Warning! 100% conjecture ahead!

If you set aside the the whole 'Phantom Pain' 'pain from what's missing!' excuse,

I feel the best way to describe this game, is it's metal gear's Final Fantasy 7,

I realize that it's not a perfect metaphor, But I feel the thought behind this game is "We've got one last shot guys, sure we could give them 'another great metal gear game' sure, but instead lets give a gift to the non-fans as well. if we make a game that breaks a lot of the conventions of MGS, maybe we'll introduce a ton of people who've been avoiding the series, We've already done metal gear solid, now lets do something else"

So they make it much more westernized, less flashy boss battles, a mostly silent protagonist who seems unphased by everything, less story driven, much more customization and control, etc.

Essentially making it the polar opposite of mgs4

But that left a problem, when you add all that it stops being a metal gear game, so they had to find a way to tie all these new conventions into the story of the game, and that's where I feel the twist came from!

• Why can the player make big boss not act like big boss? (the ending)
• Why dose snake not speak very often? (the ending)
• Why dose snake not seem to respond to anything (the ending)
• Why dose snake act so much out of character (the ending)
• Why do we not get big boss battles? (the ending) this is a different world (in a scene)

I feel like most the stuff people complain about directly ties into the plot,

Just like many western open world games, this is a game where everything we do is part of the story, It's not big boss's story anymore, it's ours!

If kojima made this as story focuses, and flashy and over the top as the other metal gear games,two big things would be lost, First the draw for new players, and Second, The special connection we'd get from all the freedom and personal choice.

By making venom less active in the story, we become more active, we can project onto him and make the game more personal.

Now with all this in mind dose this make the game great?

While I think I got an idea of what was trying to be done with this game, I personally feel he went about it the wrong way.

How it could have been better could be a whole thread on it's own, but even with this perspective on the game, and how (to me at least) many of the flaws can be explained by the plot, that dose not mean they have to exist, there are other ways to deal with all those issues.

Personally I really like this game, but I still like MGS1,2,3,and 4 better when it comes to story. (and mgs 1 and 3 better when it comes to gameplay)