Metal Gear Solid 5 Phantom Pain Venom Snake Concept Art
Editorial by Johnny Miller Four, Posted on September v, 2021
Despite receiving glowing reviews from the gaming press, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain has become highly divisive among fans. Many were disappointed in its sparse story and felt that the game's ending was sharp and defective closure. Some take theorized that the reason the game feels so unsatisfying is considering the game might have been shipped before it was completed due to the falling out betwixt Hideo Kojima and Konami.
Despite the game's five year development bike, debates over the issue tend to devolve into blaming every perceived error on Konami "rushing" its release. This article attempts to untangle fact from fiction.
Exhibit A: Concept art for an older Chico and audio files implying a usable Battle Gear were uncovered. Neither announced in the final game.
A sure amount of cut content is to be expected during the development of any game. Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake was originally going to take a mass-production Metallic Gear model that was cutting due to ROM-size limitations. The Thousand Game Plan for Metal Gear Solid two: Sons of Liberty outlined many ideas and features that wouldn't be in the concluding game. "Third Sun," Act iii of Metallic Gear Solid four: Guns of the Patriots, was originally going to feature Snake escorting an injured Big Mama through the sewers.
As absurd as seeing an older, traumatized Chico would've been, he's not the outset character to go unused in a Metal Gear game. The original Metal Gear Solid was going to feature a graphic symbol chosen "El Mariachi" as function of the Codec cast. Sons of Liberty was planned to have a boss dubbed "Quondam Male child." The Stop in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater ended upwards reusing ideas from the cut character, but that hardly ways Sons of Freedom was an unfinished game by this grapheme's omission.
As for the playable Battle Gear, we actually take a reason for why it was cut—Kojima was concerned that it threw off the game'due south residue.
"To be honest, my plan was to brand [the Battle Gear] available on the actual field. I noticed that its presence disrupted the gameplay remainder during test sessions and so I eventually had to remove it from the game."
Hideo Kojima, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain: The Complete Official Guide (Hardcover), folio 407.
This "spin-off of Metal Gear engineering" is almost as useless equally Metal Gear Rise's story.
This isn't the showtime time unused audio for a Metal Gear game were uncovered. Dataminers found a call from Old Snake's return to Shadow Moses in Guns of the Patriots where he reminisces about Meryl in the ladies room, which is inaccessible in the terminal game.
If the mere existence of cut content is proof of The Phantom Hurting being unfinished, then practically every game is unfinished past that standard. Beta versions of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 featured several zones not seen in the final game, though one of them reappeared as an Easter egg in the mobile version remaster. Halo 2 infamously ended on a cliffhanger, not due to artistic reasons, but because Bungie ran out of time and couldn't wrap upward the story with a final level, leaving players to wait three years and buy a new console to "finish the fight."
Dissimilar Halo 2, however, The Phantom Hurting ended every bit Kojima intended. It just wasn't the ending many fans wanted.
Exhibit B: In that location are scenes shown in trailers that are absent in the concluding game.
Well-nigh every Metal Gear game has trailers that use scenes absent from the final game. The E3 2000 trailer for Sons of Liberty depicts Snake escaping the sinking Tanker equally a playable segment. The E3 2006 trailer for Guns of the Patriots featured numerous unused scenes, such every bit Otacon crying in the helicopter, Liquid Ocelot making a reference to the Biblical story of Cain and Abel, or Quondam Snake putting a gun to his oral fissure in some random place in the Heart Due east.
Other times the same animations are used but play out in a unlike location, often with different character models. Ninja Raiden's debut at the end of Guns of the Patriots' E3 2006 trailer took place in the Middle East, but played out like it did in the Due south America portion of the final game. About infamously, Sons of Liberty's E3 2001 trailer showed Solid Snake in the place of Raiden in diverse scenes.
The Reddish Band version of The Phantom Hurting's E3 2013 trailer got fans excited for a render to Military camp Omega, only to subsequently be disappointed when these scenes were seemingly not in the final game. Kojima mentioned plans for The Phantom Hurting to include playable missions set in Campsite Omega for those who have played Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, but this seems to have been another cut characteristic. Nevertheless, the animations from the trailer are actually in the terminal game. Rather than a Camp Omega Pw, it is Silent Basilisk, the mute Hamid fighter from "Episode vi: Where Do The Bees Sleep?" who is tortured in Afghanistan, and tin can later on be killed by Soviet gunfire if the thespian doesn't intervene.
Likewise, depending on the time of day, the scene of kid soldiers being trained to fire weapons plays out in-game during "Episode 13: Pitch Dark."
The animation of Venom Snake falling to his knees and yelling into the sky, from the E3 2014 trailer, seems to accept been used for "Episode 43: Shining Lights, Fifty-fifty in Death."
Trailers—especially Kojima'southward trailers—aren't necessarily made to literally show what's in the final piece of work, they're made to show the style, tone, and premise to a potential audience. Fifty-fifty if trailers testify scenes that would ultimately exist cut from the concluding film, this doesn't necessarily mean that they're "incomplete."
Exhibit C: "Chapter two: Race" featured numerous repeated missions, suggesting that corners were cut to artificially lengthen the game.
To understand the structure of Chapter ii of The Phantom Pain, it'southward best to compare it to the previous "Tactical Espionage Operations" Metal Gear game: Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker.
Storywise, The Phantom Pain'due south "Chapter 1: Revenge" is the equivalent of Chapters ane through iv of Peace Walker, where the chief plot unfolds and Snake defeats the chief villain. Meanwhile, The Phantom Pain's "Chapter two: Race" is a kind of "epilogue" chapter, similar to Peace Walker'southward "Chapter 5: Outer Heaven," where players consummate side-missions while being drip-fed story progress.
Players were annoyed by the repetitive Zadornov Search missions in Peace Walker, especially as they had to play through Actress Ops just to unlock them and advance the plot. The need to develop Mother Base further to a specific point where the true catastrophe can be unlocked was also seen every bit tiresome. A similar problem exists in The Phantom Hurting, with its use of Side Ops and college difficulty versions of previous missions to progress the story.
However, despite popular conventionalities, none of these harder repeat missions are required to complete the game. The histrion tin can progress the story by playing a few Side Ops between story events, just like how Zadornov Search missions tin can be unlocked past playing a few Extra Ops in Peace Walker.
Should these harder variants have been in a split Mission List in lodge to avert confusion? Probably, but that'due south another matter.
Ultimately, a story-light, side-content focused epilogue chapter seems to just be how "Tactical Espionage Operations" Metallic Gear games are structured.
Exhibit D: The datamined "Chapter 3: Peace" title carte du jour proves that at that place was an unabridged third of the story cut from the game.
The only affair the datamined findings "evidence" is that a title bill of fare for Chapter iii was, at one point, meant to play during the game. Occam's razor dictates that the explanation that requires the to the lowest degree assumptions is the most likely.
Given the subtitle "Peace," a likely candidate for this would exist afterward the Play a joke on nuclear disarmament cutscene was triggered. This is supported by former Kojima Productions LA community director, Robert Allen Peeler, though the title carte du jour has yet to announced after several false disarmaments. Still, this doesn't hateful the championship bill of fare wasn't at least intended to be used for the disarmament cutscene at some point during development, only to exist later removed for unknown reasons.
Some other possible explanation stems from the original Japanese version of the title card—instead of "Peace," 共生 can be literally translated every bit "Symbiosis" or "To Live Together." This is reflected in the line said by Kazuhira Miller in both the Japanese and English language versions later the credits for "Episode 46: Truth: The Man Who Sold The World," where he begrudgingly agrees to keep assisting Ocelot and Venom Ophidian until eventually helping Solid Ophidian defeat the true Big Boss in Zanzibar Land:
"あんたとはそれまでの共生だ"
"Until then, we better get used to coexisting ."
Thus, "Chapter 3: [Coexistence]" may accept merely referred to the mail-game. This is similar to Episode xv of Death Stranding, which takes place two weeks before the events of Episode 14 (the game's proper ending), and simply involves Sam completing side-objectives he missed out on while playing the main game. As with the nuclear disarmament ending explanation though, the reason for the championship card beingness removed from the final game remains unknown.
Admittedly both of these explanations are speculative, just they require less bold assumptions than "Kojima wrote upward another Chapter worth of story, after the principal villain was already killed, only had to cut information technology." Peculiarly given the next point.
Exhibit Due east: The "Phantom Episode: Kingdom of Flies" bonus characteristic is the clearest proof that a substantial corporeality of story content was cut from the game.
If there's 1 thing that Konami's dissolution of Kojima Productions can be blamed on, information technology'southward the counterfoil of Kingdom of Flies, which would've resolved plot threads involving Eli and the English parasite strain he obtained from The Third Boy. Whereas things like Chico and the Battle Gear can be chalked up every bit the kind of content that whatsoever game would cut during development, the remnants of Kingdom of Flies tin can be felt within the game itself, as the plot-thread of Eli hijacking Sahelanthropus and fucking off with The Third Boy and the residue of the child soldiers remains unresolved.
With that said, the way the media portrayed this cut content as a "cut ending" was both inaccurate and quack. Kingdom of Flies merely wrapped up a sub-plot. The big twist in Episode 46 was always the ending that the game was building upwardly to since the opening scene.
Furthermore, Kingdom of Flies wasn't intended to exist role of the base game anyway. According to leaked documents related to recording the game's script, it was meant to be mail service-launch downloadable content.
The fact that Kojima Productions was doing motion capture for mail-launch DLC also indicates that Chapter 3 probably wasn't anywhere near as elaborate and expansive as people imagine. Afterwards all, why do motion capture for DLC if yous're not even done working on a whole ass chapter of the cadre game?
For what it'south worth, Kenji Yano, one of Kojima'due south closest confidants (and co-writer of Death Stranding, under the pen proper name "Hitori Nojima"), believes that the game is consummate even without Kingdom of Flies.
"I also recollect that the exclusion of 'Kingdom of the Flies' doesn't actually influence the main story. If 'Kingdom of the Flies' had been in there, it would have been a pretty long segment by itself, and if you look at V'south story equally a whole, adding in 'Kingdom of the Flies' every bit well would disrupt its balance."
"Personally, I don't think the Kingdom of the Flies episode is essential to the game. […] I remember The Kingdom of the Flies became an outlet for venting all the unease and defoliation that followed [Episode 46'south] revelation. Simply really, this fits right into what Kojima-san wanted."
Given Yano's personal human relationship with Kojima, it would exist strange if he wouldn't relay any possible animosity nigh the game's incompleteness.
In whatever example, The Phantom Pain wouldn't be the first time a Metallic Gear game concluded a plot-thread related to Liquid hijacking a Metal Gear on an cryptic annotation—that was how Sons of Liberty, which was originally intended to stop the series chronologically, handled Serpent going after Liquid Ocelot and the Metal Gear RAY he hijacked.
A Lasting Pain
Ultimately, the driving motivation behind these theories seems to exist that to many fans, the thought that Kojima simply made a game they didn't like is unthinkable. Funnily enough, Kojima really anticipated the audience feeling underwhelmed and dissatisfied with the game post-obit Skull Face's demise.
"When [Skull Confront], the target of the player'due south vengeance, is gone, his absence leaves a lasting phantom pain."
Hideo Kojima, Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain: The Complete Official Guide (Hardcover), folio 385.
Of course, how much of the game's faults tin can be attributed to a meta reasoning is uncertain. Some accept theorized that Kingdom of Flies, "The Phantom Episode," was deliberately left out in order to accentuate the game's "phantom pain" awareness, though this too is a bit of a stretch given the time and resources that likely went into the DLC mission before information technology was scrapped.
Some indicate to the lackluster boss fights as show of the game being rushed, simply Kojima himself seems to experience that their open up-ended design and the power to simply run abroad from them is actually an "advancement" in game design.
"MGSV is an open-world, free-infiltration game. So in nearly cases, y'all have the liberty to encounter or not to encounter bosses. When yous practise come across a boss, you don't always accept to defeat information technology. The traditional game design whereby you must defeat bosses has been advanced upon here."
Hideo Kojima, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain: The Complete Official Guide (Hardcover), page 411.
The comparative lack of cutscenes was a deliberate artistic choice for the game also, forth with Snake'due south lack of speaking.
Even if Kingdom of Flies was finished and included at launch, information technology wouldn't have magically fixed every trouble people had with the game—we would've only gotten a resolution to a subplot and heard Eli say more lines he would repeat 21 years later. Information technology seems as though those who desire Kojima to "finish the game" only wanted a completely different game than what he intended to make.
Information technology'southward fine to be disappointed or wish that Kojima had washed things differently with his final game in the serial. However, if your business concern was genuinely that Kojima was unable to finish The Phantom Pain every bit he intended, so worry no more. Based on the available evidence, the game that shipped on disc, twenty-four hours ane, is the game Kojima intended. For better or worse.
Source: http://thesnakesoup.org/editorial-articles/phantom-pain-unfinished/
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