Let’s find out what happened to Vapor Snake and rescue Miller!
Episode 5-1: Skulls in the Mist…Cut Commentary
Episode 5-2: Catching Up (Cassette Tapes)
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Vapor Snake may know the basics of CQC, but not the basics of driver etiquette.
I love Chip’s attempt to mix old MGS voices with MGSV voices.
Also I hate how… I don’t really know how to phrase it but there’s such a disconnect because I’m so used to the old voices that when you listen to the casette tape briefings I can’t tell who is talking at first because I was JUST introduced to these new voices like 20 minutes ago and I’m already supposed to recognize who’s Snake and who isn’t. I dunno if that makes sense or if that’s just me who feels that way.
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Yeah, I definitely get that same odd dissonance from the new VOs - I had some trouble telling Snake and Ocelot apart during this episode, they’re both so very Guttural and Manly.
Vape Snake existing on stoner time and managing to complete his missions (or not, in this case…) through sheer serendipity and dumb luck continues to be hilarious.
Just wait until you’ve got Miller on the radio. A lot of people have a really hard time telling the difference between him and Ocelot.
A TRIANGLE OF ETERNAL CONFUSION? In my ears? Sounds like this LP will mix well with allergy meds…
I just hope Snake gets some cool add-ons for his new prosthetic arm. Like a champagne whisk or a weed whacker, or something.
Just to be an incredible pedant: you can’t ride horses in first person in Skyrim, unfortunately (though you could in Oblivion). It forces third-person for that - unless you use mods. Mods to the rescue.
When I played I had no idea you could respond to Miller there by pressing the “action button”. Obviously because there’s no button prompt for it, but also because I played on PC and I’m used to playing on PC. There are an awful lot of buttons to choose from, and hitting them at random isn’t really a thing you do. A general “action button” isn’t as much of a concept on PC.
So yeah I left Miller hanging. 
Also man, the video codec really did not like the game’s night-vision effect.
… ok so who’s voice was that during the time paradox?
I like to think Vapor Snake is the canonical Big Boss (minus Miller dying) and the reason Big Boss became so legendary is the really dumb shenanigans he pulled
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But Ocelot embellished the stories on the re-telling,making him look more like a terrifying badass than a doofus who happens to get really lucky. Because of course Ocelot would do that, what with his massive man-crush.
That was Ocelot.
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I mean that would be in line with the original MSX games. His soldiers are just as high as he is and think hearing an owl means it’s night time.
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Well I can’t believe I didn’t know about that secret action button command. I’m sure I’ve played that mission half a dozen times and always left Miller hanging. I figured it was just weird writing and Boss was a silent protagonist outside of cutscenes. Now I wonder if there are any more instances like that.
I also had always assumed that taking three days in the first mission would just lead to an automatic game over screen or something, I didn’t realize it was a more subtle failure state.
Discovering music tapes is one of my favorite impressions from this game. Like, I very distinctly remember sneaking up on an outpost with a bunch of Soviet soldiers standing around listening to Kids In America, or the time I was scoping out Lamar Khaate Palace and the directional microphone picked up Maneater as I passed over one of the windows. Just ambient noise and then suddenly “–ohh, here she comes–”. Like OH, I guess I know what song I’M getting next. This game was a memorable experience, I loved it [/anecdote].
I got the tape for Take on Me and promptly never used ANY other tape for the chopper. Music in this game is great.
I’m so scared of the potential for YouTube’s automatic music flagging to get these videos in trouble 
but I’m thinking maybe the fact that there’s basically always other environmental noise and sometimes dialogue happening at the same time will keep us all safe?! 
Not really, it’s a crapshoot. For a streaming project I’m doing I apply a reverb effect to the music to make it sound like it’s playing in an arena (It’s a video game wrestling show), and while that lowered the number of times I’ve had to deal with copyright claims they still happen ocasionally.
Oh, and if anyone cares what music merely gets claimed and what music gets a video blocked and where… here’s a nice tool: https://www.youtube.com/music_policies
Evading the Skulls is extra hard because they’re actually coded to home in on you. They’ll change direction to go down the slope or across the bridge to block off your path even though they can’t see you, just to make it as difficult as possible. You have to do a lot of fiddling with magazine throws and changing your position under and around the bridge to basically trick them into a spot where you can dash past.
If all else fails we should just have Grant do acapella covers of all the songs in the game
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I think what’s lost most in terms of the casettes feeling a lot more disconnected than codecs is that you don’t have the context the codecs had. With the codec or radio you could just hit up a phonebook of people any time you like to check if they had anything to say about whoever you’re staring at or whatever you’re laying in, and even if most of the time they wouldn’t answer or would repeat a line from the past it’d still feel rewarding if just one person acknowledged you. It felt like Snake stopping for a breather with his pals who are there with him, where the cassettes you can be certain were some time ago in a closed room or helicopter far away.
I also missed that action button prompt when Miller asks you to “say it again.” Though honestly, it’s appropriate that you easily can miss it.