Hideo Kojima may have just confirmed that Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain was incomplete when it was released. According to a new social media post, players believe the gaming auteur finally answered a long-running rumor about MGSV not being finished.

Hideo Kojima May Have Just Confirmed That MGSV Was Unfinished

Hideo Kojima likes to post a lot on social media. So it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that he would like and retweet a retrospective article about Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. After all, the game recently celebrated its 10th anniversary. However, Kojima recently raised the eyebrows of fans when he posted an article on his X account that was titled “10 Years Later, Hideo Kojima’s Unfinished Masterpiece Is Still Influencing Games Today.”

This is interesting because it’s the first time that Kojima has openly commented on the possibility that MGSV was incomplete. It should be noted that the Death Stranding creator did not write the headline himself. He was simply reposting the feature. And let’s be real, it’s not that uncommon for people to retweet something without fully endorsing everything that it’s saying.

The article is also not just about the game supposedly being unfinished, but discusses how MGSV is still influencing games today. All that said, many fans took Kojima’s post as the first time that he publicly acknowledged that the game is, in fact, unfinished. This is a big deal to many players, as it’s long been a heated debate in the gaming community. Some have argued that Konami stopped Hideo Kojima from finishing the game, while others have claimed that the myth of it being incomplete is overblown. Well, we might finally have an answer. Well, sort of.

What Was Cut From Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Pain?

As I mentioned above, the long-running rumor of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain being incomplete goes all the way back to 2015. Not long after MGSV launched, Kojima had announced that he had departed Konami. Following his departure, there was a lot of back and forth over the development of his final Metal Gear game. However, the main rumor was that MGSV was missing its true ending and was unfinished.

It’s hard to get an exact answer on what was cut. Based on reports, MGSV had a mission that was scrapped from the final version of the game. It was claimed that Konami had the quest cut for budget reasons. Hideo Kojima also reportedly tried to have it funded as a separate DLC, but this fell through. This seems to be backed up by the Collector’s Edition of the game. The bonus disc in particular features snippets of cutscenes that were supposed to be in the mission.

Now, it’s hard to say how much of the cut content was important to the main story. But to this day, most Metal Gear fans believe that the true version of MGSV was never released. With Hideo Kojima reposting a feature calling the game “unfinished,” it’s likely to give more fuel to the long-running rumor.

So is The Phantom Pain unfinished or not? While Kojima didn’t outright say it, his latest social media posts may have just given us our biggest hint yet. With Konami recently doing Metal Gear Solid remakes, perhaps we could eventually get the complete version of MGSV?