Board Thread:Metal Gear Solid V/@comment-5038094-20140921003704/@comment-25366375-20140921071402

The canon is certainly an issue.

But in what little game development I've done in the past, I can tell you that it can be done with a relatively little headache. For starters, you can make some cutscenes conditional, and I'll try to explain this simply, using a hypothetical Cutscene X as an example;

Cutscene X - Big Boss returns from a mission having not met Quiet.

Cuscene X(2) - Big Boss returns from a mission (where he met Quiet) and the cutscene goes a bit longer. Her presesence alters the cutscene that is shown as a variable.

Obviously this is a serious oversimplification of game development and especially the FOX Engine which we've seen to be incredibly powerful and diverse, but I'm just trying to illustrate that it can be done. Of course by saying that I'm suggesting that characters like Quiet won't impact the overall canon, but will be contained within the story of The Phantom Pain. Based on that I think that Quiet's and D.D.'s respective story arcs are just going to entail a few more side missions and stuff (not that there's anything wrong with that, I think it'll be great), but nothing major to do with Big Boss' descent in to evil. Sort of incidental happenings.

I don't think the same will apply to characters like Eli and Kid Mantis though. I think they're going to appear, and be important no matter how the character plays the game.