I wanna tackle some of the bigger criticisms for MGSV, mainly its story, because I feel that it does a lot of great things that feel under appreciated by the majority. The Pantom Pain is paced like a TV show. It's obvious that Kojima Productions intended for this one to be a slow burn. With a steady tension that builds as the story escalates to its conclusion. Chapter 1 perfectly captures this, its paced to fluctuate at intervals until the crescendo towards the end. The previous games were of course paced like Hollywood blockbusters, so the shift in style came as a shock. But it was a necessary change, the game is no longer linear, it's open world, and its story knows that. I play a lot of open world games, and often come to a point in these games where I need to rush through the story just to enjoy the full breadth of their content. Why? Because their stories are often paced like 2 hour movies. Sometimes I just want to go a have a game of chess, yet my sister's been kidnapped, and now I feel uncomfortable doing all of this side content. But in the end it doesn't matter that my sister has been kidnapped, because it doesn't actually effect the gameplay in any meaningful way. It's more of a problem with me, I can't help but force myself through the story, I just don't feel comfortable exploring all of this side content when my main character should be in a state of distress.
So how does MGSV handle this? Quite damn exceptionally. MGSV starts with a pilot episode, Ground Zeroes. This pilot is the bridge between Peace Walker and The Phantom Pain. The conclusion for one, and a beginning for another. The Phantom Pain is at a stark contrast to what came before. It's filled with miserably serious characters, and very light on humour compared to Peace Walker. I often felt longing for the times of Peace Walker, how fun and witty it was. I missed it. But now I was in MGSV, a direct sequel, yet very different game.
The Phantom Pain opens with a very drawn out experience. You wake up from your 9 year coma, and are now bed ridden. It takes a whole hour before you escape the hospital. It's a very memorable experience, and it's also a goodbye. A goodbye to the previous Metal Gear games. They were highly scripted, and of course linear. The hospital is the perfect analogy of what came before. When you escape, and enter Afghanistan for the first time, it's supposed to be overwhelming, Ground Zeroes attempted to ready you for the experience, but it still didn't anticipate you for the complete freedom that this new world opens for you. After rescuing Kaz, you are now introduced to the real game. The story knows this. It lets you, the player, the Big Boss, play at your own pace. You're free to experiment with the side ops, explore the world, dabble in all of the games content, and the story doesn't intrude. No early story mission has a cliff hanger, or something to entice you to play more. It merely grooves at your beat, and continues when you want it to. Every early episode is self-contained, they all end with a credits sequence. You don't feel guilty for letting the story hang while you build your motherbase, because it doesn't. It accounts for your agency.
Now the brilliant thing about this is when the story does take centre, it forces you the player to pay attention to it. The Phantom Pain isn't afraid to hurt your gameplay, it will literally kill your staff you've spent hours building when a virus breaks out. You can attempt to identify the cause, and treat it. But the only way to cure it, is by continuing the story. This is great, because the things you value, you have built, are being hurt. It effects you the player, not just Big Boss the character. This idea really comes to fruition later in the game, when you have to personally execute staff members when another viral outbreak takes place. In a scene opposite of the hospital escape, in the only other linear episode in the whole game. You are now the executioner. It was one of the most intriguing things I've seen a game do in regards to connecting its mechanical world with its narrative world, and just after that mission, the game goes one step further.
Quiet is a very controversial character, I personally find her appearance distracting, and that is the best word I can use to describe it. It doesn't offend me, but it feels as though her sexual titillation is an attempt to make her more likeable. As if they felt her actual character wasn't enough to make her arc have impact. It's a shame, because it means she often gets overlooked. If one ignores her ridiculous appearance, and looks at how she fits into the bigger picture, then it's another example of MGSV's clever combination of narrative and mechanics. You bond with her not through cut scenes, but through gameplay. As a female character she surprisingly has actual agency, she is her own person, and bonds with you. She starts out being difficult to play with, going from the obedient D-dog to an actual person with freewill definitely has some growing pains. But the more you take her on missions, the more you work with her, the more useful she becomes. You become to rely on her, she becomes an asset to you, and then you lose her. Because the story loses her, because Big Boss loses her. Depending on how you play the game, this can be incredibly shocking. She becomes so overpowered mechanically, that taking her away can cause a huge reversion in how you play the game. It'd quite literally be like taking away the Red 9 handgun from Resident Evil 4 if for some reason the narrative dictated it. It'd hurt Leon, and it'd hurt you.
That's the thing that makes The Phantom Pain one of the best games I have ever played. It truly shows off Hideo growing as an excellent creative designer. MGSV is the closest he has came to capturing this idea he has envisioned ever since Metal Gears creation 20+ years ago. MGSV is the first time he has truly let the mechanics and narrative gel together, to let you the player dictate it, and to be imprisoned by it. MGSV is one of the most consistently designed games I have ever seen, everything mechanically is relevant to the narrative, and the narrative is mechanically relevant to the player. Hell, even the ending that everyone likes to take so literally, is tying its mechanical and narrative theme together. You get Big Boss' identity, and Big Boss gets yours. He thanks you the player for always being there, you deny your identity, you aren't you when play this game. You are Punished "Venom" Snake, a phantom of Big Boss. You quite literally live his identity through everything you do mechanically. There's so much beauty in its notion, so many ways that it speaks to you the player.
Everyone gets upset over Venom's limited dialogue, yet if he were too rounded out as a character, than it would hurt the games theme. If we are to be Big Boss mechanically, than our actions can't be ruined by his characterisation narratively. Venom's characterisation is dictated by how we play the game, he has to accommodate our agency, he is our avatar for how we interact with this virtual world. One of the rewards we get for finishing the Phantom Pain is being able to unmask ourselves, to genuinely play as our created avatar. It's our reward for this games design coming to fruition within its conclusion.
The Phantom Pain is probably the most ambitious game I have ever played. We can all get hooked on what was cut, what didn't work, or what was poorly implemented. But in the end, the game is still an incredibly polished, content filled adventure. It stands on its own at all fronts.
I can't express how much this game has impacted my creative thinking. I've manage to take so much from its ambitions, and I haven't even talked about the amazingly directed cut scenes, all in one shot with very few cuts, all to further tie the mechanical and narrative world together. Or the inspiring yet sadly poorly implemented FOB multiplayer end game of ridding the world of nuclear weapons. The game is littered with issues, but when looking at everything it did manage to accomplish, and respecting its ambitions, the game is a behemoth of creative ideas all directed towards one theme. That of playing as Big Boss in an open ended game of tactical infiltration. An idea Hideo has been trying to master since the franchises foundation.