THE TRAGEDY OF MGSV

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain had the potential to be the greatest metal gear game, but got tragically cut short by Konami (it's publisher) following a series of poor management decisions as well as the unrealistic scope the game's director, Hideo Kojima, had for MGSV.

Before we get into development though, we have to talk about the game itself.

MGSV follows the protagonist, Venom Snake, after his 9 year coma following the destruction of Mother Base and MSF (Militaire Sans Frontieres) (not to be confused with Medecins Sans Frontieres). Upon returning from his coma, he meets with his old aquaintences, Kazuhera Miller and Revolver Ocelot to start a new Mother Base under the title Diamond Dogs.

CHAPTER 1: ACCESSIBILITY

A few problems arise with MGSV's plot and what knowledge it expects you to have prior to playing the game.

The first and most glairing issue is that MGSV comprises of two games: METAL GEAR SOLID V: GROUND ZEROES and METAL GEAR SOLID V: THE PHANTOM PAIN. This is because GROUND ZEROES is in reality a mission taken out of THE PHANTOM PAIN and released first in order to tease the game. We will get back to the reason why when covering Konami's involvement in publishing. One massive error people make when playing MGSV is to only play THE PHANTOM PAIN and not GROUND ZEROES. This is an incorrect way to play as if you do the ending of PHANTOM PAIN makes absolutely no sense because it relies on information you don't know and reuses and recontextualizes cutscenes you have never seen. I have seen many people make the mistake of only playing PHANTOM PAIN and all of them have been severely confused by the ending, what makes this problem worse is that, while GROUND ZEROES is included in the definitive edition of THE PHANTOM PAIN, it is not included in the standard edition which is still up for sale on steam. The decision to remove this level from the game has directly impacted it's accessibility and actively ruined the experience of THE PHANTOM PAIN, but these are all issues we will circle back to later.

Second is that MGSV is a sequel to a PSP game called Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. Peace Walker follows Naked Snake during the fictional Peace Walker Incident of 1974 doing operations under his private millitary organisation Millitare Sans Frontieres and managing to prevent nuclear war. The problem with this is twofold, for one it is a PSP game, meaning less people played it because the PSP was not a very successful console to begin with, it was ported to PS3 as part of the METAL GEAR SOLID HD COLLECTION which conained Peace Walker as well as METAL GEAR SOLID 2: SONS OF LIBERTY and METAL GEAR SOLID 3: SNAKE EATER, however Peace Walker was simply overlooked over the other games present. It was also ported to Xbox 360 as a digital only release, this version of the game can actually still be found on modern Xbox stores and played via backwards compatibility and remains the only official way to play Peace Walker as it has not received a port to modern consoles and was never ported to PC (however this version no longer has any of the co-op features of the PSP release as the servers have since shut down). So not only is MGSV a sequel to a game that not many people played and remains a hard game to play to this day, but it follows the events of the ending achieved for reaching 100% completion, which was an extremely tedious thing to do.

This, however, is only a big deal for GROUND ZEROES, as it involves having two characters from Peace Walker and ends in you watching the destruction of MSF. you could absolutely get away with playing MGSV without playing Peace Walker but i felt it was still something worth bringing up as the game is still inaccessible to the general public.

Third and least important is METAL GEAR SOLID 3: SNAKE EATER. you absolutely do not have to play MGS3 in order to understand MGSV as all the important events that tie back into MGSV are either explained to you or just not as important as it seems, I only mention it because the main antagonist is said to have been heavily involved in the Snake Eater Operation, however he never makes an appearance in MGS3 so dosen't matter.

CHAPTER 2: BAD BLOOD

Kojima joined Konami at 1986 and directed, designed and wrote multiple games, one of the first being Metal Gear in 1987. Kojima would continue to direct, design and write the Metal Gear series, and putting his name at the forefront of all of his games in order to boost his popularity, dubbing them as "A Hideo Kojima Production". The Metal Gear series was a pioneer in both stealth gameplay and cinematic storytelling in video games, and Kojima puttng his name at the forefront cemented him as a legend in the video game world and allowed him to make a following for himself. After making Metal Gear Solid in 1997, he then exclusively worked on Metal Gear games, trying to move on from the series multiple times but being asked to do a sequel from Konami every time. Kojima was quoted as saying he wanted to move on from the series after the release of MGS2, but could never find anyone willing to take over, and he later repeated this after the release of MGS3 and later after MGS4. When the time came for MGSV he elaborated that this was the true end of the saga, of course by now no one had believed him, but Kojima planned to fully close the loop of the series, finishing Solid Snake's story with MGS4 and fixing Big Boss' story with MGSV.

MGSV was set to be the biggest game in the series, foregoing the regular format of mostly linear open areas and giving the player a full blown open world that missions would take place in. It was a massive shift from the usual gameplay people expected from Metal Gear Solid, but in the end was still able to deliver on the usual stealth gameplay in a way that was more fitting for modern audiences. The game was also set to use the Fox Engine, an engine developed mostly by Hideo Kojima to be used primarily for MGSV.

However, the scope of the game quickly grew larger and larger. Kojima has never really been concerned with money, he's been quoted as saying "I'm prioritising creativity over sales" and he has always been focused on making great games that are as big and detailed as they can possibly be. While this approach has brought us some fantastic titles in the past, it was clear that Kojima would not settle when it came to the last game in the Metal Gear franchise, and so became concerned with fitting as much as he could into the game.

Kojima's creative side really started to hurt MGSV, Kojima started wasting the budget in more and more ways which made Konami increasingly frustrated at him

a short list of the things he did:

among many more

One claim i found was that Kojima had taken some of the budget from MGSV in order to fund P.T. P.T, short for "playable teaser", was a game released for free on the PSN store under the fake company 7780s Studio. Upon completing the game, it was revealed that 7780s Studio was a shell company for Kojima Productions and that P.T was a teaser for an upcoming Silent Hill game created by Kojima and notably featuring Norman Reedus as the protagonist. Konami allegedly knew nothing about P.T, only learning about the game when it was announced for the first time. Kojima had abused his position as Vice-President to develop P.T and create the shell company with the help of Sony, completely going around Konami's back in order to create the game. In April, P.T was removed from the PSN store by Konami and Silent Hills was cancelled. Konami also removed the option to reinstall P.T for those who owned it. The game now only exists on a few PS4s that still happen to have it installed.

During development, a new president came to Konami, who was dedicated on shifting to the mobile game market in order to maximise profits. His rise caused a lot of problems for Kojima Productions, starting with removing any reference of Hideo Kojima and Kojima Productions from the advertizing for GROUND ZEROES and THE PHANTOM PAIN. They then limited access to corperate internet, emails and phone calls for all senior Kojima Production officials resuced all staff to contractors, having their contracts end in December, before shutting down the studio. The new management at Konami truly believed that they could no longer succeed in the console market in Japan, and that the mobile market would usher in a new era for profits.

After the release of MGSV, Kojima had left the studio in October, knowing that his contract was to expire regardless. Konami insisted that he was still an employee and that he was taking an "extended break" before shutting down the studio just weeks later. MGSV would go on to win 2 awards for Best Action/Adventure game and Best Score/Soundtrack, however Konami had prevented Kojima from attending The Game Awards and was not allowed to accept any awards for the game.

Around 2 days after Kojima's contract expired, he would partner with Sony in order to make his own independant game studio, once again named Kojima Productions, and release Death Stranding a few years later to general success.

CHAPTER 3: NEVER BE GAME OVER

Upon the release of the game, fans were dissapointed by the ending of the game, and had felt like there was something removed from the game. This sparked multiple theories and discussions around a potential Chapter 3, one that would have to be uncovered or unlocked in order to complete the story of MGSV.

This is where insanity starts to set in

Multiple theories arised with how to go about uncovering Chapter 3: PEACE, with most of the organization and findings spread through multiple subreddits.

NEVER BE GAME OVER, who got their name from the jacket worn by Eli in the game, believed that the answer lied in returning to camp Omega in GROUND ZEROES, as they had found that THE PHANTOM PAIN on PC was adding save data into GROUND ZEROES and they had believed the 3rd chapter was removed from the PC version to prevent datamining as it was 5gb smaller than it's console counterparts and had come out a week later.

Metal Gear Philanthropy believed that the secret lied in disarming every nuke in MGSV's online features. In MGSV, you can invade other player's FOBs in order to steal their resourses and soldiers to use as your own. However, in Cold War fashion, you can develop a nuke in order to disuade people from invading your base, as a nuke on base would not only prevent most players from invading you in the first place, but would also up the security level of your base and loweres the time until a blockade when players attempt to infultrate. Invading players have the option to steal a nuke from their target, they then have the option to keep the nuke to gain the same advantages, or to disarm the nuke in efforts of achieving world peace. Not long after release it was found that disarming every single nuke on the servers would unlock an 8 minute cutscene celebrating this new found peace. Players believed that triggering this disarmament cutscene would unlock Chapter 3: PEACE, which was an idea teased by Konami and Kojima on social media. This cutscene was actually trigged a handful of times, notably the first time being in 2018 on Steam servers, which prompted a investigation by Konami that had found that it was a glitch and that thousands of nukes were still left on the servers. Well players had believed that disarmament would unlock Chapter 3, they had found that this was a almost impossible task, as not only were players developing nukes faster than peace achevers could disarm them, but also multiple glitches and oversights meant that it was impossible to disarm certain nukes, as they either belonged to players that couldn't be attacked as they haden't logged in for too long, or that there were nukes that belonged to no one once players had started a new save file.

There is a well made video by DidYouKnowGaming that goes over the story of disarmament on the PS3 servers, i do believe it's worth the watch as it's a very interesting story that shows the dedication players had to achieving this goal and how utterly impossible it was.

Ultimately, there was no hidden Chapter 3, as it was never able to be finished before Konami and Kojima fell out.