Analyzing disarmament & certain cut content
Hey all,
I'd like to take a moment to re-iterate and re-analyze what disarmament could possibly hold for us. This may not be news to some of you, but I feel like the majority of the people don't know the finer details, so let's go!
We've all seen the nuclear disarmament ending. In the cutscene, certain characters that can join/leave your base will either be in the cutscene or not, depending on how far you've progressed in the story. Here's an example.
Nothing new there, many cutscenes in the game work like that. But what's interesting is that the kids will always be present, regardless of whether they're supposed to be there in the story.
This kid will always be the one putting down the flowers. He does not get replaced by a stock DD soldier. You can try this out for yourself if you're on PC. Install Infinite Heaven and force the disarmament cutscene to play, you'll see the kids are there.
So this means that the game assumes that the kids will be present on your base when this scene plays. What does that imply? It implies the nuclear disarmament scene happens after you've inevitably brought the kids back to mother base. We know it can't happen before they leave base with Eli, because Eli is not programmed to show up during the scene. Wait, bring back the kids? When does that happen?
Oh right. Muddafukkin' episode 51.
So does that mean we're going to be playing through episode 51 before we see the disarmament cutscene? That's a pretty bold claim, it was cut after all, right? Well, let's look at some other significant tidbits first.
When will we have achieved nuclear disarmament? When we've disarmed every last nuke. It is important that we realize what this signifies. Metal Gear Sahelanthropus is a nuclear weapon in and of its own, characters such as Kaz refer to Sahelanthropus as a nuke on numerous occasions. If nuclear disarmament means disarming every nuclear weapon, then this includes Sahelanthropus.
During the nuke ending, Kaz will at one point mention that the nuke ruptured during transport. This causes several DD soldiers to be exposed to radiation and fall ill. Kaz points out that the patients have stabilized, but not everyone might make it. From this sentence, we can assume the game will put several soldiers in the sickbay. Something similar happens when Quiet dives into the acid (or whatever) on mother base to salvage some kid's necklace, she'll be in sickbay after the story cutscene ends. Would it make sense for the game to put soldiers in sickbay after completing just another FOB mission? Not really, FOB missions aren't really structured like that. Scenarios like these are more likely to happen during story events. Plus, it would be weird for just an ordinary FOB nuke to suddenly rupture, considering some players have been through the process already tens (sometimes hundreds) of times without a nuke ever rupturing.
Going by this logic, what do we know?
- Disarmament requires us to disarm every nuke.
- Sahelanthropus is considered a nuke.
- Disarming the last nuke causes soldiers to be injured.
- You fight Sahelanthropus in episode 51, heavily damaging it, possibly leading it to rupture on the way back.
When we take all these things into consideration, it becomes very likely that triggering disarmament will allow us to play episode 51. I would like to point out more significant finds that encourage this theory, for those who remain unconvinced.
Being somewhat of a dataminer myself as some of you may know, I took a proper look at the code for the disarmament cutscenes. Here is the code that defines the cutscene where Ocelot flies over the R&D platform:
Excerpt from TppMbFreeDemo.lua
Nothing here seems out of the ordinary, apart from the highlighted line. This line sets the visibility of Sahelanthropus to invisible. Now why would it do that? If we are in possession of it when we trigger disarmament, then why not show Sally? Oh right, because we fucking wreck it in episode 51.
As far as the game is concerned on a technical level, we 'own' Sahelanthropus again after episode 51, so its natural decision would be to show Sally during the nuke ending. But because, from a story perspective, it wouldn't make sense as we just wrecked it, this code will manually prevent Sahelanthropus from standing atop the R&D Platform as it usually would. The game assumes you own Sahelanthropus during the disarmament ending and will make it invisible on purpose
Note: you can always force Sahelanthropus to show up through means of mods
And for good measure, here is a piece of concept art that proves the kids are taken back to base after the fight is over.
I am probably forgetting other crucial points, but for now this is all I can remember. If something else comes to mind, I'll update this post. Now get to disarming!
Posted Jun 24, 2016, 8:35 PM UTC · edited