So I think the reason Miller is always so dismissive towards you extracting guys is because it’s the same audio from Ground Zeroes - it makes sense in that situation he’d be skeptical about extracting people, as you’re operating at the end of a long supply line without fulton support. I guess they didn’t record something new for MGSV - maybe because the Japanese didn’t have that tone in the first place.
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The fact that they patched that out instead of fixing the S Rank glitch is depressing.
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Gentlepeople, we have ourselves a mascot.
And have another comic:
http://www.awkwardzombie.com/index.php?page=0&comic=081516
I believe the idea from MGS4 with factions fighting against eachother was an idea that was in development for this game, but was actually cut from release – or, at least, that’s what I heard. (Can’t recall the exact place I heard it, but once I did I remember thinking “oh, that explains a lot.”) There were supposed to be all these little fronts littered around the map between the Hamid and the Soviets. It was more or less to operate like a kind of weather system depending on what fronts were where, what bases/outposts were controlled by whom, and which parts of the open world would have soldier presence as opposed to them being holed up in the bases all the time.
I think the problem they ran into was that a lot of the open world areas that were not directly in the bases provided too little cover for it to work out as ad-hoc stealth sections – or they didn’t have enough time to make all the areas which weren’t bases and outposts rigged for patrols. For it to have worked, the level design would’ve needed to be more or less on the scale as Breath of the Wild. (And Konami wasn’t going to be in any position to agree to that.)
There are a few areas in Afghanistan where, just off the beaten path, there is all this interestingly formed natural areas that is just not used or anything – not in any mission or side op. There’s this one grove between outposts 23 and 24 I can identify as looking set up for something, but nothing ever happens there. I think the way they painted over that area’s lack of use is to just label it as a shortcut on the map at some absurdly high intel level – even though it isn’t actually any shorter. These little oddities in the level design appear less and less as the game goes on, as the space between bases are either used for only rendezvous points or open roads. Most of the ones I can think of are all in the southern half of Afghanistan, which is the part of the game that got the most attention in development.
Once the idea was cut, each well-designed area outside the bases and outposts was either rolled into a mission area or turned into an area for one specific side-op. This part of the game does a really good job at covering up the spaces left behind the cut content; even rewriting parts of the story to justify it. But there are still some leftovers for the idea in place; Russian and Phasto require different interpreter positions on staff, for example. It’s why the outposts are all over the place, despite having no particularly interesting level designs and otherwise being all samey. Future areas of the game provide even more clues to the faction system existing.
Of course, the downside is that once that system was cut out, they didn’t have anything left to make the open world segments interesting or stimulating beyond what’s there by default. I never played Peace Walker, but when I watched Chip’s LP of it for the first time after finishing MGSV, my first thought was “wow! it’s like MSGV, but without the filler.” And I shocked myself to wonder why I thought that, because MSGV has to be better because it obviously technically superior, right? But I genuinely thought the gameplay looked like someone took a video of MGSV and cut out all the boring bits. I suspect a lot of the bases in MGSV were first designed or prototyped using derivative of Peace Walker’s engine, and they filled out the open world from there. Even the base icons on the map are the same ones used in Peace Walker. (Some of the smaller bases like Ghwandai Town or Da Shago Kallai could’ve easily fit on the PSP’s engine.) This means the bases in MSGV are super interesting, but the places outside are all pretty dull. Even though the ability to approach a base from any angle and have the ability to scope it out ahead of time is core, the constant switch between base and open road makes the pacing of the overall game much slower than in Peace Walker.
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Soooo… Fat Cock badges in the near future, then?
Yo I dunno if it’s ever talked about but did Boss light his vape pen with his iDroid?
tbh after a while I started immediately kicking out every troublemaker I recruited. I just found having them to be way more trouble than they’re worth.
The first time (and probably several other times when my mind was elsewhere) I was wandering around mother base and had base personnel salute me, the CQC button prompt was up on screen of course, and the thing is that although it’s obviously intended to be a stylised fist, the icon for it also looks like a saluting hand, so…
Man I felt bad about that. The guy was saluting me and rather than salute back, I made Snake totally deck him. Just lay him out cold. It’s even worse that they slowly get up, salute again, and thank you for it afterwards.
I also felt bad about collecting a crowd of eternally saluting personnel while I just stood there fiddling with the idroid like a pre-teen trawling Facebook on their phone, so now that I think of it, I remember I would consciously go stand somewhere out of the way of their patrols so as not to bother them.
Forget Venom Snake, for me it was Apologetic Snake.
Edit: Oh okay at least I’m not the only one to do that:
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That C2W easter egg is incredible. A shame we didn’t get to actually see the mission, though. It’s one of my favourites - it always gave me a great impression of how missions in the game worked and introduced me to my one true love: C4.
What all is unique about doing it as a mission vs just invading the base on your own free time? Because I did the mission and it doesn’t…really seem all THAT different? I guess it’s just a cool set up because the base is very vertically oriented?
you get paid for it
Yeah. You can see when he uses his iDroid to scan documents they’re actually smoking slightly. I think Snake is just using the scan function to light his vape.
It’s really hard to see, but if you look really closely you can see the iDroid’s is projecting an image of a little flame when Snake lights up the vape cigar.
The iDroid is an extremely expensive vape rig lighter.
Mostly just it being a fun layout for the base with a few different ways to approach it, and as an early mission works as a great tutorial for scouting important locations within a base.
This game would be drastically worsened by being as free form as Breath of the Wild. The initial level design is really constrictive - when it starts to open up later in the game, a lot of missions start boiling down to just skirting the edge of a base to find the objective, go in and be finished in a couple of minutes.
Eh, that’s arguable. The ability to climb everything would make it a far more interesting game since as a stealth game you could take the risk of climbing obstacles instead of just sneaking around in a more stealthy position. The game being open doesn’t mean ti doesn’t have confined spaces to it, it just means that it’ll be more approachable.
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This is the first episode where we get to see what happened to some of the cut content we saw in trailers for the game!
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As far as the “plant medicine” goes… It’s Afghanistan during the Afghan War. Snake is basically just harvesting hella opium poppies.
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I haven’t even watched the uncut ep halfway through, but I am ready to flip tables about MGSV going to Petra.
wordless history nerd flailing ensues