In the MSX games, we get the impression of Big Boss as a strong, power hungry man of a master morality. It's murderous and cruel, but through that it also displays courage and bravery; ancient nobility.
MGSV perfectly harks back to this by showing how the real Big Boss, once Ocelot told him the hot stuff behind Zero and the shit he's doing with the AI, chooses to abandon his original goal of revenge and ressentiment-- acts of the weak willed-- and instead, attempt to conquer Zero's Patriots in a cunning lust for direct power over the planet-- acts of the strong. This is akin to Frederich Nietzsche's remorseless, guilt free personality of the 'strong criminal', in contrast to his 'pale criminal' who immediately gives up after committing a murder by disguising it as a robbery.
HOWEVER, at the same time, MGSV shines a new, absurd twist to him: even though he is strong willing like the 'strong criminal' to the point where he is ambitious to the end, he is, at the same time, so weak and cowardly like the 'pale criminal' in terms of that he cannot truly handle the independence of this action he chose for himself: the whole world wants his head. He could handle that when it came to his original plan for revenge, but not when it came to his new plan for conquering Earth, which is why he fucks off in secret. In other words, Big Boss is a paradoxical synthesis of both the strong and the pale criminal.
Sure, this cowardice IS admittedly justifiable, since an oilrig is unable to hold power over the world as easy as a territorialized fortress nation, BUT nevertheless, he's lower than Alexander the Great and Gengis Khan, who were (despite being just as vindictive and willing to consume the whole planet) more noble by willing to do it in an honorable, front line manner. He betrayed his comrades to the point that even the most ruthless of peoples like Caesar would see him as pathetic. Clever, cunning, brave and yet so pathetic and chicken.
Even worse, he purposefully kept his comrades in a cycle of ressentiment, the nefarious component of slave morality and weakness, rather than letting them know the truth about Cipher slowly becoming an AI network. Why? All so that he can strip his comrades of their active will to power so that he can feed off their physical efforts and eat up Venom's accomplishments.
In short, Big Boss tricked his comrades into becoming infatuated with slave morality all so that he can cheat his way to master morality in secret. He is exactly like the kind of parasites that Nietzsche calls 'Catholic priests' (read: slave morality), except that whereas the typical Catholic priest is bindingly one with the ressentiment he's spreading [and therefore his own people], this special kind of Catholic priest is merely double-dealing ressentiment for his own sole ends AGAINST his own people.
Whereas the typical Catholic priest's parasitism involves commanding a herd of weak people to enslave and weaken a group of "masters" through equality [with 'God' being merely a device of expression], Big Boss's Catholic-priestly parasitism is different. Instead, he commands strong people to form their own herd for the purpose of enslaving and weakening themselves through equality towards 'God' himself, with Venom being his propaganda tool for advocating meekness.
Whereas typical Catholic priestliness can only weaken strong people to the point where they are as equal as the priest (which is why typical Catholic priests will never be strong enough to truly be able to feel like they can display master morality and arouse fear), Big Boss's kind of Catholic priestliness is so successful that he can weaken strong people to the point where they are below him, allowing him to gain enough strength and power to proudly arouse fear and display his own prowess and master morality.
Sounds familiar to how the "PRIESTS of power" from Orwell's 1984 operate? They are the nightmarish, next generation Catholic priests.
p.s.: I spent over THREE fucking hours trying to get this all perfectly explained in two posts, so you better notice this thread and at least at how comment at how schizo I am.
>Big Boss Bro's, he's like Solid Snake, only instead of smoking cigarettes, he smokes cigars. He's different, guys. Also he has a cool eyepatch. And for some reason he knows Hal Emmerich's dad, who sounds and looks pretty much exactly like Hal Emmerich, Solid Snake's associate. It's like poetry, it rhymes.
Kayden Myers
Voices in your head here bro, we are definitely real and we love you and think you're handsome.
Looking back, I'm pretty sure it's a The Boss situation, like in MGS3. They are just preparing Snake to fight The Patriots. >There can only be one Snake and one Big Boss
Landon Young
It's not bad writing from a guy who is completely creatively bankrupt. It's just like poetry, it rhymes. It's Metal Gear ring theory.
Luis Young
You are very schizo user!
Zachary Sanchez
Big Boss is a lovable doofus Snake is pretty much a schizoid
Kojima trying to slot Venom into the canon of the MSX games made little sense since with Metal Gear Peace Walker he already introduced a pretty blatant contradiction. Which is that Big Boss founded FOXHOUND in the 70s (as seen at the end of MGS3 during the timeline thing in the credits), then up and left to form MSF in Peace Walker, was in a coma, woke up, had Venom replace him to lead Diamond Dogs, then for some reason came back and ran FOXHOUND and trained Solid Snake. Despite being a famous international warlord. Meanwhile also somehow running Outer Heaven or getting Venom to do that. And then sending Solid Snake on the Outer Heaven mission despite knowing he was his clone and probably knowing he'd be significantly more capable than anyone else.
It's one of those things that doesn't make any sense regardless of how you look at it and makes it feel like the story was written backwards, because it was. It's something he or someone else would have to fix in a remake of MG1 at this point because it doesn't fit together any way you slice it.
You are too smart for Metal Gear user. Leave vidya and never look back.
Henry Barnes
I would rather it speeds up so I can die in a blink of eye.
Justin Scott
Wtf
Tyler Torres
The only way I can think of this plot working in any capacity is if Venom Snake was the one who returned to train Solid, and it was because by that point Venom Snake was paranoid of Big Boss trying to replace him with his clone/son Solid Snake. And he'd successfully have fooled Cipher/The Patriots into thinking he was the real Big Boss just coming to mentor that child they created as an insurance policy if he ever left them.
So he'd send him on a suicide mission to the new nation BB was building intending for him to die in the process and when that plan didn't work he flew there to finish the job. The idea of Solid Snake not actually meeting the real Big Boss until right before he kills him is actually really interesting to me for some reason.
This, if metal gear was a movie or show it would be laughed out of the room by anyone willing to make a serious product. Gameplay is another story but this franchise's story is the definition of schizophrenic and batshit insane in a bad way. Only gamers could tolerate such a retarded "story". Ironic too that the hack Kojima hates MGR: Revengence when it blows any of his shit out of the water writing wise.
Ayden Flores
Might be fitting considering ocelot seemed to use similar psychotherapy to turn himself into liquid, but I really doubt Kojima thought ahead to that extent
Brandon Kelly
100% he didn't, Kojimbo stated he didn't want to remake MG1 or 2 because he stated he'd have to rewrite the plots to both completely. At the same time I'd really like to see Metal Gear 1 remade with the context that the final boss is Venom Snake, and that Solid Snake is working unknowingly for Cipher/The Patriots. They could also add some appearances from Kazuhira (and explain why he's named McDonnell now) and Colonel Campbell.
Bentley Price
Yeahh.. MG 1 and 2 with FOX engine would have been pretty cool, added tidbits like that would problably make it better than V easy. But I sure don't trust anyone but Kojimbro to make anything MGS related
Brayden Watson
Nice effortpost OP, I enjoyed reading
Ayden Jones
I think you internalized a little too much of Nietzsche but it's still somewhat interesting I don't think BB was in any way knocking down his betters and manipulating them, he was always pretty much "the best" after the obvious even if he was eclipsed later nor can it be said that any of the Outer Heavens were a strict negative for those aboard
Jack Martin
>t. jealous midwit
Robert Mitchell
>Kojima hates MGR: Revengence I swear next to Hitler I think Kojima may be the second most lied about man in human history
Kayden Butler
>Ironic too that the hack Kojima hates MGR: Revengence when it blows any of his shit out of the water writing wise. Didn't he write MGRR's story? I thought he handed it off to Platinum to just fix the gameplay because it was jank.
Justin Moore
That's basically what happened yeah. Kojima didn't know what to do with it after some point in development so he gave it to plat to make a cool action game. End of story.
Isaac Walker
Kek, what?
Joshua Allen
Big Boss always sucked. He was originally just a villain for Snake to beat. Then Kojima retconned his story so that Snake was a clone, then he later retconned his story again so that Big Boss was the original codename Snake, then he retconned it AGAIN that it actually wasn't the real Big Boss that Solid Snake killed, but an imposter and the REAL Big Boss was alive all along. Kojima is such a fan-fiction tier writer.
Julian Perez
means you got gay gamer buddies, unless they were women
Chase Nguyen
user, Kojima is a bad writer. He regularly writes himself into a corner, and then pulls a retarded retcon out of his ass to get out of it.
This. I'd be lying if I said there weren't some very cool character ideas and designs in the Metal Gear series, but that shit's all shallow. The series itself is laughably bad, with some of the most disjointed, retarded world-building I've seen in a franchise that asks its audience to take it seriously.
Sebastian Green
What if I told you that it's on purpose like that?
James Robinson
bump for effort
Oliver Brooks
They're both schizoids user. Big Boss is Solid Snake, for all intents and purposes. He was just a cheap way for Kojima to keep his story going. It's not him technically, but in all ways that count, it's just Solid Snake again. He could have at least made him a drastically different character, but he didn't. He smoked, he loved the ladies, he fought the man after working for the man for a while, he had his own Hal Emmerich even. Big Boss is just knock-off Solid Snake, and anyone saying otherwise are just coping.
Jackson Stewart
That it's bad on purpose? Well I guess I'd just laugh. >"I purposely wrote the series to be shit"
Jonathan Nelson
>a franchise that asks its audience to take it seriously. From my perspective, it was always more like >try taking this franchise seriously (lol) The juxtaposition of serious characters in an absurd setting (or vice versa) was always appealing to me and it's definitely intentional. When I play MGS games, I feel like I'm in on a joke. I feel like I'm supposed to laugh at it and genuinely think it's cool at the same time. That's the affect it has on me anyway, I don't feel like I was never supposed to laugh at the absurdities.
Benjamin Flores
I wasn't referring to the juxtaposition of serious and silly. Clearly there are silly elements in the series, even as far back as MGS1. I'm talking about the massive retcons throughout the series that were just slapped together with what seemed like absolutely no thought. Kojima just comes off like a very lazy writer to me.
