Pantom Pain Reveal

[A.G.]

So what did you think of the ending scene where Venom is listening to the tape from Big Boss? Did you like the big reveal?

Here are the issues I have with it:

The main message is this, you the player are the Phantom Big Boss. Through everything you do in Phantom Pain you earned the right to be called Big Boss. Basically, Kojima is talking to the players and saying you can go and build your life. Problem is, this story is not an end. It's closer to the middle of the 50-year plot. And you, Venom Snake, the player, will not be doing anything after this game. According to the newly adjusted plot, the next stop for Venom is to be killed by Solid Snake in Outer Heaven. He is building nothing.

To me this completely kills this 4th wall breaking moment. It's one thing to do this at the end of the series, but this story is in the middle. And Venom Snake that represents you the player (more so than any other playable protagonist in the series since you put your face on him) is a throw-away character that is disposed off in the next installment. It may have been intended as a pat on the shoulder from Kojima to the player, but in the context on the overall series it ends up being more of a "you don't matter" message.

I don't think this works.

[fgdj2000]

I kind of liked it, because A) I had a fishy feeling about Venom Snake's identity starting with the hospital where you had to input your name and create your avatar and B) "Big Boss" was uncharacteristically bland and silent over the course of the game, so I actually thought this was nicely set up. Now, as you know, I've always been vocal against dismissing plot points and an entire game solely because it messes with the established continuity too much. I stand by this and I actually think the twist at the end, fixes a couple of issues I had with The Phantom Pain.
I felt Big Boss' transformation was almost done by the time Peace Walker finished, save for the fact that he wasn't in Africa and quite over the edge, yet. Now, when Phantom Pain was announced and more and more info revealed, I was kind of worried that they would mess too much with continuity here, especially with Big Boss seemingly loosing an arm, gaining a horn and establishing another military stronghold that wasn't quite Outer Heaven, yet. So, the big reveal at the end kind of fixes these issues for me, as all of this was a doppelganger, while the real Big Boss was establishing the actual Outer Heaven in Africa. Plus it also ties into the theme of doppelgangers present throughout in the series: Solid, Liquid and Solidus being essentially doppelgangers of Big Boss, Liquid Ocelot being a mental doppelganger of Liquid Snake, Olga becoming a doppelganger of Gray Fox, etc. Even plot points from older games like the fact that Big Boss was working for Fox-Hound after the events of Peace Walker without anybody suspecting him to be the leader of Outer Heaven in MG1 makes a little more sense now as the real Big Boss could blame everything on the Phantom Big Boss; so does Big Boss reappearing in Zanzibar Land after seemingly being blown to pieces in Outer Heaven with a rocket launcher.
The nicest bit of symmetry to come out of this is the fact that you yourself are essentially the first final boss character in a Metal Gear game ever.
So, overall, being an optimist, I seem to have not as much of a problem with this as many others, but I agree that MGSV may have been a missing link too much. I cut Peace Walker a lot of slack because I really enjoyed that game as much as MGS1 and MGS3. But storywise, MGSV seems to be the weakest game thus far. However, it will be interesting replaying the game a few years down the line, without all the hype and with considerably lower expectations.

[A.G.]

That's kind of an issue as the game is essentially trying to fix problems that it's very existence creates. Having just replayed MGS4, the story presented in Act 3 by Eva is far better than what we actually got in MPW and MGS5.