A report on episode 31: continuity errors, observations, and general thoughts
(Note: The post max of 40,000 characters was reached so my final summary portion I’ve put in comments. Sorry for the inconvenience!)
Hi friends! I want to start by saying how proud I am of your guys’s determination, effort, and support for one another. 8 months in, and still we continue to learn and grow. I know some speak of NBGO as dead or dying, but that distinction is not up to them (people have been telling me StarCraft is dead for over a decade but that's never made it true!). Just look at how many posts are from the last 24 hours! And that beautiful well-researched post about the green smoke! I still see this place as great as ever. If anything, negativity has significantly dropped from months ago. And then there's the Anti Nuclear movement! Lots to be excited about in my opinion :).
My appreciation of this game and this community only grows, and I plan to be here for the long haul. NBGO I think stands for something beyond its original purpose. It is a place of determination, hope, research, investigation, and creativity. And I hope one day we can apply what we learned here towards the next KojiPro game :)
There's so much I want to say and discuss about this game, but I'm a bit shy of posting, and rather disorganized in my thoughts (my Google docs is filed with random mgsv-related observations and mission notes without structure). I hope I can provide something more insightful in the future
If any observation here is unclear, please ask me to clarify, I’d love to further explain them.
Preface
Several weeks ago Abdullah made a post about how Skull Face was shown to escape in a jeep at the start of episode 30. I thought it was a fascinating point, and decided to look more closely at the mission.
I tried to put together a report on the details of this mission and provide related images. As you might notice on the imgur picture albums, most of these were uploaded several weeks ago. I got distracted and didn't get around to finishing it very quickly, sorry. A lot of topics in here have been discussed since then, and in more detail than I provide here so I apologize if it seems like I'm ignoring other posts. I read and appreciate every post on this sub, you guys are wonderful!
I tried to stick to clear observations and mostly stay away from theories/themes/symbolism/lighting/directionality/references and other more abstract topics. I think there is far more to talk about in terms of episode 31 on those subjects, but my post got excessively long with those topics and I thought it was better to just cut those parts out and leave them for their own discussion.
I divided it into four sections. The first is about the positioning and locations of the escape sequence. The second is about all the continuity errors that occur in the mission. The third is other observations. And the fourth is more general thoughts.
Part 1: Finding our bearings
So in all the destruction and camera zooms and jitters, it can be difficult to keep track of space and distance as we watch Venom try to escape Sahelanthropus. I went to the power plant in free roam and took some pictures of the different positions of things in opening fleeing scene. I hope that this can give us a good sense of where everything is occurring.
I took pictures both from the cutscene and from free roam and divided them up into 9 imgur albums that I thought best showed the locations of what happened. I tried to use decoys/vehicles to show where certain characters were. I hope it’s not too unclear. I’ve attached links to the time in the video that each of these moments occur as well.
I’m going to just focus on the positions in this first section.
平和
###1. Skull Face out of Jeep, Venom behind stack of wood (4:11)
Image album #1: Skull Face out of jeep
When Venom first gets outside the gate, he gets in cover behind a stack of wood, and the camera shows us Skull Face out of his jeep, commanding an attack on Sahelanthropus. I think the positions are pretty straightforward in the image album for this one.
###2. Tanks arrive. Skull Face is driven away (4:45)
Then Skull Face’s tanks/helicopters arrive. As the tanks are driving up, we can see Skull Face driving away in a jeep, and he is followed by another jeep. While he obviously is going to be farther down that road than the point we last see him, we don’t see him after he goes behind the tanks. So I’m just going to show the last visual sighting and not assume anything further.
The tank pictures are showing where the tank nearest to Venom moves up to. And all the jeep pictures are the last visual position Skull Face was shown at.
###3. Sally arrives. Venom runs to hide behind the tower (5:16)
Sahelanthropus throws a helicopter into the tower and it comes crashing down. I tried to throw some decoys along the wall where the tower falls for reference. This isn’t exact, but the main point of this image album is to show that Skull Face’s last visual position (the jeep) is still a safe distance ahead of where the tower falls.
###5. Venom standing at ledge (6:05)
Image album #5: Venom near fence
As the tower is going down, and Sahelanthropus is hopping over it, Venom runs over to the rail. When I first watched this cutscene, I felt like the area it took place in was much larger. I was surprised to see how little he traveled here.
###[6. Skull Face under tower (6:18)] (https://youtu.be/I2rEk5iQBp4?t=6m18s)
[Image album #6: Skull Face under tower] (http://imgur.com/a/OyuLq)
We now see Skull Face is standing under the fallen tower. Again the point of this album is to show Skull Face is clearly a good distance behind his last visual position in the Jeep
Back to Venom who covers behind a tank. Sahelanthropus starts shooting her gatling gun and Venom flees and covers behind a second tank. Sahelanthropus knocks the tank in the air and it seemingly comes crashing down on Venom.
The image album shows these two cover positions he used behind the two tanks.
###8. Skull Face yelling (6:49)
Image album #8: Skull Face yelling After the tank falls on Venom we get one of those rare camera cuts of the game. Skull Face gives his speech. Honestly this part isn’t very useful. He’s just basically in the spot we just saw him under the tower.
###9. Venom drives away (7:57)
Image album #9: Venom drives away
Skull Face gets crushed and we get another similar camera cut back to Venom who is behind the tank now. He gets in the jeep next to him and drives away.
###Conclusions
Hopefully these images give a clearer picture on this little area that the actual action is taking place. Venom takes a relatively short and simple path to escape
Also I think it’s pretty clear from these images that there’s something wrong with Skull Face’s positions. We see him drive off, and then more than a minute later we see that he’s somehow returned to his original spot in #1 where he was outside his jeep.
Surely, this is absurd? Could it be an error? Did they simply not notice their primary antagonist drove off to safety? Was that actually Skull Face that we killed?
At this point in my investigation, I was thinking “gosh, I didn’t realize this was such a weird cutscene. That Skull Face bit sure is odd.” Little did I realize that was just one example among many of the absurdities of Episode 31.
##Part 2: Continuity “errors”
The importance of film continuity (quoted from 4filmmaking.com):
On the set it is the responsibility of the script supervisor to see that continuity is maintained between takes and between the setups. This means that the actors must be wearing the same clothes, the same jewelry, the same hair style. If a candle or cigarette is half burned down in one take then it must be the same in all takes.
Without visual continuity a movie becomes a series of unnatural jarring moments that take the audience out of the illusion that your movie is a depiction of real life. Carefully planned lack of continuity can be an effective technique to create tension and confusion in a scene but shouldn't be overdone. Careful notes need to be maintained. A digital camera can be a big help in maintaining continuity. Take a shot of the actors after each setup or at least at the end of the day and do a quick printout of the picture.
Films can be difficult to maintain continuity because they usually use a single camera and lots of shots over a period of time. You can find plenty of videos on youtube that will show you continuity errors in movies. It’s understandable though, and they usually do a pretty good job overall.
As the quote mentions, sometimes continuity errors can be used on purpose. Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is probably a good example of this (though like this game, there are many who debate the intentions and symbolism. One could argue The Shining’s errors are simply accidental errors as well). This site goes over some examples from The Shining in particular if you’re interested: http://www.collativelearning.com/the%20shining%20-%20chap%2013.html. Kojima is a big Kubrick fan, himself. I can’t find a video version but here’s an example from The Shining when they’re walking into the road and a car is clearly right about to hit them, and the camera cuts and breaks the continuity and they go on fine.
My main point here is that continuity errors are either on mistake or on purpose (trivial statement, I know). When on purpose, they’re generally meant to be unsettling. When by mistake, it’s because of combining different shots.
Now let’s bring up one more film concept, the long take. A long take is when you have one continuous smooth shot as opposed to cutting a bunch of shots together. A great feature of the long take is that it forces realism because things actually have to occur in real time and real space, mostly eliminating the possibility of the continuity error that comes from cutting together shots. Here’s a famous and great example of one from Goodfellas.
Now many of you probably realize this already, but this camera technique is heavily used in MGSV. Very few cuts happen in this game. The cutscenes always having a single continuous camera moving around and turning (with a few exceptions).
So this cutscene in 31 being a long take, it’s very difficult to accidentally make a mistake on continuity. Granted, games are a slightly different case. They’re not restricted by physical laws so they aren’t exactly forced to have continuity, but I think it’s fair to say that any continuity error that occurs in a long take in this game, they must have noticed when making the scene at the very least.
Alright, alright, enough rambling. Let’s get to the errors:
I took screenshots of the youtube video so the timestamps will be along the bottom. I put the image pairs on imgur as albums.
So after Sally stands up and chases Venom outside of the cave. We cut to Venom running through the little door beside the gate with Sally in hot pursuit. As Venom is running to cover behind the wood, we continue to hear Sally’s loud footsteps. But then when we look back and get a shot of her, she’s still back in the cave!
The first image shows her foot clearly outside of the cave. In the second, in the upper left you can see that she’s still back in the cave seconds later. Huh? (Note the 24 second time lapse…)
####2 Jeep appears next to truck
Now Sally exits the cave (again), and we first randomly see two XOF run out from behind the door we just came from where they clearly weren’t. We can see there’s just a single truck in the gate. Then we get the shot of the tanks rolling up and Skull Face hopping in his jeep. The camera turns back toward Sally and the gate again, but now an empty jeep has appeared next to the truck in the gate! And more XOF are running away from out of nowhere.
One possible explanation here is that it is one of the three jeeps with Skull Face. We only see two of the three drive away. But why the heck would one of the jeeps drive towards Sally, stop, and then everyone get out and run away? Very weird regardless of whether this is a continuity error, or just an absurd decision of some XOF soldiers.
When the tanks roll up, we see two helicopters flying along with them and they seem to be heading right towards Sally, but when the camera pans over towards Sally they’re nowhere to be seen. 14 seconds later when we pan back to the tanks, there those two helicopters are again in just about the same position. This time they are actually shown to attack. It’s as if they froze in mid air for 13 seconds until we looked at them again.
A random jeep appears by the white sign?
####5 Jeep appears, two vehicles move
Well if it wasn’t weird enough for that random jeep to appear. Now after the camera shows Venom running away, it pans back to Sally and we can see that the jeep/truck from beyond the gate have now moved forward!
The third image is from the #2 pair. You can see the jeep/truck moved a sizable distance.
Sally flips this tank on its side. But then a little bit later, we see it’s in a different spot and different orientation after the tower fell.
As Venom is covering behind the first tank, we get a shot of a jeep on the other side of the road. Later after Skull Face gets stomped on, it cuts back to Venom (who moved behind the second tank), and we see the jeep has moved conveniently right up to his new position.
It begs the question if they wanted that as his escape vehicle for him in that final moment, why wasn’t it just placed there to begin with? Why move it mid-scene?
####8 Eli’s position in the helicopter
Alright, now I’m going to move to the other parts of this episode.
In the opening scene, we see Eli is sitting next to Huey in the back of the helicopter. But then when Venom defeats Sally, it shows him sitting on the starboard side. Did he decide to get up and move in the middle of his controlling Sally in an intense battle?
####9 DD soldiers in helicopter
So this one has a few changes. In the first image from episode 30, we see that the helicopter has two DD soldiers. Then in the second image at the start of 31 we don’t see any DD soldiers. Huey/Eli are at the back and Kaz is on the starboard side. Then after Sally is defeated, in the third image, we see Kaz has moved over to the other side and Eli took his spot. We also get our first shot of a DD soldier who is to the right of Eli Fourth picture shows us a second DD soldier that is now in the helicopter. The Fifth image is a shot with Eli/Mantis/DD soldier#1 all together In the sixth image, we no longer can see the DD soldier who should be visible from that image. In the previous shot, Mantis was behind him, now the soldier is just gone?
####10 The hangar is different from Hellbound
This one is not a continuity error within the mission, but it is a strange change from Hellbound. In Episode 12, there’s that structure where Skull Face and Huey are, and then Skull Face kicks Huey down the stairs from it.
But in Episode 31, that structure is completely gone and the area is just empty in that spot.
####11 All ground vehicles except the flipped jeep are gone
When we return to Skull Face after defeating Sally, all the vehicles except for the flipped jeep and the helicopter are gone. There should be multiple vehicles visible in this scene, but they’re all gone.
####12 Huey kills Skull Face quickly
Okay, this one is less about a space continuity error and more about a time continuity error. 15:44 is when Huey passes by the screen, and then 15:47 we hear the gunshot. How could Huey have walked to the gun, picked it up, picked up the bullet, loaded the gun, and fired within three seconds? (Three seconds… you don't think?... No, nevermind) You can see some objects on the ground in the image look to be placed differently after Huey shoots Skull Face too. But I’m unsure if that’s just because of the change in angle/zoom of the camera, or not.
####13 Quiet appears in helicopter
This is one is pretty standard MGSV. And Quiet is able to cloak and such, so you could easily argue this isn’t an error. But she isn't shown to be in the helicopter until the end.
####14 Sally’s position on the R&D platform
When you first see Sally stand tall, you can see she is rotated to her left. Then when you get a shot of Venom and Miller with Sally in the background, she can be seen facing directly forward towards their position on the top of the platform.
Then in the final image, Never Be Game Over :D, we see Sally is once again turned towards her left.
####15 Soldiers appearing on platform
The platform is pretty empty when we first see Huey watch Sally land, but afterwards it becomes a lot more populated.
###Conclusions
I think these show there is something off about these scenes. I know some of the errors could simply be accidents, but many of these they couldn’t possibly have been unaware of.
But why? Why make so many changes to a scene in the middle of a single shot? What is meant to be conveyed? On its face, this doesn’t seem like a particularly chilling or mysterious mission like the hospital. Would they really be attempting to convey an uneasiness to us through these continuity errors? You’d have to think subtleties like that would be lost in the immense carnage and drama that is going on in the mission.
##Part 3: Other observations and oddities
####1 Rapid rusting of the helicopter
When Sally flings the helicopter into the tower, it rapidly rusts as it flies through the air. It’s very much like in Episode 29: Metallic Archaea when a mist envelops your helicopter and it has a layer of brown rusty stuff after you crash. But in that scene, it seems as though it is the mist doing the rusting. How does Sally’s whip flinging the helicopter cause it to rust so fast? Does the whip transfer metallic archaea, and does metallic archaea just spread out on its own from one impact point?
They sure try to give the impression that Venom gets smashed by a tank. He makes no attempt to run away and he seems to just brace himself for impact. Then it immediately cuts over to behind the tower where Skull Face is standing.
Some of you may remember this one from some past discussions, but when the camera pans over to Skull Face you see this object that looks like a satchel charge attached the downed tower. If you look at the tower in free roam, this object is not there. It only appears for this scene. Why was this prop added to this scene? It looks like an explosive, but it never explodes. And if it were a radio communications device, why the heck would it be attached 40 feet high on an electric transmission tower and only shown at this moment?
Such a weird object to be here for seemingly no purpose and only shown for a brief moment.
One thought is that it could potentially be linked to Kaz’s knowledge of Skull Face’s quote. Could this satchel be communicating with DD? Or, brace yourself for a jump in logic, is this device an audio broadcasting mechanism for maintaining the illusion that Skull Face is still there, working in conjunction with the hallucinations of Venom? No, probably not.
Those glitchy-looking flashes of lines that happen on the screen during struggles. They show up as Skull Face is smashed by Sally, and then when the camera cuts to Venom, they linger a little still. It seems to sort of link Venom to Skull Face’s experience.
You see the lines again during the Skull Face mutilation scene when he gets hit
There’s a lot of appearing/disappearing in this cutscene. Skull Faces disappears into smoke when the tower falls. Then Venom disappears under the dust/tank that falls on him. Then Skull Face appears. Later when Venom is escaping and crashes his jeep, he disappears into smoke and then reappears from smoke to begin the boss battle.
And during episode 30 if you use your int scope on the helicopter, Ocelot says, “Skull Face’s chopper is there. That’s where he’ll be headed. Move fast. If he leaves, your chance to make contact goes up in smoke.”
####6 Venom trying to shoot Skull Face
You’re given the option to pull the trigger and shoot Skull Face, but when you do, Venom seems unable to actually do it.
Note that when Kaz helps, Kaz aims at the two limbs he lost (left leg, right arm). Venom seems to do the same by aiming at Skull Face’s left arm. But each time he shoots, Skull Face shakes, but there seems to be no impact (also there are no glitchy lines we see like we do when Kaz helps hit him). Does he really miss twice?
Why give the option to shoot him when you aren't actually able to? It just goes on to the same part where Kaz helps Venom do it either way.
Note the model swap for this moment too. He switches to Hospital Snake when trying to shoot on his own. But then when Kaz helps, he switches to Big Boss GZ Snake. More on this later.
The positioning is also a little off. Venom and Kaz are shown very close in the first image, but Venom seems more distant in the second. Probably just a break in realism for dramatic effect.
What a weird way for the villain to go.
Why have a character like Huey kill him? Why not just let him die on his own as the plan seemed to be?
I like to think Huey is there to represent the player's expectation. The idea we had that we would get a great battle against Skull Face, we'd defeat him and huzzah! Revenge at last! I think Huey is there to make fun of that naive idea. Huey's reaction looks ridiculous, but isn't that what we were expecting? Victory through revenge?
####8 Miller knowing Skull Face’s last words
A few problems here. First, those aren't his last words. They aren't even his last words during that opening scene when Sally crushes him. He says major I'm burning up shortly after. But then later after you fight Sally, you see him again and he has even more words. His last words are “kill me” before Huey shoots him.
Second, how did Miller even hear that statement? Venom wasn’t close to Skull Face. Skull Face just says those lines to himself. The way Miller says it also makes it sound like he's informing Venom of the quote as if Miller knew he said that, but Venom didn't.
####9 Miller appearing as Skull Face
This one is hard to see through images so you might want to watch the video if you want the proof.
But basically when we see the whole crew looking up at Sally, we see Ocelot to the right of Venom and Miller to the left. Then Venom turns and walks away and we see him follow a Skull Face phantom. The camera turns around and as it pans we get a view of everything behind Venom. Ocelot is still in the same spot, but Miller is gone and a DD soldier is in his place (I’m not completely sure on whether the soldier takes his spot or if his spot is just left empty). Then as the camera pans more, we see Skull Face appear behind Venom and put on his hat. Another bit of movement and now Miller appears right where Skull Face was.
Why did Miller disappear? Is there any significance to him appearing in place of Skull Face’s phantom after saying a Skull Face quote he couldn't possibly know?
After they mutilate Skull Face, Kaz flips over his badge and rolls his bullet over resulting in this interestingly positioned image.
Remember, in GZ, the backside of the XOF badges were all black. So there weren’t any reserve sides like shown here. New badge?
I often have wondered why they show the inverted emblem here. It's all clearly intentionally done. It's not like a real movie where you might move some props and they just sort of land randomly. They were placed to look this way, so why?? What message is that image trying to convey?
FOX bullet -> Skull Face? FOX kills Skull Face? FOX kills its reflection?
Or alternatively the bullet is simply pointing and it's saying Skull Face is FOX?
Or here's your final bullet to kill yourself “From, FOX”?
I found this very strange. In episode 30 when you first see Skull Face at the helicopter, you can see he has his gun in his right holster as usual. Then he turns to you and does his screen shaking speech, and afterwards when you look at his holster, his gun is missing! This continues for the whole jeep ride, no gun. But then when you arrive in the hangar his gun has reappeared. And it’s shown for the rest of the mission cutscenes.
Now obviously as we see it in this mission, Skull Face is shot multiple times and then Huey finishes him off (well, we assume, we don’t actually see him shoot Skull Face). But then they walk away and head back home, seemingly leaving Skull Face’s dead body there.
But this doesn’t seem to fit with the Skull Face’s Demise tape. I’ll type out the transcript here:
CT: Skull Face has finally burned out. The world is rid of his existence, at last
Snake: Was he still alive?
CT: You could say that… But you could also say he’d been dead for decades.
Snake: What’s that supposed to mean?
CT: Biologically speaking, it’s hard to say how much was his “life.”
Snake: Side effects from the treatment?
CT: No, the primary effect. Keeping a dying host alive as long as possible, that is the whole point. But in the end, he grew too dependent on his “children.” As if he had any other way to keep on living.
CT: He first underwent parasite therapy before the Soviet Union became his home. His body was horribly burned. Fire washed across his thin, young frame and stole his skin and his throat, even his lungs. Only through repeated therapies could the parasites keep him alive. Most of his “life” became something the parasites gave to him.
Snake: And then he lost the ability to die.
CT: That is correct. The parasites live on past the host’s death, still aiding cell composition. At that stage, there’s no way to extract them from the host’s cell. There’s no way of knowing when the last cell of Skull Face’s body would die. The only choice was to burn the whole thing, and his “children” along with it.
CT: Hah, and I am one to talk. When my life is snuffed out, I expect you to treat my body the same way. And when I burn, I will truly be one with my “children” for the first time.
So according to the tape, they burned Skull Face’s body to finish him off. But in the cutscene, they seem to just leave it there.
It’s certainly possibly they had another team come back and burn it, but nothing within the game hints at that. You’d think if that occurred, they wouldn’t completely omit it from cutscenes/tapes. For such an important thing, it seems odd to just vaguely imply that it occurred in a tape which wasn’t even marked as important.
##Part 4: General thoughts on moments from episode 31
#1 XOF decision making skills
What the heck are they thinking on this mission?
To start with, why are they trying to destroy Sahelanthropus? This is their ultimate weapon that is supposed to ignite the world into a nuclear arms race. Surely they don't want to destroy it. Why not simply let it go do its job?
Another thing is the way they turn on Venom without orders. Skull Face had them stand down against Venom and never said anything about attacking him. But yet when Sally comes alive, some clown turns and decides to shoot at Venom who does not return fire.
The main thing I question though is the way they abandon Skull Face. This their leader, and he's just left to die under a tower? What the heck are all those XOF doing who drove off in jeeps? Or all the XOF he had all along the path to OKB Zero? They have plenty of time to rescue him during the Sally battle, but not a single XOF is shown after Skull Face gets trapped behind a tower. In fact, after the the last jeeps leave, you never see an XOF soldier for the rest of the game. (Excluding the replaying of the prologue for 46)
####2 Mirrored version of 31 in trailer
This is a little bit of an obscure one. In the 2015 Gamescom trailer, there's an about 1 second clip of when XOF soldiers are pulling away Skull Face in the hangar. The odd thing is that they mirrored the clip for the trailer. So you see a bunch of left handed XOF pulling away Skull Face to the left of the screen.
This was the trailer that was not directed by Kojima though so it's hard to see it as meaningful to the story. But clearly someone specifically modified it to be flipped, and did this to no other scenes. Why make such a pointless change to a clip that doesn't even last a second?
Sally shows this new weapon for the first time in this mission. Where The Bees Sleep obviously didn't involve Sally fighting, but Hellbound did and there was no whip involved. Admittedly a few other parts were missing in Hellbound too; the rail gun thing and the shoulder ball thing. Also when Sally drove her spike into the ground during Hellbound, it did create sort of similar black rock formation things as the whip does
First, as noted earlier, it seems to have some sort of metallic archaea effect to it because it causes the helicopter to rapidly rust.
But the odd (and visually stunning) part about it is certainly the ground effect it has. When I first saw the trailer where Venom is driving away while spiked rock formations pop up from the ground, I thought for sure it was going to be a dream/nightmare sequence of some sort. The spikes just looked so similar in their texture and shape to the large shrapnel horn of Venom that it seemed like it had to be imagined.
Now clearly in the game, it shows the spikes came from Sally’s whip weapon, so I assumed it was just a real weapon effect.
But sometimes I still wonder, could it be a nightmarish hallucination?
#4 There were three. Where’s the other?
Perhaps a quote that could not be fully appreciated the first time we played the mission.
I do believe this is likely referencing the game’s chapters. The quote itself just doesn’t feel quite organic enough to me for it have been purely a reference to the vials. It’s definitely possible it’s a coincidence though, but even if it were just a reference to the vials, it still begs the question of why did they arbitrarily pick for there to be three vials in the first place (and then subsequently have one missing (really two missing because Third Child takes one, but Venom is not aware))?
I think any acknowledgment of chapter 3 within the dialogue/story would be very telling. It would suggest that chapter 3’s existence/mystery was in the plans from the very early stage when they were first writing dialogue. As opposed to it either being something cut late in development, or being thrown in late in development.
#5 Flashback to Big Boss’s face
The first set of comparison shots are the four instances I could find of the mysterious post-explosion Big Boss. From left to right: GZ cover art, GZ menu, Kaz’s flashback at the end of the first mission, and the Episode 31 moment when Kaz helps Venom shoot Skull Face.
Remember when you attempt to shoot Skull Face yourself, you are not able to hit him, but you also see Venom take on the appearance of hospital Ahab. This part seems to make perfect sense. Skull Face is whom Venom blames for the his pain. He put him in that hospital. He remembers being in the hospital and looking like that. So when he tries to take his revenge, what better flashback for him to take form as? ...But it doesn’t do anything. Venom tries to shoot Skull Face's left arm and while the shots cause him to shake, they seem to not impact him. It’s as if Skull Face has no left arm to be hit.
Then when Venom fails to shoot him, or you choose not to fire, Kaz is kind of like, “what the heck is wrong with you? Let me do this for you.” And he forcefully moves Venom’s aim from the left hand of Skull Face down to his left leg. Then all of a sudden Venom’s shots are able to land. We can see when it shows the faces of Kaz/Venom that Kaz seems very upset, and Venom almost looks sad, or emotionless.
Near the end of the shooting, we start to see more flashbacks again. This time we see the post-Mother Base destruction Kaz. Again, like the Ahab flashback, this makes sense. That was when Kaz was really upset and had just watched Mother Base sink into the ocean.
Anyways, then it gets to the main part I want to talk about. The camera pans over to Venom and we see him turn into Big Boss with the post-Paz explosion burns/wounds. Now first of all, it’s just yet another weird instance of this Big Boss that doesn’t fit with the story. We’re lead to believe after the explosion, a helicopter crashes into them and they crash into the ocean, but multiple times we’re shown this glimpse of Big Boss who has the post-Paz explosion burns.
Second, Venom shouldn’t have memories of that Big Boss. That moment, whatever it was, where Big Boss exists after the Paz explosion should not have been able to be passed onto Venom through hypnagogia. Those were all his past missions which were on record, and surely the time between the explosion and crashing into the sea was not on record. So it doesn't seem to make sense that Venom would turn into an image he is so unrelated to. Though it's conceivable this was just for the sake of the player and for the sake of matching GZ Kaz.
Third, as you may have noticed there seems to be a discoloration around Big Boss’s eye. Similar to the eye markings that appear on Code Talker and Quiet. Now at first, I figured this was probably just mud or something else that splashed on his face, but I just don’t see how or why it would have gotten there and left that mark. The mark is very distinct from the rest of the burns and such on his face. It’s clearly defined and consistently used in all the images of that Big Boss.
I think it’s pretty established that the markings on Quiet and Code Talker are due to their parasite treatment, and they appear in situations of raised emotions. Is that marking on Big Boss there to suggest he was infected with parasites? Let’s remember we don’t know the exact context of that image because it never appears in a sequence of events within the game. Only in weird flashbacks/trailers/art, and we cannot see that side of the face in the Colombian hospital scene after the crash.
#6 XOF look the same?
If you start to look at all the XOF soldiers, you might begin to notice something. They’re all identical!
Considering all the randomized faces we see throughout the game and our own face customization options, it would be hard to believe they couldn't have easily had all the XOF have different faces. So the fact they didn't makes me think it was purposeful for them to look the same, so why?
One answer you'd think would be some sort of cloning. Perhaps early genome soldiers? I'm not sure. It's not really scientifically sensible, but the game I think allows for that.
The other possibility I think is they're not real, or they're hallucinated in some way. I believe this is not simply suggested by their identical faces, but also by their mysterious presence. Like how after you catch Skull Face at his helicopter, suddenly a ton of XOF appear lined up on your path to the power plant. They appear out of nowhere, and then disappear after.’
And note all XOF during episode 30 have “B 16” on their helmet.
#7 Skull Face’s helicopter from 30
When you first arrive at the roof on episode 30, Skull Face’s chopper is flying over you and landing. You can see that it has a single pilot and no passengers with Third Child floating behind it. Once it lands, you can see it’s actually a DD pilot model flying it and you can still see it’s empty, and Third Child is floating nearby. (Note: This does not require any sort of mod to see)
To add to this strangeness, then when the cutscene initiates at the heliport, not only do the XOF soldiers and Skull Face appear out of nowhere, but the pilot has disappeared. And then after XOF/Skull Face get out, the seemingly empty helicopter flies away. (I think once the cutscene ends and the chopper flies away, you can vaguely see the DD pilot again, but it’s very tough to tell because it’s flying away at an angle)
Note his helicopter’s number 17676. PubChem, a chemical molecules database maintained by the United State’s National Institutes of Health, assigns this ID number (17676) to Acetophenazine which is “an antipsychotic drug of moderate-potency. It is used in the treatment of disorganized and psychotic thinking. It is also used to help treat false perceptions (e.g. hallucinations or delusions).” I believe this has been brought up a few times before, but I really want you to think about it within the specific context it is shown to us. It obviously relates to aspects of the game as a whole, but really think about it within the scene we see it, not in general. Think about how it may relate to the fading away of the green glow at the bottom of the screen during this scene, the shaking of your screen when Skull Face speaks to you, the sudden appearance of a bunch of XOF, the disappearance of Skull Face’s weapon, the jeep ride, the dead burning bodies you pass along the way to the power plant. Why do you think the ID number for Acetophenazine is chosen to appear at this given moment of the game?
...Continued in my comment below...
Posted May 7, 2016, 5:42 AM UTC