Three years after it was originally released, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain has finally had its secret ending triggered on consoles. Known as the Nuclear Disarmament event, it requires that all nuclear weapons on a server be dismantled. If you’ve ever played any online game, you can imagine how difficult this would be to complete. While the ending was triggered on PC earlier this year, this was done illegitimately as not all nuclear weapons were dismantled prior. There is nothing like holiday miracle to wrap up the year however, and according to Metal Gear Informer, all consoles have now had the event triggered.
The Nuclear Disarmament event being triggered started with the Xbox One servers on Christmas day and continued with the event also occurring on both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 servers. As of yesterday, December 28th, those on the PlayStation 4 servers can also now see the ending. All console players should be able to see the ending just as long as they have met the prerequisites to view the cutscene. While this all seems like a nice coincidence, the fact that this gargantuan task was completed on each console around the same time makes it very likely that this was done through shady means and not as intended.
According to this tweet from the official Japanese Metal Gear Twitter, there is an ongoing investigation as to why the event triggered, as to make sure no one is being played like a fiddle. Konami stopped posting updates to the amount of nuclear weapons in the game a while back so this likely means that there were still nuclear weapons on the server when the ending began for players. Either way, nuclear weapons are still being developed according to Ocelot, who calls players right after the ending plays to inform them. The Nuclear Disarmament ending can be viewed here.