100% Completion of The Phantom Pain
If past Metal Gear games can be likened to a movie, then Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Pain can be likened to a nine season long TV series, not the 8 episodes British season or the 12 episodes cable season, I'm talking full 22 episodes network television season. It took me almost 200 hours to 100% complete the game, now that is a long time, not just by Metal Gear standard, but by video game standard in general. Now that I am 200 hours wiser, I have more insight into the game, and I want to discuss about what's good and bad for an open world Metal Gear game.
A Typical Length Metal Gear Story (Bad)
Metal Gear Solid is a series renowned for its storytelling prowess. Mixing emotional story and comedy with well thought out, fully three dimensional character (I don't mean the polygon), touching on philosophies, political issue and anti-nukes message all the while fighting monsterly-sized robot in a true David and Goliath fashion.
However, you will notice the story is all very brief. In Metal Gear Solid, the story is resolved in one night; in Metal Gear Solid 2, the tanker incident ended in an hour maximum while the plant incident is resolved within a day. You see where I am going with this? Metal Gear Solid is good because it is short, we only experience the exciting part of infiltration process.
There are a lot of things done behind the scene that we didn't see, such as Otacon hacking away at the Pentagon website for intel about the Discovery secretly transporting a new batch of Metal Gear Ray or a group of scientist working on developing the submarine used to send Solid Snake into Shadow Moses.
But in this game, you get to see all that, well, not specifically that, but you get to see the preparation process. You are required to steal the enemy PF's Walker Gear so that they will be forced to order new Walker Gear, and you can monitor their call. You are required to save a Hamid fighter and recover the Honey Bee weapon just to stumble upon Skullface. You need to listen to the conversation between three commanding officer in order to learn that they are now countering your play tactics with new equipment.
What this boils down to, is that, they are taking a 12 hour story, dissecting it and stretching it out, to make it feel like a 120 hours experience. This is, in my opinion, simply not how storytelling should be done in an open world game. Why not put more focus on each character and have each character carries their own subplot? Time and again, Rockstar Games have proved that it is a good way to set up missions, so why not learn from them? They are, after all, one of the best developer out there when it comes to making open world games.
Missions with Hidden Tasks (Good)
It has to be acknowledge that of the 31 main missions, quite a lot of them are just small mission meant as a set up for the bigger and more important mission, however I still absolutely love the way missions are designed in this game.
Essentially, each mission needs to be played at least three times in order for you to see everything it has to offer. The first time, you can just enjoy it, explore your options and do whatever you want. After the first playthrough, a list of mission tasks will be revealed. On your second playthrough, try to complete those mission tasks, whether it is eavesdropping on target's conversation or rescuing prisoners, just try it and you will get to explore a completely different side of the mission. After you have fully completed all the mission tasks, on your third playthrough, you can try to speed through the mission for the S rank.
Your play style will also have an effect on the enemy's tactic. If you always shoot them, the enemy will start wearing helmets, body armor and riot suit, they will even be equipped with more powerful weapon like shotgun and machine gun that could kill you in a few hits. If you use too much sleeping gas, the enemy will start using gas mask. If you always infiltrate at night, the enemy will start using more flashlight and night vision goggles.
With this system in place, replaying a mission will force you to change your tactics, because the enemy are more dangerous now. You can't tranq the same guard in the same place twice, because he now wears a shield on his back. But you are not completely helpless either, the beauty of this system lies in the fact that you can also counter their tactics by sending dispatch unit to destroy their supply of equipment.
Now this is a great example of a difficulty curve that is logical, which makes it a rare gem among today's video games. It doesn't give you less health or give the enemy more health just for the sake of cranking the up the difficulties. The mission become more difficult because the enemy are now better equipped and you are trying to achieve more tasks. This gameplay mechanic makes the system fair, it encourages players to experiment with different play styles and the game is better because of it.
Replaying Old Mission on Harder Difficulty (Really Good)
I know this will ruffle a lot of feather among the Metal Gear community because many of them think Chapter 2 of The Phantom Pain prove that the game is rushed out before it is finished. Well, GamesRadar did a very compelling argument against this. Go check it out.
Anyhow, it is true that only a few missions in Chapter 2 are new mission, while the rest is old mission on harder difficulty. However, because of how well the missions are designed and how fluid the gameplay felt, playing it on higher difficulty is never frustrating. When I encounter a game over, it never felt like the game is being unfair, it's just that I am not skilled enough, and that give me motivation to develop better equipment and play more carefully, which turns me into a better player.
Of course, it also forced you to be really creative. For example, in the mission where you have to steal a PF truck guarded by 4 skull soldiers, did you know that you can just climb into the Nova Braga airport through the back, extract the truck away with a wormhole Fulton device and then ride out of the Hot Zone on the D-Horse? This is mind blowing for me because in my first attempt of the mission, I spent hours trying to defeat those skull soldiers.
Finally, this mission also shows that in The Phantom Pain, your enemy works on a schedule independent of your action. They don't wait for the player to walk into an invisible line to trigger an event. After you got off the helicopter, no matter what you choose to do, the escorting armored vehicles will arrive at Nova Braga airport. The truck driver stationed there will get on the truck and they will leave for the riverside port through Kiziba Camp. And this has open up all kinds of gameplay possibility unparalleled even by the legendary Metal Gear Solid 3.
Boring Side Ops (Bad)
What a wasted opportunities here. Side Ops is a grind to get through in The Phantom Pain, it is repetitive, generic and doesn't really add any new challenge to the game.
Let me list out the type of side ops mission available here, there are 157 of them, only 24 of them have real effect on the story and gameplay. The rest consist of:
At this point, I just want to ask, what has gone wrong here? Peace Walker have a really diverse Side Ops. Why in the world would this game have such terribly boring side quest? Think of the interesting things that could be done in this huge world.
In Afghanistan alone, you can help the Taliban destroy Soviet supply truck, kidnap Soviet officer, help Soviet personnel to defect, provide sniper cover for the Taliban, dress as Soviet officer, infiltrate Soviet base and take scandalous picture of high ranking personnel to blackmail them for information. In your leisure time, maybe partaking in horse racing, or Afghan Polo like in Rambo 3.
In Angola-Zaire Border Region, you should be able to walk into civilian and accept quest from them. You can rob PF ration supply truck. Maybe hunt animal to provide food the local population. Maybe meet a few African warlord like Jonas Savimbi, that would be cool, right? But no, do the same thing over and over again with minimal variation. Where's the fun in that? I guess what I am trying to say is that this game deserve a better side ops.
Rescuing Wildlife (Why?)
The game also has some animal rescue mission where you will have to place capture cage near LZ all over the map. On paper, hunting wildlife seems like a good idea for this game, but the execution is simply not good enough, a lot of the animal are captured automatically using a cage, instead of the player personally hunting down each animal with the tranquilizer gun like in Metal Gear Solid 3. To make things worse, most of the animal you saved won't even show up in the animal conservation platform, which makes the whole thing feels tacked on and half-baked.
Managing Mother Base (Good)
Wall of texts and statistics, in the hand of another developer, managing the mother base might become a chore. Thankfully, in the hand of Kojima Production, it is surprisingly fun, addicting even if I may say so myself. It encourage you to use non lethal weapon in order to get as many high ranking soldier as possible, which increase your heroism, and after each heroism circle is filled, it unlocks higher ranks soldiers in the field.
As the mother base is quietly churning out weapons and items you ordered in the background, there is also a constant sense of progress in the game. Much in the same way as the missions, the mother base works on a time based mechanic independent of the player actions, so even if you are just sitting in the ACC listening to tapes, the development process will still go on. And once in a while the notification system will announce that the development has completed, reassuring you that no time is being wasted while you're sitting there, listening to Miller's Maxi Buns.
In conclusion, I guess there are no such thing as a perfect game, and as far as Metal Gear Solid V goes, it is not even the best Metal Gear Solid games in the series. There are flaws and plot holes here and there, but that doesn't mean it is not genuinely good. Far from it, this is technically the most polish Metal Gear game ever. As for the unfinished plot, knowing Kojima's design philosophy, I think it is still too early to tell whether this is done intentionally to give you the "phantom pain" or it is really the result of a rushed job.
P/S: Did you know that Zanzibar Land is actually Tselinoyarsk?
A Typical Length Metal Gear Story (Bad)
Metal Gear Solid is a series renowned for its storytelling prowess. Mixing emotional story and comedy with well thought out, fully three dimensional character (I don't mean the polygon), touching on philosophies, political issue and anti-nukes message all the while fighting monsterly-sized robot in a true David and Goliath fashion.
However, you will notice the story is all very brief. In Metal Gear Solid, the story is resolved in one night; in Metal Gear Solid 2, the tanker incident ended in an hour maximum while the plant incident is resolved within a day. You see where I am going with this? Metal Gear Solid is good because it is short, we only experience the exciting part of infiltration process.
There are a lot of things done behind the scene that we didn't see, such as Otacon hacking away at the Pentagon website for intel about the Discovery secretly transporting a new batch of Metal Gear Ray or a group of scientist working on developing the submarine used to send Solid Snake into Shadow Moses.
But in this game, you get to see all that, well, not specifically that, but you get to see the preparation process. You are required to steal the enemy PF's Walker Gear so that they will be forced to order new Walker Gear, and you can monitor their call. You are required to save a Hamid fighter and recover the Honey Bee weapon just to stumble upon Skullface. You need to listen to the conversation between three commanding officer in order to learn that they are now countering your play tactics with new equipment.
What this boils down to, is that, they are taking a 12 hour story, dissecting it and stretching it out, to make it feel like a 120 hours experience. This is, in my opinion, simply not how storytelling should be done in an open world game. Why not put more focus on each character and have each character carries their own subplot? Time and again, Rockstar Games have proved that it is a good way to set up missions, so why not learn from them? They are, after all, one of the best developer out there when it comes to making open world games.
Missions with Hidden Tasks (Good)
It has to be acknowledge that of the 31 main missions, quite a lot of them are just small mission meant as a set up for the bigger and more important mission, however I still absolutely love the way missions are designed in this game.
Essentially, each mission needs to be played at least three times in order for you to see everything it has to offer. The first time, you can just enjoy it, explore your options and do whatever you want. After the first playthrough, a list of mission tasks will be revealed. On your second playthrough, try to complete those mission tasks, whether it is eavesdropping on target's conversation or rescuing prisoners, just try it and you will get to explore a completely different side of the mission. After you have fully completed all the mission tasks, on your third playthrough, you can try to speed through the mission for the S rank.
Your play style will also have an effect on the enemy's tactic. If you always shoot them, the enemy will start wearing helmets, body armor and riot suit, they will even be equipped with more powerful weapon like shotgun and machine gun that could kill you in a few hits. If you use too much sleeping gas, the enemy will start using gas mask. If you always infiltrate at night, the enemy will start using more flashlight and night vision goggles.
With this system in place, replaying a mission will force you to change your tactics, because the enemy are more dangerous now. You can't tranq the same guard in the same place twice, because he now wears a shield on his back. But you are not completely helpless either, the beauty of this system lies in the fact that you can also counter their tactics by sending dispatch unit to destroy their supply of equipment.
Now this is a great example of a difficulty curve that is logical, which makes it a rare gem among today's video games. It doesn't give you less health or give the enemy more health just for the sake of cranking the up the difficulties. The mission become more difficult because the enemy are now better equipped and you are trying to achieve more tasks. This gameplay mechanic makes the system fair, it encourages players to experiment with different play styles and the game is better because of it.
Replaying Old Mission on Harder Difficulty (Really Good)
I know this will ruffle a lot of feather among the Metal Gear community because many of them think Chapter 2 of The Phantom Pain prove that the game is rushed out before it is finished. Well, GamesRadar did a very compelling argument against this. Go check it out.
Anyhow, it is true that only a few missions in Chapter 2 are new mission, while the rest is old mission on harder difficulty. However, because of how well the missions are designed and how fluid the gameplay felt, playing it on higher difficulty is never frustrating. When I encounter a game over, it never felt like the game is being unfair, it's just that I am not skilled enough, and that give me motivation to develop better equipment and play more carefully, which turns me into a better player.
Of course, it also forced you to be really creative. For example, in the mission where you have to steal a PF truck guarded by 4 skull soldiers, did you know that you can just climb into the Nova Braga airport through the back, extract the truck away with a wormhole Fulton device and then ride out of the Hot Zone on the D-Horse? This is mind blowing for me because in my first attempt of the mission, I spent hours trying to defeat those skull soldiers.
Finally, this mission also shows that in The Phantom Pain, your enemy works on a schedule independent of your action. They don't wait for the player to walk into an invisible line to trigger an event. After you got off the helicopter, no matter what you choose to do, the escorting armored vehicles will arrive at Nova Braga airport. The truck driver stationed there will get on the truck and they will leave for the riverside port through Kiziba Camp. And this has open up all kinds of gameplay possibility unparalleled even by the legendary Metal Gear Solid 3.
Boring Side Ops (Bad)
What a wasted opportunities here. Side Ops is a grind to get through in The Phantom Pain, it is repetitive, generic and doesn't really add any new challenge to the game.
Let me list out the type of side ops mission available here, there are 157 of them, only 24 of them have real effect on the story and gameplay. The rest consist of:
- 16 mission to extract highly-skilled soldier
- 20 mission to extract prisoner
- 10 mission to capture Mother Base soldiers from Peace Walker
- 5 mission to rescue Diamond Dog soldiers
- 16 mission to eliminate heavy infantry soldier
- 15 mission to save / kill puppet zombie soldier
- 14 mission to eliminate (read: belly crawl your way through and extract) armored vehicle unit
- 14 mission to eliminate tank unit (same tactic as above)
- 1 mission to save Kojima
- 4 mission to capture animal
- 10 mission to clear mine
- 1 mission to extract material container
- 7 mission for target practice
At this point, I just want to ask, what has gone wrong here? Peace Walker have a really diverse Side Ops. Why in the world would this game have such terribly boring side quest? Think of the interesting things that could be done in this huge world.
In Afghanistan alone, you can help the Taliban destroy Soviet supply truck, kidnap Soviet officer, help Soviet personnel to defect, provide sniper cover for the Taliban, dress as Soviet officer, infiltrate Soviet base and take scandalous picture of high ranking personnel to blackmail them for information. In your leisure time, maybe partaking in horse racing, or Afghan Polo like in Rambo 3.
In Angola-Zaire Border Region, you should be able to walk into civilian and accept quest from them. You can rob PF ration supply truck. Maybe hunt animal to provide food the local population. Maybe meet a few African warlord like Jonas Savimbi, that would be cool, right? But no, do the same thing over and over again with minimal variation. Where's the fun in that? I guess what I am trying to say is that this game deserve a better side ops.
Rescuing Wildlife (Why?)
The game also has some animal rescue mission where you will have to place capture cage near LZ all over the map. On paper, hunting wildlife seems like a good idea for this game, but the execution is simply not good enough, a lot of the animal are captured automatically using a cage, instead of the player personally hunting down each animal with the tranquilizer gun like in Metal Gear Solid 3. To make things worse, most of the animal you saved won't even show up in the animal conservation platform, which makes the whole thing feels tacked on and half-baked.
Managing Mother Base (Good)
Wall of texts and statistics, in the hand of another developer, managing the mother base might become a chore. Thankfully, in the hand of Kojima Production, it is surprisingly fun, addicting even if I may say so myself. It encourage you to use non lethal weapon in order to get as many high ranking soldier as possible, which increase your heroism, and after each heroism circle is filled, it unlocks higher ranks soldiers in the field.
As the mother base is quietly churning out weapons and items you ordered in the background, there is also a constant sense of progress in the game. Much in the same way as the missions, the mother base works on a time based mechanic independent of the player actions, so even if you are just sitting in the ACC listening to tapes, the development process will still go on. And once in a while the notification system will announce that the development has completed, reassuring you that no time is being wasted while you're sitting there, listening to Miller's Maxi Buns.
In conclusion, I guess there are no such thing as a perfect game, and as far as Metal Gear Solid V goes, it is not even the best Metal Gear Solid games in the series. There are flaws and plot holes here and there, but that doesn't mean it is not genuinely good. Far from it, this is technically the most polish Metal Gear game ever. As for the unfinished plot, knowing Kojima's design philosophy, I think it is still too early to tell whether this is done intentionally to give you the "phantom pain" or it is really the result of a rushed job.
P/S: Did you know that Zanzibar Land is actually Tselinoyarsk?
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