[SPOILERS] A Phantom Pain

[Redpanda]

#Not so fun fact: Phantom pain is a medical condition in which the patient gets rare/daily sensations of his/her missing limb still being there as an extended body part. This is due to the body not accepting or registering the loss of it's parts on the patient's brain.

 

Rumors, conspiracies and the phantom pain, oh my.

Controversies has been revolving around Kojima vs Konami for the past few months as we all know and when it all seemed like it began to ran out of fuel as the new Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain got released on September 1 thus ending the relation between the game director and the publisher, it only got more worse.

 

 

The publisher held review events where critics were invited to play the game before launch just for 40 hours while being closely monitored by Konami. So much integrity and enjoyment taken out just for the sake of fast reviews by mainstream critics.

 

The disappointed reaction showed by many consumers and hardcore fans alike on youtube and reddit and other gaming forums. Their opinions differing vastly from those mainstream reviewers. (Reasons are explained in-depth on the videos provided below)

 

Massive content cut out from the game itself for whatever reasons we can only guess. File diggers on the PC version of the game found out unused buried files of a supposedly chapter 'three' of the game which could have possibly saved the game's plot that stopped abruptly on chapter two while also tying up many loose ends.

Link

 

But what got me most intrigued and questioning was the overall themes of the game itself and of the franchise as a whole.

 

!!!WARNING!!!

     !!HUGE SPOILERS DOWN BELOW!!

    !!IT SPOILS  ALMOST ALL OF THE MGS GAMES ENDINGS!!

                                                             

              

 

This 34 minute video analysis by George Weidman goes into details about the core themes and mechanics of the game and possibly of the whole franchise too.

 

And this is another video by HyperBritHero which basically talks about the same thing but with less details and time consumption. I suggest you watch both just for grasping what the hell is really going on with the game itself.

 

Kojima's writing is no stranger to verbiage abuse as it is clearly evident in the MGS games and also in his early one of two visual novels Policenauts (the other one being Snatcher which was fairly short compared to the rest).{Link for Policenauts in case anyone is interested.}

 

The MGS series sacrifices brevity in exchange for complexity. Each game has a message attached to them which ultimately is the main core themes of these games. But unfortunately, these messages doesn't seem to get conveyed well because of the complexity it gains and as time passes the games messages gets more vague.

The reason is simple. MGS 1 wasn't suppose to have a sequel. It was suppose to end there when you have killed ******. But since fans demanded for more leading to the publishers putting pressure on Kojima, he wrote and directed MGS 2. And this was suppose to put an end to the game but the same thing happened and Kojima kept making new sequels while each one being an iteration to the last one. This lead to more complex and retroactive continuity of the lores and the character themselves resulting in what people considered to be one of the best story telling the gaming community has ever seen or simply a huge campy mess that was an unforgettable journey nonetheless.

 

But these things effected Kojima more than we thought as we can see his 'auteur' got more sarcastic and critical towards the gaming industry as the second game MGS2: Sons of liberty came out.

 

An in-depth review of MGS2 by Matthewmatosis which explains about the above statement and also much much more.

 

All of this is just to point out how MGSV is a reiteration of MGS2 in terms of its themes and messages. But while the whole MGS2 was buildup to criticize the fan's demands and expectations this doesn't happens to be the case with MGSV's twist. There are points in the story of the new metal gear that reinforces that it criticizes on someone or something but the whole thing gets lost in concept as the game progresses towards the end.

Perhaps it would have been better for Konami to hold off and let Kojima finish his game without an impossible time limit or to prevent Kojima from creating the game at all in the first place and to have end it at MGS3(<----best game of the franchise subjectively). Who knows how different it could have been. Either way, MGSV really left us with a phantom pain.

 

But there's one thing I would tend to expect from Kojima now on. Whatever new game he releases now that he's done with Konami, just what kind of message would he convey with complexity?

 

...................Clearly he has never heard of simplicity being virtue. With the jokes aside. Seriously m8, go play MGS3: Snake Eater right now. It really is the best of the franchise and this isn't just some neophobe nostalgic sentiment. Just go and play the game.

 

                                                          TL;DR

My point being-

Kojima's themes and messages in this new MGS game gets lost in in concepts unlike the previous games. He failed to deliver many promises from the trailers, marketing campaign and twitter posts. And although the game succeeds in delivering the phantom pain to the fans....I have to wonder, why did he even pursue this goal? Who was he criticizing exactly? What message did this phantom pain gave us as consumers and hardcore fans alike? Why did he even wanted the player to suffer the phantom pain?

And most importantly, why do we feel so patronized by the game's overall themes?

 

I believe these question can be answered in the back of our minds but with no confirmation from the actual creator himself.

 

This is what I mean when I say MGSV is a reiteration of MGS2 where both the game being a mockery to the modern consumers. But MGS2 pulled it off with much more criticizing and satirical success than MGSV's abrupt and betrayed failure.

 

Now that Kojima is free from any publisher contract, I'm curious to see what kind of themes and messages would his next game deliver. And if he would ever embrace simplicity and brevity in his writings to deliver his messages than just rely on complexity as he always does.

 

[Rose]

I don't really get your point, but I'll talk mostly about the big upset the game was from a fan's perspective I guess. A proper TL;DR would honestly do you good here.

 

V was supposed to be the "missing link". People expected to see Big Boss descending to the depths of hell until he becomes the main antagonist for MG and MG2, but instead we got Venom. What got the fanbase upset was the lack of the Metal Gear feel to the game. When you think about a MGS game, you think about epic boss fights, hours and hours of endless cutscenes, Snake and his amazing lines. Yet, what we got was a phantom pain, exactly what Kojima wanted - he stated so on twitter, but I'm too lazy to go find it. Now, the game fulfills the purpose he wanted, but there are still so many disappointments.

 

Those who bought the collector's edition have access to Mission 51, which is a cutscene that shows us what chapter 3 was supposed to be about: Venom + Diamond Dogs vs Eli + Sahelanthropus vs XOF. This would properly complete what the story setup, cutting this part just left a huge hole in the story. Still, at least we got a cutscene explaining what should have happened, but what about the remaining missing content? I'll be honest, the game feels shallow at some parts. Huey kept working on his so called "Battle Gear" during his whole stay at Mother Base, and once it's ready, he tells you that you'll be able to customize it, but you can't. There is nothing you can do with it, it's simply useless. The reason for that? "Balance". For God's sake, we can turn invisible, use a suit with super powers, order a sleeping gas air strike, have a sniper partner that can clear whole bases by herself, and a dog that can single-handedly kill any soldier and sniff the location of everyone in the map for you, but our special war tank is just too imbalanced to make it into the game?

 

 

The game also lacked things like a NG+ for those who felt like the difficulty was just too low, which is important to keep the game interesting for those hardcore players. We barely interacted with the main characters, like, it's a metal gear where I can't engage in useless chit-chat with my mates... Mother Base was also extremely annoying. Yeah, it's there for the FOB, I know, but during the in-game, more often then not, it's just annoying to go around the place raising morale - pretty much the only thing you can do there aside from Paz's sidestory. Honestly, a good way to put it as a fan should be that the game lacks the personality the others had, and as a player in general, the game's missing lots of features.

[Redpanda]

All those points you mentioned are probably what were explained in the videos.

MGSV was suppose to be the missing link like advertised in the trailers but it didn't delivered as promised because of Kojima's complexity in writings. He used the theme 'phantom pain' to make the players feel more infuriating than gratifying while also trying to end the game on a satisfying conclusion. You can just see the strange juxtaposition with his goals for the game. 

Maybe this is what Kojima meant when he said MGSV would be a 'taboo-breaking' game and he might have to leave the industry if he fails to deliver.

Here's the untranslated twitter quote.

 

Most people think that the child soldiers are in fact the taboo Kojima was talking about. The ability to kill children in the game was suppose to be a feature and was also suppose to be one of the main reasons for Snake's demonic transformation. But as you noticed, you get an instant fail when you harm the children in game. This took out the much important morally grey questions that Kojima wanted the players to ask.

While I agree with the children being the taboo that Kojima was talking about, I also strongly believe his goals for the game was also part of the taboo. With him juggling with his two main goals, he wanted the players to feel the unsatisfying itch while also making them feel like a sense of fulfillment by the end of the game. But what we really got was just the itch alone.

Either one of the above two points was to be the taboo or both of them were supposed to, the results are still the same. He clearly failed to deliver on the subjects to the promised taboos.

 

 

And yeah, those missing contents. If only Kojima's visionary could realize his own limits or if Konami provided him with more time and money, the problems would never had risen in the first place.

Most of the important narratives of the game were just found on cassette tapes instead of cutscenes.

Like any other open world, this game was also filled with fillers. The deliberate lack of quick and easy fast travel to increase the in game time (seriously, one of the quickest way to fast travel takes a minimum of 70 seconds which feels like an hour when in game and there is only so much cardboard box shipments across the map).

The not so subtle grinding and upgrading you have to do even on main missions. The game is somewhat close to 12 hours of main story but those repetitive filler courses which only serves for the players of get bored and tired in the long run makes up the game for up to 112 hours of content.

And as you and those videos pointed out, the game rarely has any character development in it. Quiet comes closest to even have an arc but she's just used as an excuse for fan service. Kojima twitted before that we would be ashamed for our accusation of why Quiet wears a bikini in the middle of a cold war once the reason was out but I don't think anyone is feeling ashamed right now. The half assed justification that she breaths through her skin is just an insult to the fans and the character itself. MGS games have had fanservices before but they were done with much more acknowledgement from the game itself than this bikini version of Sniper Wolf. A better example would be the case of Eva in MGS3 where she show's off here skin to seduce Snake for getting laid and also for completing her mission instead of a poor justification that she breaths through her skin.

This shows how much Kojima's writing quality has dropped in the recent years like showed in the above video.

 

 

I edited the tl;dr section as you asked.