Hideo Kojima loves to do exceptionally wild things in his games, including tasking all Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain players with working together to find and disarm a bunch of nuclear bombs. These aren’t just ordinary nuclear bombs, though, they’re held on to by players who can craft them themselves. This means players must infiltrate the bases of other players to find and disarm the nukes. If players manage to disarm all of the nukes on their respective platform, they’ll essentially achieve world peace and be rewarded with a special cutscene. At one point, it was even thought that this would unlock the fabled “chapter 3” of Metal Gear Solid V, something that was believed to unlock more story content for the game.
Although players have been able to trigger nuclear disarmament in Metal Gear Solid V on PS3, the platform that was deemed easiest to complete this mission on due to a low number of nukes, it didn’t count. Konami investigated the claims of nuclear disarmament and stated it was done using improper conduct, resulting in one player being banned. A new video from DidYouKnowGaming dives deep into the history of this story and spoke to a group known as The Anti-Nuke Gang who ultimately concluded that it was impossible, stating that there appear to be a handful of nukes in the game that don’t actually belong to anyone, therefore they can’t be disarmed. The group stated these “phantom nukes” are likely from banned accounts that had their offline assets reset, but their online assets remained, leaving a bunch of nukes without a home. Apparently, Konami has also made it so that the cutscene can never play again, even if it’s achieved legitimately. As such, no one knows if there really is a chapter 3 being hidden within Metal Gear Solid V.
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The group also theorized that the reason Konami has to verify the legitimacy of the nuclear disarmament is because of this walled off content, but no one really knows. Some also theorized that Konami is being strict because they want players to understand the difficulty and possibly, impossibility, of a nuke-free world. It’s a fascinating story and one that likely won’t have the exciting ending that many are hoping for. Maybe one day we’ll see a legitimate nuclear disarmament, but it seems incredibly unlikely. The Metal Gear series has been quiet for many years, but there are rumors that a remake of Metal Gear Solid is on the way.
Do you think someone will ever be able to achieve a legit nuclear disarmament? Let me know in the comments below or hit me up on Twitter @Cade_Onder.
