Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-5085906-20130627191357/@comment-64.33.250.214-20150907043617

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.