We all liked the Psycho Mantis boss battle where he reads your memory card, but you could argue all of Kojima's output is fourth-wall performance theatre, where release trailers, Twitter clues, events, fan theories and, yes, the games, intermesh to form the coherent, contextual, whole. It plays into the bigger, more contextual, issue of how to interpret Hideo Kojima's games. How many endings do we need? MGS5 alone has three endings.

We know exactly how every character's arc proceeds after The Phantom Pain. If this wasn't enough, there are a total of five MGS games set after 1984 and the events of MGS5 (six if you count Metal Gear Rising). It's wonderful, awful, fan-baiting tosh, that makes the ending of Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King look concise. Bar a genuinely touching Snake/Big Boss reunion, it features a scene with Raiden (complete with stitched-on arms) cuddling his lost son, plus the wedding of Johnny Sasaki and Meryl. It ties up *all* of the series' loose ends in almost an hour of cut-scenes. MGS4: Guns of the Patriots, released in 2008, is the series chronological finale set in 2014. The Wachowski Brothers spectacular 'alternate ending' to The Matrix: Path of Neo is the best example, where existential questions are replaced by a boss battle with a giant robot Agent Smith (opens in new tab) – before a party in Zion to Queen's 'We Are The Champions'. The inverse scenario is when creators give their fans *exactly* what they want to make the reverse point. I'd happily see George Lucas imprisoned for the Star Wars prequels, but I defend his right to make an atrocity. Whether creators truly own their work, or it belongs to fans, isn't the core issue.

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