I’m terrible at covering news, but I will say I am very happy with everything I’ve seen from The Phantom Pain so far. Fulton Recovery, Mother Base, and all of that “metagame” goodness is going to give the game some extreme longevity. Very cool, and the new trailer is a great blend of emotion and story teasing.
Go here for the up-to-date information:
As the strange tale of Kojima’s meta-narrative becomes more complex and epic, when can we expect to see him tip his hand and explain everything? Why hasn’t he done this yet? Why does he keep his genius secret?
It’s still hard for me to figure out how the hell Metal Gear Solid V will be able to fit on the PS3 and 360, because it sounds like a behemoth. But, I have no reason to doubt that NeoGaf user “duckroll” is telling the truth when he/she says that, in the latest Famitsu magazine, Kojima has revealed the following things:
– Ground Zeroes is the prologue to Phantom Pain, and it is intended to be similar to the pre-title sequence of a Hollywood movie, where something major happens to catch the audience’s attention, before the real story starts.
– The main content in Ground Zeroes is largely meant to be a tutorial for Phantom Pain. He uses the exact word – tutorial, so there’s no doubt about this at all. The story content in Ground Zeroes is limited to the night setting in the rain, but you’ll be able to see other times of the day via the side op missions. There is no dynamic weather or day/night cycle in Ground Zeroes.
– Phantom Pain is the game which will feature the full range of expanded features carried over from Peace Walker – base building, recruiting soldiers, etc. Most of this will not be in Ground Zeroes at all. You will not be able to use the fulton recovery system in Ground Zeroes either, but there are optional captives you can rescue using the helicopter.
– The save data in Ground Zeroes will carry over to Phantom Pain, and there will be benefits in the full game for extra stuff you decide to do in Ground Zeroes.
– The reason Ground Zeroes is being released as a separate package in the first place is because the main game is taking a long time to develop due to the large amount of content. So the marketing team at Konami worked out this release format with Kojima so gamers can at least experience the prologue segment of the game earlier.
– Kojima wants to reward fans who buy both Ground Zeroes and Phantom Pain later on with some sort of content in the full game, but he hasn’t worked out the details with the marketing team yet.
– Ground Zeroes (and Phantom Pain by extension) will support a secondary display device via smartphones or tablets. It can be used to display stuff like leaderboards. There have also been feedback from people outside of Japan for a map display and so on, but Kojima has some concerns about players diverting their attention between two screens, so he’s still looking into it.
Now, assuming this translation and paraphrasing of the supposed interview (which doesn’t display when I click on the link) is accurate, the real bombshell is confirmation that Metal Gear Solid V will include building Mother Base, capturing soldiers with Fulton Recovery, research & development, and (therefore) a massive amount of replay value and layers to its gameplay.
I could not be more excited by this news, even though it was sort of mentioned before. Whether or not you believe that Ground Zeroes will be worth $20 because Kojima is calling it a glorified tutorial, doesn’t matter. What matters is that eventually, when MGSV is released, we’ll be able to build Outer Heaven with our own hands, just like we should. I’ve said before that I love how Peace Walker gives you an insight into Big Boss is different than Solid Snake, and how something as crazy as Outer Heaven could exist. Now we’ll be able to fully immerse ourselves in that role, sneaking around freely in huge environments, stealing weapons and technology, kidnapping soldiers, and doing the dirty work as we try to get revenge on Zero.
The year where sanity creeps into reality, and things get messy.
I have a theory about those who “don’t exist”. It could be wrong, or it could be a more common belief than I’m aware of, in which case it’s hardly much of a theory, but I want to share it nonetheless.
.
I think this group of people are actually real, but they simply “don’t exist” in the official sense. They’ve been officially wiped from all government records. As far as the world is concerned, they are nonexistent. I believe Kojima purposely labeled them as people who don’t exist in order to mislead us into thinking they’re hallucinations of Big Boss after his coma.
Powerful psychics, capable of summoning flaming demons with their minds and float through walls; misshaped and soulless soldiers who leap into the air and shuffle toward you; they seem to be demons…
“We are not your kind of people — won’t be cast as demons”
That’s a lyric from the Garbage song used in the trailer. This is probably the most important line in the song, considering we know Kojima was calling MGSV “the Demon Project” (or “Ogre Project”) for a long time. Everything is pointing to these people either being real demons (not likely) or hallucinations. But I like my idea more for a couple of reasons that I’ll get to.
They refuse to be cast as demons, and refuse to “not exist”. The fact that there are quotes around the words “don’t exist” implies that this is a label they’ve been given, not actually true. Why put quotes around it if its simply a statement of fact?
The CIA has marked these people as “nonexistent demons”, and after Big Boss’ nine year coma, he too has been marked as somebody who “doesn’t exist” anymore. He’s officially been considered dead and forgotten. He lost, and has fallen into mercenary Hell. The CIA and enemies of Big Boss won, and now he has to join those who “don’t exist” in order to rebuild his influence and make his comeback. He’s one of those “demons”, and this might even bolster his future obsession with recruiting “demons” from around the world, much like the Cobra Unit, or FOXHOUND.
To me, this all makes for a much more interesting story than Big Boss being brain-damaged and hallucinating. Truth being stranger than fiction. Can somebody really float through a wall and summon telekinetic demons? I don’t know, but The Pain could control bees and shoot them like bullets, The End could come back from the dead using photosynthesis, and the dead ghost of The Sorrow could cause it to rain blood. Oh, and Volgin could shoot endless amounts of electricity from his hands, and control machinery just by grabbing random wires. Just sayin.
One last thought. The whole theme of losing limbs and being stuck with the pain until you go crazy certainly makes Revolver Ocelot’s future psychosis more logical, don’t you think?
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is going to do everything, according to this interview Hideo Kojima did with computerandvideogames.com.
Update: The following picture-painting was under the impression that The Phantom Pain would be released episodically, which it won’t apparently. The game is simply episodic in how you explore the different missions it offers.
This might be hard to wrap your head around, so let me paint a picture for you.
Afghanistan is huge, and the trailer only shows a relatively small part of the whole area. Within the area there are a series of clues, “side quests”, and objectives that further the story but also just provide interesting benefits, but initially your goal is to rescue Kaz and escape with him on your back. You get back to Mother Base (or its equivalent) and plan your next move. You’re free to go back to Afghanistan and do other things, like kidnap people, steal technology and weapons, destroy enemy outposts, and so on.
Several areas are available with the initial release, including Cuba, and each of them can be revisited for strategic purposes, much like Peace Walker. There may even be a tug-of-war style fight for territorial control.
Meanwhile, “Those Who Don’t Exist” are hunting Big Boss across the world, phantoms in his own mind, who essentially serve as boss fights in situations where there shouldn’t logically be any. From a game design point of view it’s a perfect excuse to add new random challenges and extreme situations (flaming unicorn chase) anywhere.
One thing I bet we can count on is travelling the world to recruit new members, such as Emmerich, Quiet, Eli, and Code Talker. Each of them is probably going to be on a different continent, and have their own aspect of the game to contribute.
Maybe it’s just me, but this sounds like a dream come true. How the hell will this all work on the current platforms? I don’t know. Will multiplayer ever be cooperative? Will tablets factor into that? Could be. We know that Ground Zeroes itself will be solo, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be added later to the main game, now that we know MGSV itself is going to have an online mode.
If Kojima can pull off even half of this stuff, it will be a truly monumental sequel.
See, this is why I didn’t bother analyzing the trailer much — I knew Threedogg would do a much better job. He connects all the plot points together, including Eli being Liquid Snake, Miller being the Beret Man who tortures Emmerich, and more.
Read on, folks! And make sure to follow him on Twitter @ThreedoggGaming and over at his Twitch channel.
Before I comment on the trailer contents, let me say this game is going to be cross-platform and cross-generational, as expected. I have to say it looks gorgeous in a meaningful way. The dust storm, spotlights, animation, and aesthetics feel like they go hand-in-hand with actual gameplay considerations, and this is just one of many convincing environments we’ll have the privilege to explore.
