Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-5085906-20130627191357/@comment-1971498-20150830185614

Weedle McHairybug wrote: Honestly, despite what that Spainkiller stated on NeoGAF thread, MGSV's twist was a very bad move. It's not simply because we don't get to play as Big Boss. Done right, not playing as Big Boss actually would give us a very good outside perspective on how he falls from grace. However, the way they did it, there's little indication that Big Boss even fell, especially when Venom Snake effectively takes over that bit. There's also the story problems this presents. Namely, it cheapens a LOT of MGS4's story. Since not only are Big Boss, Ocelot, heck, possibly even EVA are in on the whole Venom Snake thing, and probably would know that Zero was going to become a vegetable by the 1980s, pretty much everything in MGS4, namely reviving Big Boss, euthanizing Zero, Ocelot becoming Liquid, all of it was basically pointless, and it also cheapens a nice and bittersweet reconciliation and reunion Solid Snake had with Big Boss, EVA, and technically Liquid. Heck, it pretty much made all the games taking place after it exceedingly pointless as well, since there would have been no point to the S3 Plan at all since the expressed desire for the S3 Plan was to mold someone into a certain figure, and thus control society (then again, Zadornov's plan in Peace Walker also basically rendered S3 pointless as well, but at least with that it was intended for Snake to kill off America anyhow indirectly, not benefit Cipher/the Patriots). Heck, Les Enfants Terribles basically was rendered extremely pointless with this game, since who needs cloning if you can effectively mold someone into being a new Big Boss? I think that thematically it's an interesting twist in that Venom Snake is essentially the player manifest as Big Boss (which is far more meta than how MGS2 gracefully tackled it), but in-universe it literally adds nothing to the equation beyond being inclusive of a player avatar and it only really serves to complicate the nature of Big Boss's characterization into an even bigger mess.