MOD EDIT:

Spoiler policy for this topic: Absolutely NO story discussion spoilers in this thread. Use the other pinned thread to discuss story spoilers. In addition, if you think the item or weapon or whatever you're about to discuss could be considered a spoiler by some people, then please mark it as such and use the spoiler block tools to hide it. If you break spoiler policy you may be asked to stop participating in the thread, if you spoil something maliciously for another user you may find yourself unable to participate in more than just this topic for awhile. Please respect the fact that others want to avoid MGSV spoilers. Thanks!

With the The Phantom Pain about to be in the hands of a lot more people in the coming hours, I thought it would be good to have a thread to contain general discussion pertaining to MGSV, in which we can discuss gameplay tips, tactics, and thoughts on the game as people progress through. If wish to talk about the story (and associated spoilery material) please do so in the allocated thread. With the game being open world with many different ways of completing missions, I suspect it will be a haven for "water-cooler talk", or, forum discussion.

I was lucky enough to get the game last Thursday, and have spent about 55 hours with it so far. The game tells me I am 43% of the way done, and I'm about 2/3s of the way done with the story missions. I can easily see myself putting another 50 hours into the game in the pursuit of completing everything, which I definitely want to do because this game is so much fun to play. Even in a year that I consider to have been chock full of great games, I feel confident in putting this game in my ten favourites of the year. And I'm not even done!

There's an interesting little titbit in the official guide for the game, written by Kojima himself, that discusses his original intent for the Metal Gear series and how it's became known as a stealth/espionage franchise. He explains that he always wanted to make an infiltration simulator, in which the player could explore and react to different circumstances as they saw fit, but hardware limitations pushed him towards a stealth focus. Even in older games like MGS4 we could see him exploring the possibility of players being able to take a more action-orientated approach whilst still succeeding. But MGSV truly does feel like the full realization of that principle. Stealth is there, and is encouraged in some situations, but there are so many options at your disposal that it rarely feels like you're forced into any one play style. I've gravitated towards stealth as I typically play these games non-lethally, but on the odd occasion I've enjoyed tearing up a outpost with a grenade launcher or some well placed C4. Curious to see what the duders at Giant Bomb make of the gameplay.

http://www.giantbomb.com/metal-gear-solid-v-the-phantom-pain/3030-40796/forums/mgsv-spoiler-thread-options-1781579/

I've adjusted the thread to suit gameplay discussion only. I'll let someone else set up a story/spoiler thread.

It's a fun game so far(I got the game on Saturday), but I find that playing it for long stretches really tires me out. I've gotten lost more than once. Spent many tries and over an hour just trying to figure out where to go during the Honeybee mission. Currently I'm at a big base during episode 14 I believe(It's the one that starts when you see Huey), and I have no idea what I'm gonna do to get into the target area. This might be more a "at this point, I'm too exhausted to think about stuff" kind of things(especially since both of those have other big enemy areas you have to get through first), but I go in stealth first, guns blazing when that fails, and finally I ride around on the side of D-Horse, which works best of all. If the odds aren't TOO overwhelming though, and if I need to go inside a small base or something where a horse would be discovered, it really helps to use explosions to lure people towards you and then use more explosions to just murder them.

There's not much story, too little for my tastes, but it helps a lot that the gameplay is fun. Just the act of moving around is so fast, even on foot. Some of this stuff is probably old news to Far Cry players, but I never played them since I'm not fond of first person games. To me it's quite refreshing.

I can't seem to line up headshots with the tranq gun anymore, though. Additionaly: Playing it on a 360. Looks very pretty to me, though navel and butt textures were blurry for some reason. Mountains get real plain the higher up you look as well.

I really like the game, as in the actual game part. I'm at 40+ hours and despite the vast amount of things to do 95% of the game has pretty much been "Eliminate this dude" or "Extract this dude" There's definitely some real big problems with it like shitty checkpointing (something GZ was very good about) and being thrust into combat encounters that you're completely unprepared for. Brad in the Quick Look talks about being able to run and gun your way through the game which is an utter joke. Stealth is the focus here and if you don't sneak about you're going to get murdered pretty quickly. So, when the game starts throwing The Skulls at you it breaks. Those combat sections are unforgiving in their difficulty and have been the main reason for me hitting hard roadblocks.

The later game repeated missions are the exact same bullshit Peace Walker pulled... It sucked there and it really sucks here. Thankfully the gameplay is awesome here, but I absolutely hate that it's main mission stuff. Ridiculous.

The story is a dreadful bore. Sure, there's some cool action moments, but Kaz's constant chatter (boooooring) and Sutherland's "Eh, why'd he even bother" performance aren't memorable in the slightest.

As I said. This seems pretty complainey, but the gameplay is very, very, very good. I do very much enjoy playing it. Some of the 10/10's and whatnot are pretty damn baffling though.

I've gotten through the first hour or two on PC. Apparently, the online servers are down, so I can't get my Ground Zeros save in, and it unhelpfully says to check the website, but not what website. *shrug*

I just played about 100 minutes and all I can say is Wow...this aint your daddy's Metal Gear Solid.

This made me remember the checkpointing in GZ. I haven't gotten my copy yet but I remember loading checkpoints in GZ would sometimes place my character >50 meters away at a place I hadn't been to. Do you mean it's like that or is it a different problem?

do you guys want to talk about how weirdly pixelated the desktop icon for it is

I've only played the first two missions, as well as the third one that acclimates you to mother base's mechanics (in a really hilarious and awesome way), and boy do I love this game. The first mission is packed with all kinds of Metal Gear craziness that I love, and it all rolls into a mission that is bursting with some of the best gameplay this series has seen. It just controls and runs very well. It's a lot more responsive than GZ was, cover works a lot better, the amount of options for secondary items and interrogation/CQC options are great expanded.

MGSV feels really damn good. Well worth the wait.

I was having the same problem up until just a few minutes ago. You can enable/disable online from the pause menu at any time, so you don't need to keep restarting the game to establish a connection. Once I got it up and running it took no time to import the GZ save. Thankfully it doesn't make you restart anything too, so I guess you can do it at any time.

I disagree.

I was undoubtedly convinced of Sutherland's casting the moment, I saw the cutscene where he saves Paz in GZ. The facial animations in this game are smack on, and better than any cheesy dialog. I think the majority of people will put down Sutherland simply because of Hayter. I get it, I grew up with Metal Gear. But let's be honest, his Snake voice was a very forced one and almost killed PW for me. The cutscenes here require more natural and nuanced performance.

Sutherland is good.

Is "Behind the Drapery" a track made specifically for the game? Because, holy shit. Listen to that track if you picked it up.

Also, given how the game presented BB's recovery from his coma, I can totally buy BB's apparent unwillingness to talk too much.

There are definitely some odd conversational pauses where I feel like Boss should be saying something (two specific conversations were even written as though Boss were responding to the other person, it seemed) so I'm still very curious about his lack of speech. That said, I don't mind Keifer.

I've done four or five missions and am really enjoying the different mechanics so far, knowing I am only scratching the surface. This sense of stealth dread creeps up before every town, though, and I'm hoping as things get tougher I can evolve alongside the game. Stealth's never been my strongest attribute in the Metal Gear series. I'm glad this game is slinking back from MGS4's infinite war chest model, though.

@thesecondagent: I agree he's good but I wish there was more of him. As mentioned above, some interactions seem plain odd where you would expect someone to say something and he doesn't. Plenty of instances where people talk to him and he just looks at them that feel out of place not only for the series as a whole but for those individual situations. Everything else is so organic that this one thing always stands out.

Other than that I do think he adds a proper gravity to the character we all heard so much about. Peacewalker made him basically feel like Snake in the 70's. Sutherland Big Boss feels like an imposing legendary character.

This was captured at 0430 PST on a Tuesday morning.

@honkalot: It can be completely fucked. You could spend 45 minutes to an hour sneaking about, doing your best to be a perfect stealthmaster only for everything to go wrong and get thrown back to the last checkpoint that may be at the point you entered the base/area. Some missions have multiple checkpoints, but often, unless you find an intel document or hit the thing that continues the mission you can sometimes be waiting an awfully long time for one. Also, the game likes to checkpoint you a billion miles away from bases and things you're approaching. It wouldn't be so bad if in some cases you didn't have to take down the same couple of guards, then hit a cutscene just to try again... I just don't understand why it doesn't checkpoint in places many other games would... including most of the games in the series.

@thesecondagent:It seemed fine in GZ. I don't have a problem with Sutherland replacing Hayter, I agree that he sounds like a parody of Snake in Peace Walker. Whenever he talks it's in this weird hushed/semi mumbled tone, which is kinda his thing. It's completely out of place when everyone else talks like a cartoon character. Skull Face is the absolute worst alongside Kaz. Troy Baker does his best with what limited material he has, but still sounds like he's acting in different game than the one Kiefer Sutherland is. I probably have bad things to say about Code Talker also.

@Mike: Just checked, and literally everybody in my friends list who is playing a game is playing TPP.

The gameplay here is by some margin the best in the series since Kojima's magnum opus (MGS3). Stealth is more viable and more rewarding than it was in the vast majority of MGS4, back to the MGS3 and earlier levels of effectiveness. The gameplay sandbox is perfectly matched to the open environments, in a way it simply wasn't in the cramped and restrictive locale for Ground Zeroes and the abilities and options are opened up massively versus the stripped-down Peace Walker.

MGSV feels like MGS4 never happened. It's a massive course correction. MGS4 veered off to pander to people who were really only interested in the story. MGSV is an antidote to that. Here, the gameplay is to the fore. Its modern action game controls allow people who want to just Dan Ryckert their way through to do so, but the situations, environments and encounters once again reward and encourage stealthy play.

Numerous times, I've run through a mission with an S-Rank or an A-Rank and just immediately felt that the whole thing was an exercise in practised, precise beauty. You steal through quietly, leaving none with the knowledge you were ever there. And then you make your way out, and press the trigger on your C4 to blow the shit out of something (RADAR, comms, a mission objective) because you can do so with impunity. And it. Is. Glorious.

I often said in the run up to this game coming out "I just want to sneak into and out of places". This is the last word in doing exactly that.

Would I be correct in guessing that the carbine ending in "-76U" is an AKS-74U? I saw the name in a list but without image.

It's my favorite video game rifle.

@Mike: It's pretty gross that @sweep is playing DOTA 2 instead of conforming!

@humanity: That's the only game he has been playing for years now!

This is the reason I bought Phantom Pain. I couldn't care less about the franchise as a whole, and I haven't played a Metal Gear game since the first Metal Gear on NES. Well, discounting Rising, anyway. If this game was made more in the style of MGS4 I most likely would have skipped it.

Still haven't played yet, but it downloaded last night. I want to go back and finish collecting XOF patches in Ground Zeroes so I can go on and unlock the sneaking suit for Phantom Pain, then I will have a full save properly uploaded and ready to go.

@Mike: Even the first tier sneaking suit you research makes a huge difference. You can crouch walk at full speed and guards don't hear you. The beginning of the game when you don't have it and are forced to slow walk when crouched to sneak up behind guards can be a challenge.

The combat variation of the sneaking suit makes you look like a goddamn tank though.

@humanity: I marked that last part as a spoiler...let's try to keep some of the later gear and weapons and stuff in spoiler blocks, I don't want to know EVERYTHING before I get to it.

@Mike: Sure, I mean people have seen it in trailers, but I understand wanting to go in knowing nothing.

@Mike I believe the sneaking suit is unlocked for simply having a GZ save. It's the Solid Snake outfit that is unlocked via the Deja-vu mission.

I've essentially reached the half-way point in the story/missions, so I've been making the effort to go back and S-rank every previous mission. There's some real doozies. I must of spent a couple of hours trying to S-rank mission 09. (the secret is to fulton everything)

I won't say what it unlocks, but there is definitely an incentive to go the extra mile and get those high rankings.

Huh, I found that you can still approach them at normal speed at a point, since you can CQC grab them before their alert goes off. At least on normal, I haven't attempted a hard mission yet. I've also noticed that I'm favoring CQC over tranqs a lot more than I have before. It's due in part to the fact that CQC is so much easier to execute now, but tranqing seems to have been nerfed. It's much less accurate, you can't carry many rounds for it, it uses a degrading silencer, and finding ammo/silencers hasn't seemed too easy. It's good, though, as it helps put more of an imperative on being naturally sneaky than relying on tranqing everything.

@atomicoldman: I think a lot of those aspects of the tranq gun can be improved with research & development.

@sunbrozak oh that would be great! I don't really care about the other suit right now, I can always go back and do that Deja Vu mission if I want the suit in the future. Thanks.

For sure, you can. The tech tree is pretty damn big in general (the amount of camo upgrades seems nuts.) I already started finding a bunch of plants that will improve the tranq rounds, but lack some resources to research them.

I'm actually kinda curious what the first things people researched was. For me it was C4 and smoke grenades, and some desert camo.

@atomicoldman: all the quiet non-lethal stuff is the hardest to research probably because it makes the game a lot easier. That said there are a ton of options and without giving away any spoilers, you can do a lot more.

I'm only about an hour in. Without spoiling, I *really* like the first sequence of the game (from game start to mission debrief). I'm only on the next area but yeah so far it seems this game is firing on all four cylinders. I was really worried because I sorta hate MGS4.

Ok, playing with a good pair of headphones is highly recommended, especially in the beginning. So glad I'm not using some tinny ass TV or PC speakers right now.

There's a couple of things in the guide that I think are worth pointing out because the game doesn't seem to tell you:

1. Choking a guard out with CQC will actually keep them out longer than a tranq. dart. Initially I thought "SLP" was always superior to "STN", but that is not the case.

2. While SIDE OPS are meant to only be completed once, you might find that you'll be able to replay certain earlier missions. This is because the SIDE OPS appear on a regional basis, with the open worlds being segmented into various regions. If you have not unlocked the next SIDE OP for a certain part of the map, it will instead offer up on older one to repeat.

Okay, I originally thought I was just gonna skip this game and watch Metal Gear Scanlon instead but I'm kind of wavering and might just pull the trigger and buy the game myself. But I have a couple general questions:

1. I haven't played Ground Zeroes (though I do own it). Does anything of significance transfer over or would I be better off just reading/watching a plot summary to get the gist of it?

2. I know literally nothing about Peace Walker. Will I be completely lost when it comes to the story in Phantom Pain? Should I watch that Peace Walker Metal Gear Scanlon video to catch up?

@milkman Nothing really significant transfers over, but it would be worth knowing the main plot points to Ground Zeroes and Peace Walker before jumping. At least if you want to get the most out of the story. Metal Gear Scanlon has you covered on both fronts.

@milkman: Hey dude...I'm pretty much like you. I haven't played a Metal Gear game since the original on NES when I was a kid. I just bought Phantom Pain this week on Steam and got Ground Zeroes for free, and spent the last week or so going through it casually. It was a TON of fun. There are a number of things you can unlock and bring over to Phantom Pain. Most notably, there are some named people (and one super secret one) that you can optionally rescue in GZ that you can then get in Phantom Pain as Mother Base staff. Some of them are said to be quite good. In addition to that, there are a couple of other goodies like the GZ Sneaking Suit (which looks pretty cool - not sure what kind of bonuses it has in Phantom Pain, though) and another suit that you can get by completing an optional mission in GZ. SunBroZak mentioned in an earlier post that another thing you get is a gold version of Snake's bionic arm. I'm not sure what there is beyond that.

So, it's not anything critical, and you can totally just go and watch the entire thing on YouTube and/or watch Drew's playthrough of Ground Zeroes here on the site if you want. It isn't that long.

As far as Peace Walker goes, I didn't play that either, but I did watch some YouTube videos and kind of brushed up on the events that happened in that game. I just started Phantom Pain though, but I'm really not worried about it. From all accounts and what I've seen so far, the game seems pretty self-contained. I think I have a pretty decent idea of what is happening just by watching the videos linked in that thread here in the Phantom Pain forum that has the Peace Walker tapes in it. I don't think it's totally necessary, though. I probably spent about two hours total watching YouTube videos and listening to the Peace Walker tapes as I was sneaking around in Ground Zeroes.

I think this is a great time for people such as ourselves who haven't historically been Metal Gear Solid fans to get into the franchise. It seems to be putting a lot more emphasis on gameplay and activities and a lot less on long, drawn out cutscenes and an insane story. Which may be a negative to some people, but for someone such as myself, it's the whole reason I bought the game in the first place.

@Mike: Wait what... Gold arm? Where was this post? I did everything in GZ outside of S-Ranking Hard mode missions and don't have it.

@demoskinos: Here it is! I'm not clear on how to actually get the thing in Phantom Pain. Maybe it's an upgrade? I'm still doing the Prologue.

It's the first I've heard about this item, but I find SunBroZak to be really trustworthy when it comes to stuff like this.

http://www.giantbomb.com/metal-gear-solid-v-ground-zeroes/3030-39575/forums/getting-my-ground-zeroes-save-ready-for-phantom-pa-1781538/?page=1#js-message-8048755

I'm not sure what I did to fulfil the criteria (even the official guide doesn't specify), all I know is that I unlocked it when I transferred the GZ save over. The only thing I can think of that I did do that you may not have is s-rank the deja-vu mission.

Holy cow...they really nailed the horse movement in this game! It feels and looks go good and natural compared to any previous video game horse that I can think of. Feels just right. Anyone else spent a lot of time on horseback in real life? What do you think?

What would you say is required playing in order to really get what is going on TPP? I've played MGS 1 thru 3, but I feel like I'm missing the really crucial ones being PW and GZ. Should I play through those first before I even attempt TPP or just jump headfirst into the insanity?

@hippie_genocide: I'd recommend watching a Peace Walker movie cut and then play GZ; this is the fastest way to know that stuff. At least you have MGS3 under your belt. The main GZ quest can be done relatively quickly, but the other quests flesh out the back story more, it's entirely up to you how much you want to do. As a plus, GZ preps you well enough how to play TPP. A lot of the tapes in TPP delve into the back story without anything expositional, it requires prior knowledge of the story (MGS3 / PW / GZ) preceding this one.

Don't forget to upload your GZ save data for some extra stuff in TPP.

Adding custom music on PC is really easy. There is a folder named CustomSoundtrack in your installation directory, just drop copies of your MP3s in there (or use a symlink to your media folder like I did) and then all of the tracks will be playable through your iDroid in-game. Took only seconds to get it working.

I'm not sure if the consoles have this capability or not.

You guys should fast track to the "Active Decoy" item. It's so dumb, but so good. It's also very useful when you're trying to be stealthy.

From what I read in a review the gameplay is great but the story is not and Snake barely speaks. As someone who loved MGS1 and 2 for the conversations as much as the gameplay I am torn. On the one hand it sounds like an awesome game but it doesn't sound like it is Metal Gear anymore.

@dagas: As much as I don't think it's a great way to tell story, the cassette tapes do contain a lot of the more traditional MGS conversations and Snake/Big Boss does talk a lot more in these than he does in the actual cutscenes.

I have said it before and I will say it again: Voice work is 55% the director and 45% the actor when things are going perfectly. That voice actor has very little time to "get the vision" for a character, so it is mostly up to the script writer and sound director to say what they want. When the voice acting sucks, it typically going to be a lack of DIRECTION.

And, yeah, I do suspect that the team at Konami that writes ridiculous convoluted stories and takes years to put out convoluted games....perhaps....gives somewhat confused direction for how the lines should sound. We have heard from David Hayter that when he was first brought in for Metal Gear they were giving him directos for what they wanted that seemed counter intuitive, like being asked to say the name of Metal Gear as if it was a question - Metal Gear?