Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-5085906-20130627191357/@comment-64.33.250.214-20150907193151

Weedle McHairybug wrote:

175.159.163.39 wrote:

64.33.250.214 wrote: Weedle McHairybug wrote:

Nuhr wrote: I like the ending. Even though it comes somewhat out of nowhere, I mean you do missions and then you unlock the ending and learn that Venom is the medic it comes somewhat out of the blue, despite getting hinted at my Eli's DNA-test-results.

I think it's kind of nice Kojima closed the loophole of Big Boss in the old MG games, even though I always believed them not to be canon because they were made at a time when Kojima was not yet able to make complex plots. Actually, the games alluded to the plots of the MSX2 games, so they are canon (even IF they were basically hugely retconned to the extent that they barely even qualify as canon).

And it's not simply that the twist was unneeded that bugged me, though that is one of the big offenders, it's also that thanks to Big Boss, Ocelot, and EVA knowing about Zero being in a vegetative state during the 1980s, their actions in the later games came across as pointless, not to mention it ruined a bittersweet reunion and reconciliation between them and Solid Snake by implying that they basically lied to him even when they were about to die, meaning he's still a Snake and not a man despite what Big Boss stated. Heck, the S3 Plan and even Les Enfants Terribles were rendered completely pointless with this twist. The plot twist is dumb. Scratch that, the CUSTOMIZATION is dumb. What if you chose to customize your character as a black man? Or what about the female players? The customization option is far too elaborate and yet somehow too limited. Kojima was trying to be meta by saying Big Boss was the fans, ever since the franchise became popular since MG1. But the more you think about, the more it doesn't work. We're basicially being used as plot devices to retcon an event in an old game that didn't need retconning. Furthermore, we're set up by one of the most popular characters in video games to look like a villain.

Venom could've easily been a failed experiment from the LET project, yet instead we get this needlessly complicated 4th wall break.

If there's one aspect of the story I appreciated, it's how the game attempts to show that Zero was never a maniacal villain. The bigger villain was always the Patriot AIs. Which explains why Big Boss hadn't expressed genuine hatred towards Zero in MGS4. Because he spoke of him with pity and a sense of longing. BB essentially euthanized Zero. (As of today I am only at mission 13 and only watched cutscenes on youtube in bits and pieces)

Indeed, the Medic becoming Big Boss is somewhat unnecessary and have, as a few of us have said, cheapened the subsequent (in-game timeline wise) MGS games' story a lot. Maybe Kojima had no other way to explain Big Boss' "fall" to a demon, having him returning to command FOXHOUND after all that happened between him and Zero, etc, etc, maybe he wants us to feel like Big Boss, but I don't mind if certain in-game elements were said to be supernatural, said to be the end result of extreme luck (like how Big Boss survived the 1995 Outer Heaven) or even left unexplained, and I honestly don't get (nor appreciate) his idea of us becoming Big Boss.

When Big Boss, at the end of MGS4, said that he made a lot of mistakes which Solid would not have made if being put in his position, I would say the sense of repentance is much heavier before MGSV is out, and was actually better played out after we learned of his "good deeds" in MGSPW. Up till then, I felt the real Big Boss, having been a demon and made his apologies all the more meaningful than just saying his biggest mistake is to allow a fake to exist and twisted the world. He now sounds more like he is making an embarassing apology to everyone in and outside of the MGS world for fooling them due to his stupidity.

As to the matter of retcon, my view has been that MG 1 and MG2SS are forgivable for retcon since they were written so many years back. For MGS games, I think the only retcon I can cite is Sunny being made a girl when being mentioned as a boy in MGS2 (they now even purposely explained Dr. Clark's gender issue by Huey's recording). As far as Kojima provides a valid explanation for the "changes" made, I am fine, only I really don't see the necessity to make Venom as Big Boss just to fit him into MG 1.

A separate point on giving extra background to old characters, I quite like the inclusion of Liquid and Mantis, and I don't mind them explaning The End's abilities by way of the parasite, although it sounds unfair that The End can do photosynthesis with clothes but Quiet could (while acknowledging the fact that it would be a big turn-off seeing The End naked).

All things considered, MGSV is still a very good game. No kidding about the Big Boss retcon. Probably the only thing that is even worse than the Big Boss retcon is how they handled Zero in this. I could forgive the bit about him being in a vegetative state in the 1980s thanks to Skull Face and possibly his secretly funding Diamond Dogs' creation if it weren't for the fact that he basically revealed his debilitating condition to Ocelot and possibly EVA, and Ocelot relaying THAT to Big Boss in his reports, which not only meant that their fighting Zero and their plans in MGS4 were made extremely pointless, but it also meant that EVA, Ocelot, and Big Boss basically lied to Solid Snake to the very end, thus not only painting a very horrible picture for the three, but basically making Solid Snake seem even more like a tool than ever before and dying a tool in the end. Now, if Zero actually kept his debilitating status a secret, or at best only revealed it to Big Boss when the latter was still in a coma and in a cutscene rather than a cassette tape, I can forgive that change, heck, even like the bit that he actually tried to stop the Patriots yet failed, but not his giving word about his condition to every founding member who was part of the Patriots formerly or currently. That's another thing which could've been conveyed better. We get no cutscene with Zero, not even one for when he visited Big Boss in the hospital. He's the villain who started it all, and we don't get to see what he'd look like in the Fox Engine.

My memory may be a little fuzzy, but wasn't fighting Zero in MGS4 already pointless? It wasn't like he could control the Patriot AIs, who had broken free from his will. Killing Zero just meant putting him out of his misery.