetime? Probably not. Which means there is no time to waste. Some day the world will no longer need us, no need for the gun or the hand to pull the trigger. I have to drag out this demon inside me and build a better future. That’s what I…heh…what we will leave as our legacy. Another mission, right Boss?”
As well as Miller’s reaction to Big Boss’ doings: “No…Big Boss can go to hell. I’ll make the phantom and his sons stronger, to send him there. For that… I’ll keep playing my role.” - Venom is about to become the weapon that would attack the very thing he was meant to protect. He might not get any achievements of his own, no celebration whatsoever and not even leave behind small bits of himself in any shape or form as he will be nullified from history, but at least he will indirectly destroy Big Boss’ whole being. And the better future might come through Solid Snake guiding Raiden, what could and should have been the relationship between Big Boss and The Medic.
You most likely have already heard just how much of a technical marvel this game is and yeah, that indeed is the case and many would probably agree that the gameplay is treated quite fairly at least when compared to the games of its time. Now where the game is not being treated fairly, I think, is its story-telling and even if I do not mind players not caring about narratives in video games, I will still try to appreciate it here, since I consider MGSV’s plot to be at least as good as the rest of the series and quite frankly I do not have much else to talk about.
That being said, this will be a mini-review and I won’t really be talking about a wide variety of things that can be discussed about it and won’t really bring many examples.
I think people mostly not click with Phantom Pain because it connects to the entire series in an overly subtle manner but otherwise has very grounded and small scale conflict and its not as expressive as the rest and also it requires from the player to take it into account that its moreso a prologue (you could overthinking as it coming back to the very first Metal Gear game to form an ouroboros from various angles) to the rest of the series and thus they should not be expecting a cathartic ending - which is also highlighted by how it fundamentally mirrors Sons of Liberty - but the way its using the entire series for its own good is what makes it the best
How well do MGS2 and MGSV contrast one another is already elaborated here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV4wY2rjAWY and to put it shortly, we have two cases of identity crisis being born by the influences of the Snakes and how the reaction (or lack of thereof) by these people (re)shapes the MGS world. A spontaneous descent into ‘evil’. Many might have been disappointed by how said promised descent was not really directly focused in long-winded sequences and instead we have not even played as Big Boss as he was absent for the whole game, but that is exactly what makes it more natural and plausible to me. We did not have to witness the change in Big Boss, we only needed one big reality check to realize that he has always been one, come make the point sounds. As a result, we get a room to sense the noticeable (unless you are Venom) change in Big Boss after the events of Ground Zeroes as the ‘ideological clash’ - of what kind of a person everyone (by the most closest one, The Medic) thought Naked Snake was in the romanticized lenses and what kind of a person he actually turned out - is born between his current self and his present self, or rather what Venom (We) understood of him in Snake Eater and Peace Walker. Vices come from short-sightedness, after all…
... the 'evil' of Big Boss being, of course, doing the very thing that was done to The Boss to his comrade, essentially becomin whatever he sought to fight against...
… in 1984 Metal Gear universe is full of aimless proxy wars and impending apocalypse of information.
Everything is a lie to establish another lie.
Everything is a trap to establish another trap.
Everything is a gambit to establish another gambit.
And then we have ten thousand peoploids split into small tribes, the Diamond Dogs - on the surface, a group seeking to appease their loss and establish a place gathering people regardless of their age, ethnicity and gender (diamonds are a girl’s best friend, and a dog is a man’s) all while letting them learn to use their skills for good and leave whenever they please, as well as building separate territory to the ones not indulging in warmongership and educating them in civil manner.
Beneath the surface, we have good old manipulators, accomplices, puppets, rapists, war-criminals, victims, perpetrators, traitors, torturers and whatnot, all keeping the 'Outer Heaven' grounded to the existing reality.
Contrary to the RPG nerds' beliefs, MGSV's pseudo open-world is doing exactly what it should be doing - we are not getting a talking simulator full of lousily connected (if at all) side-quests detracting from the main plot, but the aspect exists with the sole reason to immerse as in the freedom of espionage. It may feel bland, sure, but it is 'an official' war-zone between people with a thick language barrier, all that is left to them is to kill and manipulate and be killed and manipulated. Not to mention how emptying the environment (to safety) is also a part of their job and that's a refreshing thing about Phantom Pain's world, it is not about what quests you are taking and what is the extra context that characters are telling you about their lives, but what you yourself are doing and how are you doing it (the world having to adapt to your legendary status) every bit of task and mechanic further drives that point, with no unnecessary content to be found.
All in all, we get a game completely focused on (in)direct progression of its mechanics and narrative. Although, side-ops would have benefited if the locations had missions with different contexts instead of repeating the same thing over and over again, especially when, say, you are supposed to rescue someone in a certain location, they will always be at one fixed location. And if I mention another issue I have with the game, it is the boss battles - Now unlike others, I do not think we got the small amount of boss and battles with them, in fact there is a very good amount of fights and part of them are simply more than just fights-to-death like in other MGS games, showing clear maturity, but that very maturity and realism gets a bit too much when these boss fights are not getting their own 'stage' of sort, to give them their own unique flamboyance to them, as the boss fights get influenced too much by the game being open-world to the point that they feel like engaging in average MMORPG type action with them and there really is not much to do against them, they come off as very easy, be it you getting free missile launchers, airplane help or just blatantly run away from them easily without you being affected in any negative form because it does not even affect your mission rank.
The game would also massively benefit from more indoor sequences/set-pieces and whatnot. Prologue showcased a fantastic example of what could have been achieved, but unfortunately it is never repeated.
What I appreciate a lot in MGSV is that it is up to the players to decide whether story content gets in their way or not. Or we can just get the minimal amount of information or just dig in the cassettes and interpret various things in various ways. We can take the name of the series as an example. Hell, we can take one letter from the name as an example - V - and take connections such as… it is not a proper number because the game is some sort of a spin-off… it being two lines mirroring one another… it represents peace or victory… or maybe it is Vendetta... or it could also be used by the villain to give a hint with double meaning as to where the bomb is located…
… there is a mission in MSGV where Venom Snake is being bit by venomous snake so funny and full of meaning he biting himself and generally Snakes and clones all die by other snakes' hands… and this is basically how MGSV manages to be a free resident of my mind, you can connect to one another as much as you like.
Sure there are a lot of questionable plot development and connections to the lore established in the previous installments… for example, how the final mission with Skull Face starts, our veteran Venom Snake almost announcing to Skull Face that he was indeed approaching him for the kill, in the open field, which seems very weird at first, but then we can look at the mask of the Third Child (who is in fact Psycho Mantis, but never gets named for exactly the lore reasons) and it becomes clear that he was manipulating Venom through his bloodlust, given the visible horn on him, the detail that keeps changing according to who the child is manipulating at the moment. So yeah, slowly and surely, thinking about such satisfying details and making sense out of the game is exactly what makes it age so well for me.
Basically, you could even skip all of these cutscenes and just play the missions, indulging in the mechanics as you please, the story won’t get in your way, aside from explaining some mechanics here and there. What’s more, gameplay itself plays a vital part in the development of at least one narrative point. You can see Automata’s Ending E being praised by anyone and anything and it is quite easy to do so, given how blatant and shoved down your throat it is (not to say that I do not like the ending), but barely anyone appreciates MGSV doing the same thing with its nuclear disarmament, but in much more subtle manner.
I know, I know… having to listen to cassettes is the gravest sin towards writing and all… but on one hand they are not really necessary and on the other hand, video games are not advanced enough (if they will ever be) to hold such high standards for them in this very medium, so I really do not see the reason to be so unforgivable and harsh towards MGSV.
Of course, there are other interesting mechanics… one of the memorable ones being how the soldiers you recruit learn to speak more and more languages, which then gets directly revealed as a theme, language’s power, that which was very well elaborated in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8EJyHh2xfM
"Your favorite song... Nicola, Bart — immigrants, wrongly executed... But their deaths served as a message to others: that ours is a society that murders the innocent. Do you, too, believe that your sacrifice will change the world?"
(says the guy who basically proudly delivered everything catastrophic that was about to happen in the MGS-verse before he himself - or should I say, got turned into a phantom pain to the world? Alright, sorry for the lame joke… and he is as much of a shadow to Big Boss as much Venom Snake is… foreshadowing, foreshadowing…)
what I love about Phantom Pain, aside of its relatable language power theme that serves as clear message in comparison to pure emotions that other series are trying to convey via vague resolutions that are not really saying anything, is that even if characters are doing questionable things in a harsh world, it's not a 'necessary evil' propaganda, but Venom Snake's squad is constantly improvising and questioning the missions they are provided to complete. Were they vaguely asked to kill and it turns out they were asked to kill children? They just record fake video and if it works it works, if it does not work then they won't care about the mission and when they take children back, they don't turn them into soldiers, but make separate space for them to get educated. it starts as a seemingly random band but it grows and shapes as an interesting system in itself
And then all of it crumbles… the final nail being put by Big Boss himself… making Venom realize that the point of no return has been crossed by not only himself, but his present environment too, and it's too late for him to fight for his own good, so he should do it for the next generation.
Well I love the whole cast - even Ocelot, who is seemingly ‘not himself’, but actually cleverly plays with the expectations once again and Huey who I find as a fantastic subversion to the expectations built by his son (in addition to the proofless and self-(un)aware bickering between Huey, Ocelot and Miller that makes the matter unreadable and unpredictable through the various possible outcomes) - but I will solely focus on Venom here. The shadow of Big Boss that still remained as the expendable shadow even after literally turning himself into the Big Boss himself. Or on meta level, us, the players, towards whom the Venom is looking as we break the mirror and there remains nothing to reflect on.
The way he was given the most freedom and agency out of the protagonists and at the same time he was the least person you would call 'free', the way he can bond with the system he built and various individuals and commit atrocities towards enemies and his own people alike, all with their own consequences and having psychological issues of his own on top of that, while also make poor choices both in how he judges people and how convincing he is - in just a single game - makes me appreciate him on quite a high level, as it is an achievement that none of the protagonists have achieved (and Sutherland nails it the way I do not see Hayter being able to do, for this particular character)
I also liked how it does not really feel like the game is making a 'twist' out of his identity and it is only a fault of main character's identity crisis/twisted perception and maybe player not giving much attention to A LOT of details telling you that he is not the real Snake (heard people already knew he was not Big Boss, from the original trailer alone... with very simple and natural details like what they are smoking and etc). But then again, all of the Snakes and 'clones' in general are very close, so I don't really care about their ranking. He kinda lacks catharsis and is probably the most brooding of them all in how silent he is, that downplays him a bit, but at least he is not pushing people away like you would expect from such an archetype and its also done with its own interesting purpose (as he is supposed to be the self-insert, in comparison to Raiden who was supposed to have his own life and it could not have been suppressed in favor of Snake's role machinations)
Venom might be ‘mute’, but he still an individual, making his own choices that can go against his surroundings, not being influenced by them, as seen in his judgment of releasing Huey and most definitely not using nuclear weapons in action, but just as a symbol, to completely negate Naked Snake in him. He is, of course, also capable of going with reasonable suggestions and change his mind, as seen by him changing his mind about the kids once Miller affirmed his stance to treat them well and put them outside the warfare. And, of course, he could be forced to commit things he does not want to commit or not commit just for the satisfaction’s sake, which can be seen in Skull Face’s final moments, Miller forcing his hand… and Miller himself is the one who respect Venom for not indulging in vengeance as his character progresses. After all, he has always been a medic and the role he is forced into is the complete anti-thesis to him.
See, everyone but Venom Snake desires revenge in the game. One might think that expressing the desire to vengeance is what would define someone and thus Venom Snake does not really have personality, but one thing is clear, that very specific desire is made universal in the game and not admitting to it can only be defined as the trait.
I love how Venom has memory problems and only retains romanticized view of Big Boss and then is trying to uphold it, thinking it's him and he feels more and more comfortable in it but at the same time feels guilty and pessimistic about his previous identity, self-unaware as he can’t even recollect in objective manner the most crucial event in his life, the one he feels guilty about. That he was unable to locate the bomb and got Paz killed. Or so he thinks, to not shift the blame to someone else, like Eli, but to himself. It was his fault. He should have been better… and that’s the transformation that occurs to Venom, he embraced his fate to weaponize in favor of the Boss’ wish.
Everything comes and culminates together in the final scene in front of the mirror. In the mirror. Which is in itself mirroring. It's his 'phantom self’ looking at what he has become on the one hand and despising, but another (something that is presented as ‘reflection’ to us, as the Phantom is reflecting on his life) probably is his gradual change looking at his 'phantom' self at every change and despising himself even more on top of that, as it is drifting further and further away.
I don’t feel like I have unpacked all of the scene myself, so bear with my rambling.
As the game starts by the view going into the tape and ends out of the tape too, the whole game is indeed what Venom was reflecting into.
That scene does not take place in one fixed time, but throughout the whole ‘Venom’s Life’ (you have heard of the life flashing in eyes before one is about to die). Blue color is about it happening in his gaslighted mind (the whole room is in blue and it is moreso when he is playing the second recording and we heard the noises, likely placed by Ocelot, who was also brainwashing even his own self), red is being influenced by emotions of vengeance (of the real Big Boss, that does not belong him so it is on the outside and not being accepted as part of Venom identity, he does not care about vengeance throughout the whole MGSV, but about himself. That is, up until the MGSV ends and MG1 starts) and then breaking the mirror (his face neither red nor blue, but moreso green/yellow, color of peace) seeing the general picture, sorta absorbing the blood, coming clean AND then starting uprising at Outer Heaven on his own from thereon to ruin the reputation of 'Big Boss' (lashing out, as that was the sole purpose that Big Boss reduced his life to) and maybe sacrifice himself to Solid Snake, to do with Solid what the Boss did to Big Boss and just like Skull Face leaving his phantom pain, he would leave one through Solid Snake... while OG Big Boss was doing MG1 plot to catch two birds by sending Solid Snake for them to kill Venom or/and die trying and freely continue the rest of his goals in Zanzibar.
Also, Venom is colorblind, so he mixes red and blue (as we see at the start of the game, blue bloodbath in the hospital) and that might symbolize his unawareness and confusion in the grand scheme of things as well. Red and Blue is also basically a subversion of Red Oni and Blue Oni tale that I need to research a bit, but the game was called Project Ogre initially (ogre = oni), the intent is present. Also how Ocelot is dressed yellow-ish, while having red scarf on the surface (probably symbolising how he does not really care about the revenge and is just there to help out OG Big Boss), to contrast Miller who is dressed yellow-ish on the surface but beneath its all red (and not forgiving OG Big Boss for what he did in MGSV, because revenge is important to him. Of course there were many other examples in the game (such as Huey’s judgment - between red and yellow) as the color symbolism is quite prevalent there.
Venom smiling after hearing how he too is a Big Boss would basically be something like 'you are telling me this now, huh' and then shifting the expression immediately, making his mind up about ruining Big Boss because his whole existence in basically Big Boss reputation at this point and by looking at the mirror, its him realizing what exactly going on and negating the attempts of brainwash and then breaking the mirror on his own, embracing what he is right now and making it unable for himself to reflect on himself ever again and stepping into the mist, being wiped not only from the history but from his mind as well (foil to Skull Face - who ironically dresses and acts as over-the-top American ideal chad while taking revenge on America... and like Venom, he understood the Boss' will (or lack of thereof) too... but when SF satisfied his personal desires despite failing at his goals, Venom achieved his goals, all of it to go in an exact opposite way as he would have wished) and that would at least give meaning to his and his fallen comrades forgotten lives, who would all have been already lost as the sacrifices to Big Boss’ grander plan.
There never was neither ‘You’ nor your idea of Big Boss. Nor did anyone have any proof of consent to do something so horrible, to rob someone of his life, to Venom Snake. That very idea of Big Boss has fled away in the mist with us. Venom Snake never needed the title of Big Boss to exist, but it is all to late now, no matter what he will try to do about it - he is Big Boss and will always be one, he sees himself as Big Boss and will always see himself as one, everyone sees him as Big Boss and will always view him as such, he has commited sins and there is neither redemption nor heaven awaiting for him, but at least there is future for Solid Snake, but for that he has to embrace embrace what he was made into.
As one of the tapes goes: “It is just a dream. It is all a dream. I am in it, and you are in it too. I am the dreamer, but you are having my dream. Do you get it now? You do, don’t you? Peace Day never came … Our wishes do not come true. We just cling on to our dreams, our phantoms. Mine and yours.”
Naturally, there is room for the head-canon in this interpretation (considering we only had revealed the connection between Venom Snake and the final boss of MG1, but not the answers as to how it all could have happened) and they all would be connected to Miller purposely going to Solid Snake and training him for this exact plot development, as he wishes ever since it was revealed to him as to what Big Boss did (likely after he was rescued by Big Boss at the start of the game - which would explain why would he be opposing Ocelot’s (towards which we were naturally catering) decisions throughout the game… it has always been interesting as to why would he be presented as someone so bickering despite how everything he was advocating for was in the framework of rational decision-making, so we had a nice ‘little’ pay-off to that)
Implications towards this can be found once achieving the unachievable, getting rid of every single nuclear in the online gameplay of MGSV and we get Venom talking to ‘the phantom that the Boss has left behind’: “I haven’t forgotten what you told me Boss. We have no tomorrow, but there is still hope for the future. In our struggle to survive the present, we push the future further away. Will I see it in my lifetime? Probably not. Which means there is no time to waste. Some day the world will no longer need us, no need for the gun or the hand to pull the trigger. I have to drag out this demon inside me and build a better future. That’s what I…heh…what we will leave as our legacy. Another mission, right Boss?”
As well as Miller’s reaction to Big Boss’ doings: “No…Big Boss can go to hell. I’ll make the phantom and his sons stronger, to send him there. For that… I’ll keep playing my role.” - Venom is about to become the weapon that would attack the very thing he was meant to protect. He might not get any achievements of his own, no celebration whatsoever and not even leave behind small bits of himself in any shape or form as he will be nullified from history, but at least he will indirectly destroy Big Boss’ whole being. And the better future might come through Solid Snake guiding Raiden, what could and should have been the relationship between Big Boss and The Medic.
Currently a 10 but sometimes a 2 but also can be a 5 sometimes.
This is the most difficult game to review/rate I have ever played. It's amazing but it's also godawful. As a game, it's damn near flawless, as a Metal Gear Solid game it ruined so many things.
This is the most difficult game to review/rate I have ever played. It's amazing but it's also godawful. As a game, it's damn near flawless, as a Metal Gear Solid game it ruined so many things.
With the Phantom Pain, Kojima avoids the kind of spectacular descent into villainy that the fans wanted and the trailers promised. Instead he gives us the Sopranos season 6 of Metal Gear (but instead of a depressed mobster, we play as a depressed war criminal). Maybe that sounds like one of those hack game journalist "the dark souls of x" comparisons but it's true. The best case scenario for all of our favorite characters at this point is a swift death.
Spoilers below.
After losing everything in9/11 Ground Zeroes, having his mind and body shattered, Snake just... gets what's left of the gang back together, rebuilds his army, and tries the exact same shit again. Only now, it is completely devoid of purpose; The revolutionary anti-imperialist cause of the 70's is all but forgotten. There's a sinking feeling of dread as the camera pans to "our new Mother Base" in the helicopter after rescuing Kaz; an undeniable sense of this being a pointless, doomed effort. But since being a soldier is the only thing these people know how to do, they are stuck repeating the cycle. They're just going through the motions at this point; You really get a sense of that as the once charismatic and driven Big Boss is rendered a mute with a permanent thousand-yard stare who just does whatever Kaz and Ocelot tell him. When he's at the base between these missions he just stares at nothing and vapes for five hours straight. Far from the badass antihero that people expected from trailers. Venom Snake is actually kind of a directionless loser, which makes him just as good of a player stand-in as Raiden.
And the missions in this game, while incredibly fun and well-made, really beg the age-old American question "What are we even doing in Afghanistan?". The plot feels totally incomprehensible at times; you spend the whole game going after random acronym organizations, shell companies, and mercenary groups with some vague connection toBin Laden Skullface and al-Qaeda the American deep-state/Cipher. But every single character is lying and basically, everyone is Cipher. I had to repeat mission briefings multiple times at certain points to figure out what the hell was going on, and I still really don't. You could say that's just bad writing, but it works for what the game is trying to do, which is to make you feel like someone with a severe head injury. You're not supposed to understand this convoluted imperial entanglement - no one can. Especially not someone as fucked up as Snake.
And like Snake, the returning characters from Peace Walker are reduced to these broken versions of themselves. The only person who seems to be doing well is Ocelot, who has really come into his own as the sort dead-eyed psychopath that thrives in this kind of environment. Honestly? Good for him. Kaz on the other hand is a crippled, traumatized husk driven by revenge which is in turn driven by his own guilty conscience, and Huey has become a delusional, pathological liar focused solely on self-preservation. The few unnamed soldiers who survived9/11 Ground Zeroes are literally running around as raving lunatics in the wilderness. All of these people were supposed to die a decade ago, and instead they linger on as hollow men. Even the metal gear Snake fights is broken - it literally doesn't work without someone's magical powers. It's just this technological abomination created by a madman. When it tries to chase Snake it gets stuck in rocks because its sheer size is self-defeating, and Snake easily sneaks away. Probably the most obvious meta joke in the game (watch the last couple minutes of the launch trailer and tell me the game isn't making fun of itself). These Metal Gear (Solid)s aren't what they used to be. I mean come on, Metal Gear Rex roared like a T-Rex; Metal Gear Sahelanthropus... makes monkey noises.
Even Skullface, who was built up in trailers and in Ground Zeroes as this terrifying villain, turns out to be just a sad joke like everyone else. His plan is the most nonsensical, harebrained shit ever explained by a villain in any Metal Gear game. He spent a decade practicing a 10 minute theatrical monologue about why he has to eradicate the English language and give everybody nuclear weapons to unite the world. It makes absolutely no sense, it's a parody of Metal Gear villains, which were already parodies of 80's movie villains. While Skullface is performing his monologue in the jeep (to the wrong person), Venom just hits him with that fluoride stare and loops through a 20 second idle animation. Then Sins of the Father just... starts playing as they sit across from each other in complete silence and avoid eye contact. It's one of the funniest scenes in the entire series, mistaken by many fans as simply botched and awkward on accident (rather than on purpose, which it was). And if that wasn't obvious enough, Skullface's defeat is just straight up slapstick comedy; he gets crushed by his own non-functional Metal Gear in the middle of another absurd speech. Genuine comedy gold.
I think a lot of people overlook the humor in this game. It's a lot more muted and sad than in the rest of the series, but it's smarter here than in any other entry. Miller's "why are we still here" speech is MEANT TO BE FUNNY AND OVERLY MELODRAMATIC, as well as depressing and hard to watch. The way it ends, with that uncomfortable silence before he just... awkwardly sits back down? That was on purpose. The tone is that this has all become a very pathetic (and funny) spectacle at this point. Kojima's famously asinine dialogue becomes something really transcendent here; each hollow, ham-fisted statement really drives home the fact that everyone is just making this shit up as they go along now, trying to weave some bullshit heroic narrative out of a long series of L's. Kojima is telling us: "This is you dude. This is the American Empire. Your War on Terror is as darkly funny as it is monstrous." MGSV isn't the self-serious death march the trailers painted it as.
The way V's cutscenes are shot adds to these moments too. The shaky, handheld camera builds documentarian realism and a sense of witnessing real atrocities in more high-stakes scenes, but can also lend a comedic awkwardness to these exchanges between characters. I've seen someone compare it to The Office as a criticism but I think that's a feature and not a bug, as strange as it sounds. Somehow, it just works so well for the tonal balancing act this game maintains. But what really elevates V's cinematography thematically is its use of continuous shots. One-takes are often criticized as being essentially a gimmick, style over substance. But in Metal Gear Solid, a series defined by the juxtaposition between hard military realism and over the top fantasy? It's pure genius. Having all of this insane Kojima bullshit captured in documentary style is so fitting for this series. Perfectly hyperreal.
Speaking of hyperreal, let's talk about Quiet. I've thought a lot about whether her portrayal plays into Kojima's contempt for the audience (and the Metal Gear series itself for that matter) or if it's just a part of the game that didn't land. I was inspired by this article to conclude the former. In classic Metal Gear fashion, Quiet's characterization is ridiculous and offensive, but ends up transcending its low-brow trappings and having an emotional payoff - all while playing into a greater meta-narrative. And if you don't like that method of storytelling, then you sure picked the wrong media franchise. That scene of her speaking for the first time to guide the helicopter through the sandstorm is genuinely great. It perfectly encapsulates Kojima's ability to make something ridiculous, cheesy, and melodramatic - but still deeply affecting and with a lot of heart.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves; Quiet is absolutely a biting self-parody of Kojima's own portrayal of women throughout his series and in the wider industry. It's Kojima saying "Is this what you like, you sick fucks?" or possibly a case of introspection on his part ("Oh God, is this what I like?"). She has some hastily made up bullshit explaining why she wears no clothes, she is literally incapable of speaking for herself, and she undergoes gratuitous violence and imprisonment. Kojima obviously knows how ridiculous this is; he's seen basically every American movie, he knows this isn't how you're supposed to respectfully portray women. No, Quiet's portrayal is purposefully exploitative. Her objectification starts out fairly straightforward, but it becomes more and more disturbing for the player to partake in as the game goes on, in order to heighten the dark absurdity of all of this (particularly in Chapter 2, which is where everything in the game falls apart, on purpose). The point of Quiet's character, and the whole game really, is to give players exactly what they want in the most contemptuous way possible. To make you "feel ashamed of your words and deeds", you could even say. MGSV is about getting exactly what you want (another MGS game, endless content, revenge on Skullface, a sniper gf) and resenting it.
To build on MGSV's portrayal of women though, I think it's important that Paz takes on the role that she does in this game. She makes an initially very confusing reappearance - that first moment when you see her is genuinely unnerving, as if even the strange, fucked up Metal Gear reality we have become accustomed to can't explain what we're seeing. Out of all the unrealistic fantasy bullshit we've seen in this series, a series where it feels like anything goes and there are no rules or laws of physics, this is the first moment where I went "Wait, what? How?" But as we find at the end of "Paz's" side story, this is all just a projection of Snake's fragmented psyche. It's incredible in the way it makes you question what's real and what isn't, while simultaneously using Paz as a proxy to just straight up diagnose Snake's own mental disorders. But it's tucked away where most probably never saw it - like a hidden repressed memory somewhere in Snake's mind.
It perfectly conveys his nostalgia for a time that was never even good, as well as his crushing guilt and helplessness over the death of Paz. It's genuinely moving. That last tape of hers is something right out of Silent Hill 2, and it adds such depth to Snake as this miserable person that you should absolutely not want to be. For Snake, women really are just these fixtures of loss, shame, and regret - feelings that no doubt originate from the killing of his mother figure, The Boss. And despite all of the talk about getting revenge and taking down Cipher, the only time we ever see Snake get animated in this game is in his scenes with Paz. Snake's desire for redemption, his insistence on nuclear disarmament that feels strangely out of place, and his statement at the start of the game that he's "already a demon"? It's all about Paz, man.
One thing fans really disliked about Snake's portrayal though is that he never really seems to become the demon we knew him as in the early games. We never get to see The Exact Moment Walt Became Heisenberg. Quite the opposite; his intentions appear to remain heroic all the way to the end. The only scene where Snake approaches the kind of evil fans wanted to see is when Snake appears to murder the children in the mines but ends up saving them instead. In trailers this was depicted as if Snake actually goes through with the murder; to me, this is the smoking gun of another Kojima bait-and-switch. Fans wanted a game full of shocking, flashy acts of villainy on the part of Snake, and Kojima deliberately lead them on in trailers (just like in MGS2) but denied them of it in the final game. What did fans get instead? Spreadsheets.
Don't miss the forest for the trees; Snake is absolutely responsible for unimaginable atrocities during the events of MGSV. But instead of sensationalist images of man's inhumanity to man, Kojima shows us the banal cruelty of what it really means to be at the top of the war machine: You're just... on the computer, like everyone else. And everything you're doing is represented through so many layers of abstraction that it is impossible to understand the consequences. This ties directly into the themes of Metal Gear Solid 2 as well; by issuing your orders via this computer interface, you are even further removed from what is happening in reality. You just do a cursory cost-benefit analysis before sending the next death squad to do god knows what in some African or South American country you don't even know the name of.
And when a disease outbreak hits Mother Base, Snake's iDroid computer makes it easy for him to commit ethnic cleansing, sentencing scores of people to imprisonment and death for the language they speak. It isn't until all of the digital artifice is stripped away, and Venom is forced to enter the quarantine zone and personally slaughter his own men, that he has any crisis of conscience (and you actually lose some of your best men, because Kojima never fails to give the story actual weight via game mechanics). And you can say "Venom didn't want to do it, he had no choice." But that's exactly the point. If the Metal Gear Solid series is about one thing, it's about individual will being crushed under the weight of systems and institutions that have become organisms in and of themselves.
It doesn't matter how much Venom yearns for redemption. It doesn't even matter if he's in charge of Diamond Dogs. The system of global private warfare that Big Boss and friends established has taken on a life of its own, just like the Patriots of MGS2. His own intentions are irrelevant. If this system demands he kill his own men, he will do it. If this system demands that Raiden later kill Solidus, he too will do it. All actions within the system, regardless of intent, perpetuate the cycle of violence, war, and profit. Even if Venom disarms all of the nukes and brings about the Peace Day that never came for Paz, it just sets up the nuke free world that we hear about Big Boss exploiting in the intro to Metal Gear 2.
That's why everything in MGSV takes on such a hilariously pathetic flavor. Nobody, not Big Boss, not Zero, not Skullface, not Venom, has any agency in any of this. They're just flailing, looking for anything they can do to enact their will in a system that now imprisons its own creators. The only person who manages to achieve victory over the system by the (chronological) end of the series is, once again, Revolver Ocelot. And he only does so by shedding all individuality, tearing his mind into a thousand schizophrenic pieces to always be one step ahead of the algorithm. And it's all because he wants to fuck Big Boss. In the end love wins, and I think that's beautiful. But for everyone else, they are doomed to perpetuate the system they so desperately want to be free of.
And to what end? The truth is that there is no point to this system beyond its own self-perpetuation - it's a Snake eating its own tail (pretty good, huh?). The soldiers of Diamond Dogs, and every other PMC, kill so that they can keep killing. It's all for the love of the game at this point. Sure, they did the same thing back in Peace Walker, but at least back then it felt like you were blazing a new trail, sending a ragtag band of freedom fighters to oppose imperialism - that's long gone now. Any lofty goals this organization may have had are now lying somewhere at the bottom of the Caribbean. All of the bullshit Snake and Kaz spout about "fighting for the future" and "standing tall on missing legs" are just words to talk the gun out of their own mouths, to convince themselves that they are still moving toward something.
But they aren't. In the end, after killing Skullface (which was made purposefully unsatisfying according to Kojima) as revenge for the events that destroyed his life a decade ago, Snake is left to rot in a hell of his own creation. There are no holiday celebrations or fun outings like on the Mother Base of Peace Walker, and it's far lonelier; Quiet is gone, Huey is gone, Paz is long dead but still haunts him, and some of his best men are dead by his own hand. His only friends, Kaz and Ocelot, are just using him in some schizo game of global 4D chess. Even Eli and the child soldiers are just suddenly gone, and your metal gear with them - much more simple and poignant than the infamously cut Episode 51 would have been.
The effort to rehabilitate these kids, and maybe figure out Eli's origins? Track him down after his escape? Nope, you never see them again; they're just another of Diamond Dogs' many failures, another part of yourself that will be missing forever. All you can do is take the same helicopter ride to do the same (flawlessly crafted) stealth infiltration missions again and again and again, because senseless murder is the only thing that makes you feel anything anymore. And with the battlefield always shifting to adapt to your tactics in-game, you'll never make any real progress. Oh yeah, and none of this is actually real and Snake's entire life is fake. And deep down, he knows it.
So what about the real Big Boss? Well, he's basically stuck in the same cycle, only he has shed even more of his humanity than Venom. By using Venom's life as a tool in his own geopolitical game, Big Boss has committed the very same crime that was done to him and The Boss back in Operation Snake Eater. And all you can do about it is watch him ride off into the sunset to pursue yet another stupid evil scheme (that we already know will be a total failure), before getting right back to work like the epic gamer you are. Because you the player, like Venom, love LARPing as Big Boss no matter how pointless and repetitive it becomes. You'll complain about how Chapter 2 is "unfinished" and repeats the same missions from Chapter 1 (those were optional just fyi), but guess what? You're still gonna play those missions.
The Phantom Pain left players with such a profound feeling of emptiness and loss, and that's the real reason they felt it was unfinished. It's not because of any actual missing content - MGS2 had far more cut content, backed up by documented evidence, not just internet memes. But the difference with that game was that there was no falling out between Kojima and Konami - a convenient scapegoat for any aspect of the game that wasn't what fans expected, anything that hit players the wrong way. But that gnawing void you feel playing this game, the feeling that something is missing? That was intended, and it's honestly pretty heavy-handed and obvious when you approach the game on its own terms. I mean do I even need to say it? The pain from something that's missing? It's barely subtext.
Kojima purposefully denied us almost all of the campy, goofy nonsense we love about the Metal Gear Solid series to force us to confront how fake and hollow the legend of "the world's greatest soldier" really is. The level to which this game irrevocably shattered the minds of Metal Gear fans, leaving them eternally chasing their White Whale (the Moby Dick references weren't for nothing), is a testament to how the whole experiment was a resounding success. It snuck past gamers' emotional defenses, subverted their media illiteracy, and made them actually fucking feel something for once. Something real, something about their actual lives even.
There's a reason the game ends on a mirror - it's because the game is trying to hold one up to its players. And they could never forgive it for that. For turning their shallow, campy video game funtime, where I get to be a cool secret agent and Solid Snake is my dad, into a challenging work of art that interrogates their life. Because it's true: you are Venom Snake. You're a slave to the whims of others, your own desire for satisfaction. You do not know why you do the things that you do. And everything you're doing here - in this video game, in the digital realm - is ultimately fruitless. Fans complain about how there's no real resolution or ending to the story in MGSV, but it seems to me like that's the point: There is no resolution to be found here - not for Snake, and not for you. None of this is moving toward any conclusion or moment of truth. If you spend your life playing video games, you certainly won't ever see one. Like Venom, you'll never understand yourself, never have a real identity. The only way out, to freedom, is to stop fighting - to stop gaming. You can't save MSF, or Paz, or the Boss, or even Snake - you can only save yourself. Get out while you can. In the words of Naomi at the end of MGS1: "You have to live, Snake."
And that's the way this story ends. No Mission 51 "Kingdom of the Flies", no unwinnable boss fight against Solid Snake like fans wanted. Not even a sudden cut to black à la the Sopranos. Just the same meaningless thing over and over again, but somehow getting worse, until it's just... over. Not with a bang, but a whimper. If Metal Gear Solid 4 was about accepting the death of something that has clung on to life far longer than it should (the Metal Gear Solid series), MGSV is about being denied that noble death, brought back to life in some profane necromantic ritual, forced to live a tortured, half existence for all of eternity.
MGSV is best summed up as Kojima's way of saying "You guys wanted to keep playing Metal Gear Solid forever? Fine, here you go. Enjoy yourselves." He knows that he'll never be able to give this series a conclusive ending - he already tried that with MGS4. Instead, Kojima hands it off to the player, letting each of us come to it on our own, privately. One day, each player will get tired of the same missions and the same fucking helicopter ride and quietly decide for themselves, once and for all "Alright... I guess Metal Gear Solid is over. I'm done." and turn the game console off.
Spoilers below.
After losing everything in
And the missions in this game, while incredibly fun and well-made, really beg the age-old American question "What are we even doing in Afghanistan?". The plot feels totally incomprehensible at times; you spend the whole game going after random acronym organizations, shell companies, and mercenary groups with some vague connection to
And like Snake, the returning characters from Peace Walker are reduced to these broken versions of themselves. The only person who seems to be doing well is Ocelot, who has really come into his own as the sort dead-eyed psychopath that thrives in this kind of environment. Honestly? Good for him. Kaz on the other hand is a crippled, traumatized husk driven by revenge which is in turn driven by his own guilty conscience, and Huey has become a delusional, pathological liar focused solely on self-preservation. The few unnamed soldiers who survived
Even Skullface, who was built up in trailers and in Ground Zeroes as this terrifying villain, turns out to be just a sad joke like everyone else. His plan is the most nonsensical, harebrained shit ever explained by a villain in any Metal Gear game. He spent a decade practicing a 10 minute theatrical monologue about why he has to eradicate the English language and give everybody nuclear weapons to unite the world. It makes absolutely no sense, it's a parody of Metal Gear villains, which were already parodies of 80's movie villains. While Skullface is performing his monologue in the jeep (to the wrong person), Venom just hits him with that fluoride stare and loops through a 20 second idle animation. Then Sins of the Father just... starts playing as they sit across from each other in complete silence and avoid eye contact. It's one of the funniest scenes in the entire series, mistaken by many fans as simply botched and awkward on accident (rather than on purpose, which it was). And if that wasn't obvious enough, Skullface's defeat is just straight up slapstick comedy; he gets crushed by his own non-functional Metal Gear in the middle of another absurd speech. Genuine comedy gold.
I think a lot of people overlook the humor in this game. It's a lot more muted and sad than in the rest of the series, but it's smarter here than in any other entry. Miller's "why are we still here" speech is MEANT TO BE FUNNY AND OVERLY MELODRAMATIC, as well as depressing and hard to watch. The way it ends, with that uncomfortable silence before he just... awkwardly sits back down? That was on purpose. The tone is that this has all become a very pathetic (and funny) spectacle at this point. Kojima's famously asinine dialogue becomes something really transcendent here; each hollow, ham-fisted statement really drives home the fact that everyone is just making this shit up as they go along now, trying to weave some bullshit heroic narrative out of a long series of L's. Kojima is telling us: "This is you dude. This is the American Empire. Your War on Terror is as darkly funny as it is monstrous." MGSV isn't the self-serious death march the trailers painted it as.
The way V's cutscenes are shot adds to these moments too. The shaky, handheld camera builds documentarian realism and a sense of witnessing real atrocities in more high-stakes scenes, but can also lend a comedic awkwardness to these exchanges between characters. I've seen someone compare it to The Office as a criticism but I think that's a feature and not a bug, as strange as it sounds. Somehow, it just works so well for the tonal balancing act this game maintains. But what really elevates V's cinematography thematically is its use of continuous shots. One-takes are often criticized as being essentially a gimmick, style over substance. But in Metal Gear Solid, a series defined by the juxtaposition between hard military realism and over the top fantasy? It's pure genius. Having all of this insane Kojima bullshit captured in documentary style is so fitting for this series. Perfectly hyperreal.
Speaking of hyperreal, let's talk about Quiet. I've thought a lot about whether her portrayal plays into Kojima's contempt for the audience (and the Metal Gear series itself for that matter) or if it's just a part of the game that didn't land. I was inspired by this article to conclude the former. In classic Metal Gear fashion, Quiet's characterization is ridiculous and offensive, but ends up transcending its low-brow trappings and having an emotional payoff - all while playing into a greater meta-narrative. And if you don't like that method of storytelling, then you sure picked the wrong media franchise. That scene of her speaking for the first time to guide the helicopter through the sandstorm is genuinely great. It perfectly encapsulates Kojima's ability to make something ridiculous, cheesy, and melodramatic - but still deeply affecting and with a lot of heart.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves; Quiet is absolutely a biting self-parody of Kojima's own portrayal of women throughout his series and in the wider industry. It's Kojima saying "Is this what you like, you sick fucks?" or possibly a case of introspection on his part ("Oh God, is this what I like?"). She has some hastily made up bullshit explaining why she wears no clothes, she is literally incapable of speaking for herself, and she undergoes gratuitous violence and imprisonment. Kojima obviously knows how ridiculous this is; he's seen basically every American movie, he knows this isn't how you're supposed to respectfully portray women. No, Quiet's portrayal is purposefully exploitative. Her objectification starts out fairly straightforward, but it becomes more and more disturbing for the player to partake in as the game goes on, in order to heighten the dark absurdity of all of this (particularly in Chapter 2, which is where everything in the game falls apart, on purpose). The point of Quiet's character, and the whole game really, is to give players exactly what they want in the most contemptuous way possible. To make you "feel ashamed of your words and deeds", you could even say. MGSV is about getting exactly what you want (another MGS game, endless content, revenge on Skullface, a sniper gf) and resenting it.
To build on MGSV's portrayal of women though, I think it's important that Paz takes on the role that she does in this game. She makes an initially very confusing reappearance - that first moment when you see her is genuinely unnerving, as if even the strange, fucked up Metal Gear reality we have become accustomed to can't explain what we're seeing. Out of all the unrealistic fantasy bullshit we've seen in this series, a series where it feels like anything goes and there are no rules or laws of physics, this is the first moment where I went "Wait, what? How?" But as we find at the end of "Paz's" side story, this is all just a projection of Snake's fragmented psyche. It's incredible in the way it makes you question what's real and what isn't, while simultaneously using Paz as a proxy to just straight up diagnose Snake's own mental disorders. But it's tucked away where most probably never saw it - like a hidden repressed memory somewhere in Snake's mind.
It perfectly conveys his nostalgia for a time that was never even good, as well as his crushing guilt and helplessness over the death of Paz. It's genuinely moving. That last tape of hers is something right out of Silent Hill 2, and it adds such depth to Snake as this miserable person that you should absolutely not want to be. For Snake, women really are just these fixtures of loss, shame, and regret - feelings that no doubt originate from the killing of his mother figure, The Boss. And despite all of the talk about getting revenge and taking down Cipher, the only time we ever see Snake get animated in this game is in his scenes with Paz. Snake's desire for redemption, his insistence on nuclear disarmament that feels strangely out of place, and his statement at the start of the game that he's "already a demon"? It's all about Paz, man.
One thing fans really disliked about Snake's portrayal though is that he never really seems to become the demon we knew him as in the early games. We never get to see The Exact Moment Walt Became Heisenberg. Quite the opposite; his intentions appear to remain heroic all the way to the end. The only scene where Snake approaches the kind of evil fans wanted to see is when Snake appears to murder the children in the mines but ends up saving them instead. In trailers this was depicted as if Snake actually goes through with the murder; to me, this is the smoking gun of another Kojima bait-and-switch. Fans wanted a game full of shocking, flashy acts of villainy on the part of Snake, and Kojima deliberately lead them on in trailers (just like in MGS2) but denied them of it in the final game. What did fans get instead? Spreadsheets.
Don't miss the forest for the trees; Snake is absolutely responsible for unimaginable atrocities during the events of MGSV. But instead of sensationalist images of man's inhumanity to man, Kojima shows us the banal cruelty of what it really means to be at the top of the war machine: You're just... on the computer, like everyone else. And everything you're doing is represented through so many layers of abstraction that it is impossible to understand the consequences. This ties directly into the themes of Metal Gear Solid 2 as well; by issuing your orders via this computer interface, you are even further removed from what is happening in reality. You just do a cursory cost-benefit analysis before sending the next death squad to do god knows what in some African or South American country you don't even know the name of.
And when a disease outbreak hits Mother Base, Snake's iDroid computer makes it easy for him to commit ethnic cleansing, sentencing scores of people to imprisonment and death for the language they speak. It isn't until all of the digital artifice is stripped away, and Venom is forced to enter the quarantine zone and personally slaughter his own men, that he has any crisis of conscience (and you actually lose some of your best men, because Kojima never fails to give the story actual weight via game mechanics). And you can say "Venom didn't want to do it, he had no choice." But that's exactly the point. If the Metal Gear Solid series is about one thing, it's about individual will being crushed under the weight of systems and institutions that have become organisms in and of themselves.
It doesn't matter how much Venom yearns for redemption. It doesn't even matter if he's in charge of Diamond Dogs. The system of global private warfare that Big Boss and friends established has taken on a life of its own, just like the Patriots of MGS2. His own intentions are irrelevant. If this system demands he kill his own men, he will do it. If this system demands that Raiden later kill Solidus, he too will do it. All actions within the system, regardless of intent, perpetuate the cycle of violence, war, and profit. Even if Venom disarms all of the nukes and brings about the Peace Day that never came for Paz, it just sets up the nuke free world that we hear about Big Boss exploiting in the intro to Metal Gear 2.
That's why everything in MGSV takes on such a hilariously pathetic flavor. Nobody, not Big Boss, not Zero, not Skullface, not Venom, has any agency in any of this. They're just flailing, looking for anything they can do to enact their will in a system that now imprisons its own creators. The only person who manages to achieve victory over the system by the (chronological) end of the series is, once again, Revolver Ocelot. And he only does so by shedding all individuality, tearing his mind into a thousand schizophrenic pieces to always be one step ahead of the algorithm. And it's all because he wants to fuck Big Boss. In the end love wins, and I think that's beautiful. But for everyone else, they are doomed to perpetuate the system they so desperately want to be free of.
And to what end? The truth is that there is no point to this system beyond its own self-perpetuation - it's a Snake eating its own tail (pretty good, huh?). The soldiers of Diamond Dogs, and every other PMC, kill so that they can keep killing. It's all for the love of the game at this point. Sure, they did the same thing back in Peace Walker, but at least back then it felt like you were blazing a new trail, sending a ragtag band of freedom fighters to oppose imperialism - that's long gone now. Any lofty goals this organization may have had are now lying somewhere at the bottom of the Caribbean. All of the bullshit Snake and Kaz spout about "fighting for the future" and "standing tall on missing legs" are just words to talk the gun out of their own mouths, to convince themselves that they are still moving toward something.
But they aren't. In the end, after killing Skullface (which was made purposefully unsatisfying according to Kojima) as revenge for the events that destroyed his life a decade ago, Snake is left to rot in a hell of his own creation. There are no holiday celebrations or fun outings like on the Mother Base of Peace Walker, and it's far lonelier; Quiet is gone, Huey is gone, Paz is long dead but still haunts him, and some of his best men are dead by his own hand. His only friends, Kaz and Ocelot, are just using him in some schizo game of global 4D chess. Even Eli and the child soldiers are just suddenly gone, and your metal gear with them - much more simple and poignant than the infamously cut Episode 51 would have been.
The effort to rehabilitate these kids, and maybe figure out Eli's origins? Track him down after his escape? Nope, you never see them again; they're just another of Diamond Dogs' many failures, another part of yourself that will be missing forever. All you can do is take the same helicopter ride to do the same (flawlessly crafted) stealth infiltration missions again and again and again, because senseless murder is the only thing that makes you feel anything anymore. And with the battlefield always shifting to adapt to your tactics in-game, you'll never make any real progress. Oh yeah, and none of this is actually real and Snake's entire life is fake. And deep down, he knows it.
So what about the real Big Boss? Well, he's basically stuck in the same cycle, only he has shed even more of his humanity than Venom. By using Venom's life as a tool in his own geopolitical game, Big Boss has committed the very same crime that was done to him and The Boss back in Operation Snake Eater. And all you can do about it is watch him ride off into the sunset to pursue yet another stupid evil scheme (that we already know will be a total failure), before getting right back to work like the epic gamer you are. Because you the player, like Venom, love LARPing as Big Boss no matter how pointless and repetitive it becomes. You'll complain about how Chapter 2 is "unfinished" and repeats the same missions from Chapter 1 (those were optional just fyi), but guess what? You're still gonna play those missions.
The Phantom Pain left players with such a profound feeling of emptiness and loss, and that's the real reason they felt it was unfinished. It's not because of any actual missing content - MGS2 had far more cut content, backed up by documented evidence, not just internet memes. But the difference with that game was that there was no falling out between Kojima and Konami - a convenient scapegoat for any aspect of the game that wasn't what fans expected, anything that hit players the wrong way. But that gnawing void you feel playing this game, the feeling that something is missing? That was intended, and it's honestly pretty heavy-handed and obvious when you approach the game on its own terms. I mean do I even need to say it? The pain from something that's missing? It's barely subtext.
Kojima purposefully denied us almost all of the campy, goofy nonsense we love about the Metal Gear Solid series to force us to confront how fake and hollow the legend of "the world's greatest soldier" really is. The level to which this game irrevocably shattered the minds of Metal Gear fans, leaving them eternally chasing their White Whale (the Moby Dick references weren't for nothing), is a testament to how the whole experiment was a resounding success. It snuck past gamers' emotional defenses, subverted their media illiteracy, and made them actually fucking feel something for once. Something real, something about their actual lives even.
There's a reason the game ends on a mirror - it's because the game is trying to hold one up to its players. And they could never forgive it for that. For turning their shallow, campy video game funtime, where I get to be a cool secret agent and Solid Snake is my dad, into a challenging work of art that interrogates their life. Because it's true: you are Venom Snake. You're a slave to the whims of others, your own desire for satisfaction. You do not know why you do the things that you do. And everything you're doing here - in this video game, in the digital realm - is ultimately fruitless. Fans complain about how there's no real resolution or ending to the story in MGSV, but it seems to me like that's the point: There is no resolution to be found here - not for Snake, and not for you. None of this is moving toward any conclusion or moment of truth. If you spend your life playing video games, you certainly won't ever see one. Like Venom, you'll never understand yourself, never have a real identity. The only way out, to freedom, is to stop fighting - to stop gaming. You can't save MSF, or Paz, or the Boss, or even Snake - you can only save yourself. Get out while you can. In the words of Naomi at the end of MGS1: "You have to live, Snake."
And that's the way this story ends. No Mission 51 "Kingdom of the Flies", no unwinnable boss fight against Solid Snake like fans wanted. Not even a sudden cut to black à la the Sopranos. Just the same meaningless thing over and over again, but somehow getting worse, until it's just... over. Not with a bang, but a whimper. If Metal Gear Solid 4 was about accepting the death of something that has clung on to life far longer than it should (the Metal Gear Solid series), MGSV is about being denied that noble death, brought back to life in some profane necromantic ritual, forced to live a tortured, half existence for all of eternity.
MGSV is best summed up as Kojima's way of saying "You guys wanted to keep playing Metal Gear Solid forever? Fine, here you go. Enjoy yourselves." He knows that he'll never be able to give this series a conclusive ending - he already tried that with MGS4. Instead, Kojima hands it off to the player, letting each of us come to it on our own, privately. One day, each player will get tired of the same missions and the same fucking helicopter ride and quietly decide for themselves, once and for all "Alright... I guess Metal Gear Solid is over. I'm done." and turn the game console off.
awful
There are three Metal Gear Solid 4:
- The MGS4 that wants to push the ideas of Metal Gear forward exploring the concept of war economy and mass produced soldiers as a product of capitalist greed aided by gene manipulation and nanomachines.
- The MGS4 that wants to burn everything to the fucking ground Hideaki Anno style and spit on MGS fans for asking for more games. And it'll make sure that any grave that the franchise has left is getting pissed on.
- The MGS4 that's a caring and touching love letter to everything the series represents. A celebration of everything that's dumb and fun of Metal Gear.
Three games, three different core ideas and themes, and and it doesn't mesh all that well. It's a freaking mess of a game and has both the lowest and highest points of any Metal Gear.
But despite its flaws, I had a lot of fun.
- The MGS4 that wants to push the ideas of Metal Gear forward exploring the concept of war economy and mass produced soldiers as a product of capitalist greed aided by gene manipulation and nanomachines.
- The MGS4 that wants to burn everything to the fucking ground Hideaki Anno style and spit on MGS fans for asking for more games. And it'll make sure that any grave that the franchise has left is getting pissed on.
- The MGS4 that's a caring and touching love letter to everything the series represents. A celebration of everything that's dumb and fun of Metal Gear.
Three games, three different core ideas and themes, and and it doesn't mesh all that well. It's a freaking mess of a game and has both the lowest and highest points of any Metal Gear.
But despite its flaws, I had a lot of fun.
john backloggd please change the icon to the japanese box art
How can something be this terrible and this good at the same time
Kojima filters plebs once again with Sissy Hypno
This review contains spoilers
>me: this game is pretty bloated, the bosses suck, and it just answers questions that don't need to be answered"
>also me: "METAL GEAR REX VS RAY OH YEAH BABY"
>also me: "METAL GEAR REX VS RAY OH YEAH BABY"
i recognize fully that this game is a goddamn mess but i love it even so. never played anything quite so dysmorphic, so hateful, so disinterested in its own legacy and in its expectant audience (at least until drakengard 3). that it nevertheless delivers unforgettable moments in spades and pseudoscientific genre kitsch in equal proportion just solidifies it as the mgs franchise writ large, a macrocosm of vestigial feelings, directorial gratuitousness, and creeping entropy. still one of the most interesting in kojimas ouevre, astonished mgsv managed to outpace it in charlatanisms
Kojima really woke up one day and said "yeah I think I will make fiction peak today"