Metal Gear Solid V TPP SPOILER/PLOT THREAD - this thread has spoilers

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Metal Gear Solid V TPP SPOILER/PLOT THREAD - this thread has spoilers

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

Vengarr posted:

Just realized that the Outer Heaven skull has a hole right where Venom's shrapnel horn was.

Holy poo poo

# ¿ Sep 16, 2015 05:48

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# ¿ May 13, 2024 21:57

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

Snak posted:

yeah but none of the metal gears were ever worth a poo poo. I mean, I didn't play MGS4, and it looks like Gekkos were pretty good, but REX? never used, RAY, LOL. ARSENAL gear? Good for one 9/11. Zeke? All the ones from Peace Walker?

Metal Gear is a garbage technology compared to the S3 program. These giant war machines that are supposed to change the face of battle, are, without exception, all destroyed by a single guy with a rocket launcher. Seems like maybe it's more cost effective to just make really good rocket launchers? What's that you say? Metal gear is really about a nuclear launch platform? Well how about nuclear rocket launchers? They've only been around since before metal gear, surely improving the range and effectiveness of those is a better investment than anime robots?

No really, the real villain of the MGS saga is hilariously bad priorities for military spending. The plot of MGS is that the most advanced technology that DARPA can buy built by geniuses who are a half-century ahead of their time is useless against a guy in a cardboard box who didn't even bring his own rocket launcher, choke-slammed one off of one of your own guys.

The metal gear is you, the player

# ¿ Sep 16, 2015 22:45

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

Yeah Bro posted:

Skullface has no identity aside from his desire for revenge. The central irony of his character is that he is seeking revenge for the loss of his cultural identity, but the means by which he does this further removes his cultural identity (his experiments with the language parasites leave him unable to speak his native tongue). It's fitting then that the only name he is identified by is the physical manifestation of that loss.

They should've stuck with MGS tradition and done Adjective Animal, but actually called him Adjective Animal to show how he lost his identity

# ¿ Oct 6, 2015 09:54

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

Smirking_Serpent posted:

Same exact thing happened to me.

I also didn't really realize that Huey was so despicable until I heard other people talk about it � I just kinda assumed that he was a weak nebbish dude that was always getting bossed around. I didn't like him that much, but I didn't realize he was actually an awful person until way after he got kicked off. I listened to the tapes, so I don't really know what my problem was.

And, as soon as I heard that Eli didn't match Boss's DNA, I immediately assumed that meant he wasn't Liquid rather than thinking something was up with Boss.

Basically, I'm a giant loving idiot when it comes to this game.

They actually hint at the Venom is not Boss thing so much. I got spoiled on it before the game was out so I was actively looking for it and they're dropping hints all over.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2015 10:03

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

Yeah that skull face video is a good example of how much they hint at it.

Although we know from the beginning that Big Boss never had a hand missing or a horn so you know something's up early on. Then they force you to design a guy, tell you this is your "new face" and show you BB, MANY people in the game when they first see you have to question whether you're really BB. Even the AI in huey's lab straight up says you're not him.

Then Ocelot tells you you "Forgot Russian" when you first try to interrogate a Russian (like, lol what), Miller and Ocelot both try to tell you what you SHOULD feel or think and that this is how you would have felt if you just remembered.

Colapops posted:

Oh man. I've never actually played MGS1 or really looked into it other than by secondhand; I was too young when it first came out, and then I got into the series with Revengeance. I sorta worked backwards but never actually touched MGS1 until now.

It's super, super weird seeing the "original" Psycho Mantis and how much of a pushover he is, not to mention the fact that he talks. The novelty of his fight is... well, novel, but he actually barely seems threatening, especially compared to what he's like as a child. I'd like to see how Psycho Mantis would be presented if the series had actually progressed in chronological order. What would adult Mantis be like if Kojima had come up with him in 2015 instead?

IMO the original Psycho Mantis is by far "stronger" because of how much it breaks the 4th wall. Like sure he doesn't summon flaming whales but he also tells you what videogames you, the player have played irl. He turns off your TV and reads your mind unless you switch controller ports. He messes up your first person view button (the FPS view switches to him instead, because he's inside your mind). He moves your controller! Magic

(Also if you try to beat him on port 1 he's actually quite hard I thought)

# ¿ Oct 6, 2015 11:24

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

Enallyniv posted:

To be fair, they explain this as a consequence of the giant chunk of Paz sticking out of your head impacting the language center of your brain. It makes more sense once the twist hits, of course.

Yeah, it also ~sorta~ makes you think well, that's why the new Snake doesn't talk much.

Also I kind of wish that Kiefer never voiced BB in Ground Zeroes and that the voice actor changing was part of the twist as well

# ¿ Oct 6, 2015 12:33

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

So the parasites are straight up nanomachines right? Especially how they stop you from saying certain things (it's why nobody can say Patriots in MGS2)

# ¿ Oct 7, 2015 10:53

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

Yeah Bro posted:

Pretty much. MGSV's language stuff is basically a direct follow on thematically to MGS2's algorithmic/information society. MGS2 suggests that you can shape and recreate people by constructing particular memetic environments; people will internalise constructed norms as the way things are and will have faith in the existence of mythical entities in spite of disproof (mythic in this sense being "the self-made man" or "the dole bludger", not God). MGSV goes one further, if we understand 2 to be about the nature of the content of media and also the mechanisms by which that media is produced, then V can be understood as a sort of "the medium is the message" sort of thing. The parasite stuff in V treats language as a medium that can be scrutanised, that is inherently political and ideological. That language is constructed and can be reconstructed for particular purpose. It borrows from "Sapir/Whorf" with the idea that all thought is mediated by language and thus that restriction of language necessarily reshapes thoughts (Skullface says as much).

As for in a literal "series chronology/canon" (I'm not too fond of such things but some are), I believe there is a tape that says that the parasites are something of a research dead end, and that nanomachines get developed independent from them. But for the role they play in their respective game's narratives, they are essentially the same.

I just read a study the other day on how people who speak multiple languages literally have different mental personalities for each language. It can even be applied to code switching in the same language like how minorities within their community will have different ways of speaking to someone outside the community in the same language. It's not necessarily that we are bilingual in this case but more that we are bicultural, and you tend to only use one language with a certain culture.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2013/11/multilingualism

Interesting stuff anyway

Edit: Actually it DIRECTLY links to something someone said in the non spoiler thread. "Why can't you just stop speaking Kikongo and get on with it"

quote:

Speaking Spanish rather than English, for a bilingual and bicultural Puerto Rican in New York, might conjure feelings of family and home. Switching to English might prime the same person to think of school and work.

Language has so much attached to it that forcing someone to give one up is like forcing them to give up an aspect of themselves. They probably could've gone a bit deeper into it honestly

THE AWESOME GHOST fucked around with this message at 12:10 on Oct 7, 2015

# ¿ Oct 7, 2015 12:04

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

SynthOrange posted:

Hm, does a water gun affect no trace if fired? Because that can definitely be used to ruin transmitters.

Haha for real? That's awesome

# ¿ Oct 8, 2015 07:04

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

Speedball posted:

Eh, shooting one with a silenced assault rifle works too.

But then they come over and say it was destroyed and go on alert. Will they do the same thing with water pistols or just be like "Huh that's funny guess it's broken"

# ¿ Oct 8, 2015 08:07

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

Hey so if you guys remember Raiden's story was that we was a child soldier in Africa, and Solidus found him. So Venom finding Liquid in Africa as a child soldier is like a totally intentional parallel yes

I know it's MGS and everything happens like 5 times

# ¿ Oct 11, 2015 13:25

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

Vikar Jerome posted:

Anyone else follow kojima on twitter? The scamp keeps tweeting about media he is consuming and their 3rd parts. Like he randomly talks about true detective season 2 episode 3, talks about getting the killing on dvd and mentions there was no season 3. Talks about c3po's red arm in vol 3 of this star wars mag.

Didn't he say we played MGS V and not MGS 5

# ¿ Oct 12, 2015 20:26

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

Broseph Brostar posted:

Grey Fox's back story is already a big mess. I don't think Kojima can do anything but make it worse by shoving him into another game.

Kojima needs to be free of MGS already. He wants to write good games, but every game he makes has to fit into a canon that started before most players were born.

I mean I know he says that every game it's his last game but even as far back as MGS1 I think this quote is kinda telling

"If I knew MGS1 was not the last game in the series I wouldn't have killed Liquid"

He does a bunch of poo poo to just be like, IT'S DONE THERE BYE and then had to undo it

# ¿ Oct 13, 2015 11:46

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

Snak posted:

So, as I was first playing MGSV, and there was all this forshadowing of things not being what they seemed, I started to form some crazy theories about what the twist was going to be.

The crux of these are

* Ocelot is not Ocelot. He is an impostor. He is one of the variables designed to convince Venom that he is Big Boss.
* Miller is actually Liquid, which leads us too
* It's not 1984. The walkman, all of the music, all of this is immersion therapy to help reinforce the delusion programmed into Venom that he is Big Boss and it is the 1980s.
* Actually it is 1991. Liquid is using Venom to recruit for the Genome Army
* You aren't fighting the soviets. You aren't in Afghanistan. It's Gulf War 1. Venom has been made to believe that he is fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan, when actually he is fighting American forces in Iraq.
* Skull Face is Big Boss, post MG2 toasting

Turns out I'm just an idiot.

This is incredible actually. You wrote a better game than they did. Too bad nobody speaks Arabic in the game but yeah Liquid spends like... 5 years in Iraq?

# ¿ Oct 13, 2015 11:49

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

Onmi posted:

Oh there will be. Just most likely it wont be for a while, or if it is, it wont feel the same. I would only trust Platinum with something as nuts as Metal Gear to get the appropriate theme if it's not Kojima.

I still would play MG Rising 2.

To be fair I would play MGS6, I'm sure SOMEONE that worked for Kojima can make a decent game

# ¿ Oct 18, 2015 20:23

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

WaltherFeng posted:

Kojima has a bad habit of connecting and expanding plot elements that do not need to be revised. Hence why MGS3 still has the best story. It's almost completely disconnected from the previous games and works as a stand alone origin story (And even explains Big Boss's descent into villainy far better than any other games after it)

Then MGS4 happened.

Yeah IMO a super dumb thing is that at the end of MGS3 I was like, ah, this game clearly explains why Big Boss becomes a huge rear end in a top hat

Then they make portable Ops, Peacewalker, Ground Zeroes, Phantom Pain all saying no THIS is why

# ¿ Oct 18, 2015 20:25

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

MeatwadIsGod posted:

Seeing what Episode 51 could have been really makes me wish it had been completed. Even if they had to construct a sparse area for the Sahelanthropus re-match to make it easier for consoles and PCs to deal with, it makes all the Lord of the Flies allusions a lot more appropriate. Even if it were a relatively small mission area, having a tropical island littered with booby traps and child soldiers would have been very cool, even if it doesn't add very much plot-wise. I was kind of bummed how child soldiers weren't as prominent in the game as I'd expected, but it wouldn't surprise me if Konami wanted to limit their inclusion to avoid controversy.

With how controversial Kojima was saying the game would be I was absolutely sure they would let you kill child soldiers. In real wars where western peacekeeping forces have to go in and fight child soldiers they don't have tranquil darts, they are killing children unless they want to die and it really really fucks up them up mentally. I think killing a child in a game is like instant ban territory though

# ¿ Oct 19, 2015 11:39

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

Onmi posted:

At least in one of the Huey interrogations, he's clearly got the tape recorder on him at the time.

There's a cassette that goes "you aren't recording this right"

# ¿ Oct 19, 2015 20:18

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

MrSmokes posted:

So, was there an actual good reason why Quiet didn't just write in English? Was it because she hated everyone but Snake on Mother Base? Apologies if this was actually explained, it's been a while since I beat the story.

I guess the parasites aren't 100% understood by everyone and they assume just thinking about the language at all will trigger them? Like if you don't know better I guess you'd avoid your lungs turning into spaghetti by any means

# ¿ Oct 25, 2015 09:33

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

setafd posted:

I hated that they explained the Cobras' powers

Nanomachines

But yeah it's implied even if they don't say it. The End literally has the same power as Quiet without the stealth. He also photosynthesizes and is super good at sniping

How's the MGS3 HD collection on Vita because I really wanna play that game again now, I totally forgot they explode and say their name at the same time

THE PAIN the pain _{the pain}

diamond dog posted:

every answer you could get based on this bullshit game is gonna be wrong because skull face is probably revolver ocelot or something. WHO KNOWS

PS there's multiple clues indicating that you're seeing the world mirrored (like SGOD DNOMAID in Shining Lights and Paz Zone, arms reversed in the intro, POWs closing their left eye, and the use of the PC-6001 version of Portopia which has a screen to swap your red and blue channels unlike the MSX rom), so every time you saw XOF it probably really says FOX.

holy poo poo

THE AWESOME GHOST fucked around with this message at 10:05 on Oct 25, 2015

# ¿ Oct 25, 2015 09:59

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

I hear a lot of complaints about chapter 2 but I kind of like that you see even the staff slowly turn against Miller and he puts up BIG BOSS IS WATCHING posters everywhere

# ¿ Oct 30, 2015 10:13

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

Elephant Ambush posted:

Yeah this. If I was supposed to be terrified of the idea that my native language would be wiped out, then maybe something is wrong with me because I don't care. I'd learn another language if I wasn't already dead.

And I don't agree that language and culture are that tightly bound

You can disagree but they absolutely are which is the entire point of destroying identities through language

# ¿ Oct 30, 2015 23:35

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

Venom Soag posted:

why did ocelot brainwash himself

seems unnecessary

Seems unnecessary is the answer to any MGS plothole

# ¿ Nov 3, 2015 08:51

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

Snak posted:

I just realized that's literally the mechanism through which they gave Venom all of Big Boss's memories. Because you've played the other games.

Yeah but also this was the plot of mgs2

# ¿ Nov 6, 2015 09:04

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

MinibarMatchman posted:

read a neogaf thread about how "mgsv is the worst mgs ever" and now I think I contracted eyeball cancer

then again this may have started at "read a neogaf thread"

There is a huge backlash against this game from hardcore MGS fanatics who bought it and played straight through to the true ending in like 2 days

poo poo like "this game is 80% filler" because they forgot what gameplay is

# ¿ Nov 7, 2015 10:22

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

Nohman posted:

And in the Otacon ending it's a 2001 reference with Dave and Hal. Hideo Kojima has never given gently caress one about the English side of Metal Gear.

David Hayter is literally in MGS4 as himself

That loving Sned posted:

MGSV may have pissed off a lot of the hardcore fans, but that's not the only reason I like it.

Yeah as a game this is definitely deserving of GOTY, I'm 100% sure of this. Even stuff like repeating the missions for hard modes made me realize how well parts of this have been designed, and how much of the game can actually be handled without firing a single shot.

As a story it literally did not need to exist so I'm not sure what people expected

THE AWESOME GHOST fucked around with this message at 10:41 on Nov 7, 2015

# ¿ Nov 7, 2015 10:37

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

That loving Sned posted:

The only problem with the gameplay is how hard it's made going back to any of the earlier ones.

If they really wanted to tell the story of how Big Boss started Outer Heaven, it should have been handled like Luigi in Paper Mario TTYD, where it's exactly the same adventure but much shittier. While you're working with Ocelot and Quiet, he's got Dirty Duck and Shoot Gunner.

Well see I know everyone thought they were gonna get that story but historically every time they go back and try to explain past stuff they don't give people what they want at all. People just wanna see like, Kid Sniper Wolf but you know they're gonna nanomachine it up and introduce 20 new characters that you somehow never heard of instead

# ¿ Nov 8, 2015 08:38

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

Digital Osmosis posted:

I finally beat the drat thing last night, and then spent around another hour listening to tapes and watching cut footage and poo poo. Act two is... totally pointless? There's absolutely nothing added to the plot or characterization other than suddenly finding what's up with Quite and then the last mission, which has no narrative build up and no narrative after effects. It just suddenly happens. What triggers "The Truth?" And while I think a lot of the fallout was intentionally vague and ambiguous, there's still the disturbing question at the end of how much Venom Snake knew, when he knew it, and what his response was to it.

I completely disagree about Act 2 being pointless. Hell even mission 43 alone seemed like a huge turning point for Venom - killing his own men really hosed him up to the point where he was rubbing their ashes on his face and turning them into diamonds... and then you find out the real Big Boss, this perfect ideal, actually just did the same thing to you. He set you up to die but even worse, he did it to help himself not save the world from a disease. Everything you suffered for was pointless. Big Boss basically Skullfaced you

Also from the trailer I think it's implied you're not supposed to do the Paz stuff until act 2. It makes more sense there because you're really seeing Venom crack in every way.

But yeah it's pretty vague what actually happened

# ¿ Nov 16, 2015 08:34

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

Gortarius posted:

People have said that the mirror scene is just before Venom gets killed by Solid Snake but... what implies that at all?

I mean it sounds like he is near some warzone...

I guess there is the operation tape.

???????

The Operation Tape is the same name as the MG1 operation, and you hear fighting in the background so it's pretty heavily implied the operation has both started and is close enough to Venom that it's right before he fights Solid. Like there's no other time when the operation would have started and Venom would have known I guess. Pay 4000 MB for a DLC casette that you thought would explain it but is telling you about the mating habits of DDog for 15 minutes

# ¿ Nov 16, 2015 11:36

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

Hey so I've been thinking about this (More than I should have)

Mission 1/46
Mission 20
Mission 43

Don't these all feel like they came out of a different game totally? The cinematic camera angles, the control being taken away from you frequently into cutscenes, the LOAAAADS of blood, all being very suspenseful and incredibly violent? On top of that, Kiefer voice acts way more of these missions than the rest of the game. It feels like they actually finished these missions first as the frame of the game then filled out the gameplay around it. It even makes sense with GZ being so dark that they'd transition into starting on the hosed up missions like that as a framework.

On the other hand you get say mission 30/31, where even during the super long exposition sequence you never go into a real cutscene, there's no creepy suspense parts and it's just sorta generic villian monologue to himself but without Snake talking back at all and they use entirely existing assets. I guess you shoot off his hand but whatever.

It sort of feels like they had 2 games being worked on side by side that were stitched together. The above missions also make me really wish we saw the rest of Silent Hills.

# ¿ Nov 16, 2015 14:34

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

A Buttery Pastry posted:

It's symbolic of how the medic and Big Boss were stitched together. The bloody parts of the game are the medic, a man who would have much experience with blood, guts, and tragedy, while the lighter parts of the game is Big Boss just doing what he loves. This is also why the darkest missions take place in hospitals or hospital like settings.

I uh didn't notice those were all hospitals

# ¿ Nov 16, 2015 18:40

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

Is that really a Japanese thing? Burning your bridges with an old employer in a tiny, insular industry seems like a terrible idea. I can't think of someone at a very senior level leaving a videogame company then trashing them.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2015 14:03

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

Mission 46 actually does change things even though people were saying it's the exact same. The opening cutscenes specifically give away most of the twist now where before they were really confusing.

This game is amazing i really don't get the backlash

# ¿ Nov 20, 2015 06:42

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

I like how people interpret the ending differently honestly. My personal take:

When he saw his former self, then Demon Snake, then smashed the mirror the reflection was showing the real big boss. I took it to mean that he was fully on board with the idea and was ready to become Big Boss. Like it didn't matter that he wasn't Naked Snake, he was part of the myth of BB, people believed he was BB. Him seeing BB in the shattered reflection was Venom.

To be fair this is colored a bit by the fact that the game takes place in 1984 and has BIG ~~BROTHER~~ BOSS IS WATCHING posters all over the place. If you read 1984 a big part of the ending is that Big Brother is never revealed as a real person, and some characters hint that he's just a concept with a cult built around him. I took the comparison to Big Boss and that sort of thing pretty literally I guess.

# ¿ Nov 23, 2015 21:15

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

kaesarsosei posted:

I trawled through 25 pages of threads and the general MGS thread seems to be inactive.

I just wanted to ask: I've never played or seen a single minute of a Metal Gear Solid game in my life. Can or should I take a dive into MGSV or would it be completely over my head? Both from a gameplay and story perspective.

I have friends in your situation. From a gameplay perspective it's totally fine as 5 is so different from previous entries you won't mind. From a story perspective they had absolutely no idea what was happening at all and were not able to follow the story in any way but they had fun with their open world sneaking simulator

# ¿ Dec 7, 2016 11:59

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

FedEx Mercury posted:

I wonder if we'll ever get the full story about why they couldn't finish a full sandbox game in five years while Ubisoft has turned this poo poo into a science by now.

Ubisoft has a base they can work on and refine each time, if they started doing yearly MGS5 spinoffs it would've been easy for them

# ¿ Dec 13, 2016 07:55

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# ¿ May 13, 2024 21:57

THE AWESOME GHOST: Oct 21, 2005

Harrow posted:

Yeah, that's the kind of thing I don't really need an explanation for, but I like that Big Boss sending Venom to die in his place at Outer Heaven makes Big Boss do to Venom what was done to The Boss, the betrayal that sent Big Boss on this journey to begin with. "It's like poetry, it rhymes" - master writer George Lucas (although in this case I actually mean it sincerely, it's legit poetic)

Kinda funny that the game does a terrible job of setting this up. Venom was even betrayed by his "Country" the same way.

# ¿ Dec 15, 2016 07:09

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