Leaving aside the fact that they have multiple side-objectives (some of which are mutually exclusive, forcing you to replay the mission if you want to do all of them), even they can be completed in some slightly extraordinary ways. Or when I sniped a target from a distance and relocated to another nearby hill… and then watched as mortar fire rained down on where I was, followed by the outpost guards searching in that direction for me, leaving me clear to sneak into the (now relatively undefended) outpost.īrilliantly, this isn’t just emergent stuff: the main missions (which tend to be more scripted) allow for plenty of possibilities, too. Like the time I had a side-op to clear a minefield, and I did so by attracting the attention of a nearby outpost and leading its guards into said minefield. Main missions unlock more upgrades, more side-ops, more buddies, more story.Īnd good grief, but it presents so many opportunities for creating emergent chaos and inadvertent hilarity.
Completing side-ops gets you the resources needed to develop these upgrades, and gives you ample opportunity to kidnap/”liberate” troops to fill out your own ranks. Upgrades to Mother Base strengthen your abilities on the field you might be able to call in artillery strikes, or get helicopter support sooner, or you might simply develop a new weapon. As you progress through the game and gather resources you flesh this out, building new struts, employing more troops, developing better weapons, and gradually improving both yourself and your forces.
#Metal gear solid v the phantom pain story series#
Heavily linked to this is the second part, the main missions, which are a series of operations that unlock in a fairly linear fashion (although you’ll often have a choice of two or three at any given time) set within limited slices of that open world.įinally, there’s Mother Base, the oil rig home of the proto-PMC you’re building up. It’s very much a game of systems, nested within each other like matryoshka dolls.įirst up is the open world, a pair of fairly vast areas in which you can wander, completing side-ops or gathering resources or abducting unsuspecting wildlife or randomly attacking outposts or hunting for 80s music cassettes or all of the above. All of these contain little systems of their own, which can be used and abused. As a game, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is composed of… I guess I’d say three fundamental parts, although all three are heavily interlinked, and two of them are very, very similar.