Holy. Shit. Holy. Shit. I did not see that coming. I'm completely blown away by the true, final ending. I can't believe that ...
(Seriously, a massive spoiler, I'm talking a kind of spoiler I would not wish upon anyone)
(Also, seriously long)
SPOILER: Show
in the end, Paz was evil all along.
The only thing I've felt for the past hour and a half is a persistent state of shock. Never, at least in recent memory, has a game or any work of art done something like this to me. Never.
I thought that the story of Peace Walker was over. It was a nice, cute story. No real surprises, just a good ride, much like MGS3 for that matter, almost archetypal or folkloric or something. Just a real good solid story. Even made me cry. When I completed the last Zadornov mission and read on a wiki that you must find him by going to the target practice range, and that it would be followed by battling against a hijacked Zeke, I thought little of it -- that it would just be me against Zadornov in Zeke and after that the game would be over, concluding with maybe a little something or other tying the story into the broader metanarrative. I didn't even consider that who Zadornov's accomplice was would even be all that important -- just some futurely-important character like Vamp or even a brand new characer or even a complete rando.
Instead of that simple ending, now I'm walking away from this game with so much more on my mind.
Paz turning out to be evil... How can I explain. Paz became a little something more than a video game character to me. Not on the level of the Evangelion cast or anything, but still something kind of special. She was a character I was engaged with enough to make up stories about. Not more so than other characters in the same class, and not even enough that I ever actually got around to writing those stories down, but still a character, an idea, with a special place in my heart around which I built a shroud from my imagination. A comfortable, stable place.
That's gone now -- and it's like nothing I've ever experienced.
It's hard to explain. It's something that's never happened to me before -- where something happens which so completely changes who a character is to me (after I've already gotten to the point of fapping to them) that it completely invalidates that shroud of stories I've built up around them from my own imagination, to where I'm not sure I can ever think of those stories again without something in my mind going this is wrong or this is a lie (even if all fiction is equally false). If Paz had simply died, I could have at least kept her memory alive in my imagination, but now... This is a kind of shock that even death can't deal. A kind of shock so severe that it affected me even when the character in question was not even, like, the most important fictional character in the world to me or anything like that.
I wouldn't say that what I feel is exactly heartbreak. I did begin to think of Paz in a way I think of very few other characters (not quite on the level of the Evangelion cast, for example, but maybe Yuna or Rikku (and it certainly helps that Paz has Rikku's voice in the English version)), but even I have limits on how attached I let myself get to fictional characters. But if such a thing can possibly said regarding my feelings for a fictional character, this would probably be the time to say it.
It's more like, the kind of feeling, a pain you don't want to face but makes you grow and you're glad afterwards that it happened even if you would deny wanting it to ever happen again, that takes a story from already pretty good or even great to a level of true golden mastery that I wonder if I'll ever experience again.
Bravo, Hideo and whoever else deserves it for thinking up this twist. Bravo. The old man's still got it -- or even more than still got it, it's as if he's only improved.
The funny thing is, in retrospect, I feel like I should have seen it coming. It feels so obvious now -- as if it was only sheer disbelief that someone like Paz could be anything less than sincere that I refused to entertain that she could be willfully evil. The hints were all there, such as when Kaz mentioned that Zadornov managed to escape (one time of many) because Paz led the guard away to join the ladies in the kitchen to taste some of their cooking. The most I ever entertained was that she was a Manchurian candidate or was being put up to it or something like that -- and the writing even has Kaz allude to this right as soon as Paz is revealed to be in the cockpit of Zeke (he says "She's not herself!" but Paz then quickly proves this wrong), which shows just how masterfully they knew exactly what would be going through our minds.
One of the stories I came up with before learning Paz's true nature even sort of "predicted" (not really) her defection. One night alone with myself in bed, at some point after learning from Kaz that Paz lured a guard away from Zadornov's cell and thus "accidentally" was complicit in his latest escape, I decided to imagine a pornographic version of how that scene might have gone, and imagined her sinfully tempting him away to taste her "cooking" -- cunnilingus followed by them joining an orgy-in-progress in the kitchen involving Amanda and Cecile and like half the MSF. I used the idea of her luring him away "intentionally" as a way to add sinful spice to her, without considering why I would consider it sinful when I don't think of sex as sinful on its own. I characterized it as sinful in my mind because she was leading him away from his duty -- without ever thinking more on what exactly it meant that she was leading him away on purpose from that cage. It was this black hole, this blind spot in my thinking that I ignored so completely that it was not even like denial, just a complete glossing over, and it could perhaps be that I'm only imagining after the fact that I truly knew or suspected anything at the time but I really feel like my lack of analysis of it says something.
I never actually wrote down any of the hentai scenarios I've come up with surrounding Paz, and for once in my life, I'm not sure I'll ever be able to. Because who Paz is, after I've begun to care about her to the point where I think of her at night, has so fundamentally changed. Her behavior at the end of Peace Walker completely redefines her as a character, and now I just ... don't know what to think. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do with the her that exists in my mind. I can't just go on and write those same stories or even think of them again like this didn't happen, like it was some other Paz at the end of the game, not just because it happened, but because it managed to be the natural endpoint of everything that she is. This wasn't just some ass-pull; this was what everything was pointing to and leading up to the whole time, and can't be ignored. It tied together all the loose ends I didn't even notice before and made her a whole, complete package.
One tiny flicker of hope remains. And I don't mean hope for the idea that I could ever think of Paz the way I used to, or fap to the old stories of her.
It started with the conversations I found in the Data Briefings after the final credits. One of them was with Chico. It revealed that Paz tried to sabotage Zeke before she wound up hijacking it. And that got me thinking that maybe there was some good in her that was not an illusion. Then I went to the Metal Gear wiki and read Paz's entry. Apparently there is actually quite a bit more to the story: If you fight the hardest optional bosses, you can acquire tapes that Paz made which reveal even more about her true self and her experiences in the MSF, and they add more hope. And you can eventually also get one final conversation with Chico about Paz that adds even more hope. Hope that, 1), that Paz might still be alive, and 2), that there did wind up being some good in her just before the end.
This tiny flicker of hope is not really about me wanting to see Paz in future installments of the series, nor is it about me really caring what happens to her afterwards and hoping for her to have a better life or whatever. Rather, it regards what Paz means to me in my own mind from here on -- what kinds of stories I could or would have to construct around her now to form that emotional connection that I enjoy, in bed and otherwise. I may never be able to get myself to write or even think again the stories I've already thought up, which were based on the Paz I thought I knew, but maybe this new information, detailing the more complete Paz who was revealed to me tonight, can give birth to new stories in their place.
Still... I feel a great sense of loss and longing for that more innocent time, when Paz was nothing more than a sweet, charming girl who was just as much of a peacenik as I am.
Addendum:
SPOILER: Show
After writing the bulk of this post I decided to give the Date with Paz mission one last go because I learned from the wiki that you can interrogate her and I figure I might as well see the last piece of content that I can for myself before I turn this back over to my friend (I think I'll just find youtubes of the Paz tapes or something instead of going to all the massive trouble that it takes to unlock them myself). I previously achieved S rank on the mission (oh man, what a new context that love box action has now knowing what I know about her now), so she was in her underwear, which I believe is the only way you can interrogate her. I grabbed her, interrogated her several times, and I must say, I wonder what I would have felt doing that interrogation before learning what I learned about her tonight. I wonder if I would have figured it out or if I would have simply felt awful for doing such a thing to her.
Final addendum:
SPOILER: Show
One teeny tiny insignificant question remains in my mind. Does Paz wear her underwear in Zeke no matter what, or was that only because I completed the Date with Paz mission? I know she was drawn in her underwear even in the comic-style cutscene, but for all I know that was just the result of the artist being made to draw two different versions for the sake of doing a good job of maintaining consistency, and instead if I had not done that mission she'd have been wearing her school uniform in there.
I bring this up because seeing her be inexplicably in her underwear during that scene was kind of distracting and left me wondering why, and although the impact was fairly negligible, occupying little more than a subchannel in my otherwise utterly shocked brain, it was still significant and I'd like to know.
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