MGSV: 3 Years Later [Spoilers]

I am replaying the game after not playing so much for a while. Also I have completed MGS3 & 4 for the first time on real hardware since beating MGSV. This game is still stunning. Returning to this game after finishing 4, I am more than satisfied with the amount of content and story in V.



Warning: there are open spoilers throughout.



"INCOMPLETE GAME"

I never bought into the "it's an incomplete game" memes, it felt like a way to capitalize on the anti-Konami sentiment. The truth is every single game, including the other MGSes, have content cut. Every single game has artistic sacrifices made for the financial people calling the shots. For that matter, antagonism between Konami and its devs is a tale as old as time, and it has informed all of the games in the series, especially this one. As far as what is missing, there is a title card, a half finished cutscene (featuring all old characters that disappear mysteriously at the end anyways), and perhaps a map that has a fight against Sahelanthropus. We already fight him twice in the game. Four times including the postgame subsistence missions. I am fine with that missing.



It is a shame that TPP didn't receive the level of polish bestowed on GZ but given more time to finish, I believe this is where those resources would have been devoted, rather than some new chapter about... who knows what...? that's the thing, nobody has said what is missing. the story is pretty much wrapped up by the time you get to the Truth ending. what story? you ask:



THE STORY

ACT 0 - ROCK BOTTOM

I loved the story. I see the game as a new take on the MGS2 formula. The Tanker chapter is Ground Zeroes: the final mission of the real Big Boss. Gameplay and presentation wise, it is the ultimate vertical slice, the platonic ideal of Metal Gear as a polished huge budget game. Yet this is Big Boss at his lowest point: he is building a massive stateless army of international mercenaries, hiding nukes from the world, his loyal child soldiers are having their bodies mutilated, implanted with bombs, just to send a message to the guy. The shocking trauma of the Medic's heroic act which saved Big Boss's life is a violence inflicted from officer to soldier. This trauma and other PTSD are huge themes in MGSV's story, and this gets revisited in the Missing Mother Base Soldiers sidequest later in TPP. Big Boss goes into a coma, just as he "dies" in the Tanker chapter, only to soon re-appear in order to train our new Snake, the new pretender to the throne of Big Boss. After the game there is a cool promo for MGSV. Credits. Ending one.



ACT1 - SKULLFACE

This act is all about tying up loose ends from MGS3 and Peace Walker. It is about getting revenge, the endless cycle of which "turns men into demons and keeps the dead alive". By now we know Big Boss dies in so many of these games. In MGS4 we even see him as a barely alive torso get utterly destroyed in a fire and then he just shows up again a few hours later (played by someone who is not David Hayter). We start in the Hospital Prologue. Ironically Big Boss sets Quiet on fire with a lighter and spray can (the same technique used on Big Boss in the first Metal Gear) and Quiet becomes a huge part of the story. This first, main part of the game focuses heavily on MGS3, Quiet as a The Boss analog, Venom as a sort of second chance. When we meet Quiet the game directly compares saving her life to killing The Boss at the end of MGS3. Throughout the game we are introduced to classic MGS characters -- the scientist Huey, the once and future villain Ocelot (note how a future villain here is training another future villain), Kaz (who would train Snake to defeat Big Boss, here he finds his Peace Walker-era influence over his friend his waning in the face of Ocelot's brutal practicality). At the end, Big Boss has the Metal Gear, he has the parasites, he has single handedly captured the mercenaries of everyone that Skullface does business with, he has Liquid, he has Psycho Mantis, he has won, but he has sort of become Skullface more or less. His thirst for power will lead to his undoing. It is cool that Huey kills Skullface, in most of these games he is a whimp, wetting himself, but here is defeats the main villain! Credits.



ACT2 - SHINING LIGHTS

This act is all about Venom's deconstruction. The main villain is dead, now is just a endless list of missions to take on until Snake kills him in MG1. There is nothing driving the plot forward during this time because Venom's own life is aimless. There is the PTSD of Paz, there is the antagonistic relationship to Liquid (including several melee fights against Liquid, like most MGS games). All that remains is to set up the future of the series. The new characters that have joined the army but are not in the first game need to be removed, they need to turn on Snake because the timeline demands it. Liquid and the kids leave, taking Psycho Mantis and the Metal Gear with them. We will see them all again in MGS. It all climaxes with 43: Shining Lights, the other main linear story based mission in the game, and an inversion of the Hospital Prologue.



The Hospital mission and Shining Lights have many parallels. In the former he travels from the top of the building to the bottom, in the latter he goes from down to the top (heaven->hell?hell->outer heaven?). In the former Big Boss sets Quiet, later a parasite soldier, on fire, in the latter, Venom sets his own parasite soldiers on fire (through his actions he has become like Big Boss). Him shooting his own men is merely foreshadowing the events of Metal Gear, where he shot at Solid Snake. This mission is ultimately to train him for that purpose. Huey leaves. Credits.



ACT3 - QUIET EXIT

The first time I saw this I was very moved by it. Perhaps this is a victim of western prudishness, perhaps also of Kojima's ability to frame a heartbreaking scene like it were a porno. Quiet foregoes her famous gamelong silence in order to save Venom's life, at the cost of her own. It sort of parallels The Boss's sacrifice in MGS3, yet Quiet gets away, she heads off to live in exile. Credits. As the final strands of Venom's new life have left him, and all that remains is aimless war (sideops and FOB), he has his Truth realization. This is something hinted at periodically throughout the story, and Kaz even talks about remembering the hospital mission for the first time all game. At the end of the Quiet Exit, when you have been bitten by the poisonous snake and have said goodbye to Quiet, you are given an Anti-Venom. This is explicit foreshadowing. Anti-VENOM. Your character's name is Venom, what happens when that is stripped away?



ACT4 - TRUTH

What I consider the final ending, it wraps up the entire story, it allows the real Big Boss one more chance to get one over on the player/character. Think about it, going into this game, he was fated to not be able to kill anybody, because they are all in future games, or really do anything, and in fact his fate is to get killed like a punk in the very next game. This is not a good way to send out a character so cool. Big Boss is cooler than that. He steals himself a secret ending, he rides off into the sunset on a motorcycle, Hollywood style. What could be more classic?



Venom's ending is just as intriguing. I love the meta-ness of him playing the tape in the MSX machine, literally starting the series, the games forming a chronological loop. We don't really know how long the post-game is, it could be years, it could be over a decade of endless war. Is he happy with this mission? It is the question that comes up. He punches the mirror and disappears in the classic smoke and mirrors and we can debate whether he listened to the tape and liked what he heard, what he had to do, or not. THIS IS THE FIRST TIME ALL GAME WE HAVE CONSIDERED HIS FEELINGS ON THE MATTER! By this point Venom has done dozens of missions, listened to all kinds of tapes and intel, been given orders by his "friends", etc. he has killed people, he has destroyed stuff, and this is the first time this has really come up. Brilliant. Kojima is saying something very complex about free will here.



You could probably analyse the ending in so many ways. That will be done someday, I'm sure, somebody with a mutli-hour youtube video that shows people there is actually a bunch of cool story stuff in this game, and it will be looked on as a brilliant but flawed MGS2-style masterpiece. The gameplay is already undisputedly amazing (as unpolished as the game is, the level design is rock solid), it's just such a huge game, taking everything in really requires hundreds of hours of play. After 900+ hours of play, sometimes i even want to play it more than newer games that have come up. It's so much fun.