Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-78.21.225.39-20150916205858/@comment-64.33.250.214-20151031055737

72.222.125.23 wrote: No, he was being tactical. You can't build a rogue nation to take out the Patriots when their prying eyes are always watching you. He was building Zanzibar Land up while Venom Snake took all the heat off of him, building up the legend of Big Boss and uniting soldiers under the cause. Big Boss was doing all the heroic shit Venom Snake was doing, building a nation for disenfranchised soldiers, just not out in the open for the world to see. A theory I like is eventually Venom Snake becomes unhindged (he's had to endure being mutilated, his mind being irriversably altered, multitudes of his men dying of infection, and having to kill dozens his own men, remember: HE RUBS A DEAD GUYS ASHES ON HIS FACE) and Big Boss realizes Venom Snake has become a threat to the World, and that's why he sends Solid Snake to Outer Heaven to kill him. Venom Snake doesn't become unhinged, because he is a projection of the player. That's why the ending was left ambiguous. There's no further character arch for Venom Snake beyond his confrontation with Solid Snake.

Here's the problem with setting up Venom to take the heat: The Patriots, as you said, are the prying eyes of the world. If there's the slightest hint of military activity in Zanzibarland, they're going to investigate it. They had 3 agents at one points (Skull Face, Ocelot, and Paz). Why they didn't send anyone other than Solid to infiltrate Zanzibar is a glaring error on either the Patriot's part of Kojima's story telling. All it would take is one double agent to ask the children there who rescued them, and they'd probably say "a pirate saved us". Then the Patriots would realize Big Boss was leading Zanzibar.