9 Unsatisfying Video Game Plot Twists (And How To Fix Them)
6. You Aren't Big Boss - Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
Hideo Kojima was always going to have one hell of a time wrapping up the final Metal Gear Solid in a way that both delivered on fan expectation, netted him enough money to avoid being whipped by Konami's top brass, and left his own mark as a worthwhile entry in the series. As such, the game was meant to be a tribute to the fans in the most meta way possible, revealing that we were never actually playing as Big Boss, but a brainwashed medic who'd survived the former game's helicopter crash alongside him. Suddenly the game wasn't about discovering precisely how Big Boss could've gone from hero to villain, and more about forging his legacy across the Afghani and African wilderness. Personally I'm a huge fan, but general cultural reception has been supremely negative, and that's without mentioning that having this be the 'big reveal' completely side-steps a good three years-worth of marketing. How to fix it: This mainly boils down to making TPP into the game we were shown in the run-up to release, as a humungous amount of content and narrative was left on the cutting room floor. We were supposed to see Big Boss (the real one, in theory) breaking down in an African village as he lamented some event that drove him to near-madness. We saw him smear his fellow soldiers' ashes on his face and eventually 'go nuclear' by not giving a hoot he was soaked in blood - not exactly something that happens without ample reasoning. Kojima mentioned during development that he was working on a very delicate plot line that he would "have to get right". Now, get this; in the full game you can visit an area of Africa that looks like the aforementioned burned out village, complete with charred corpses of dead child soldiers. If you go with the assumption that in a scene that was never finalised, Boss involuntarily brought this about by accident, you've got one hell of a motive for a guy to really struggle living with himself afterwards.
