Metal Gear Solid V: Meticulously Flawed

I've spent a long time trying to rationalize and piece together Kojima's reasons for all of the disappointing aspects of Metal Gear Solid V they're going to be in-game spoilers for Metal Gear Solid V 2 & 3 you've been warned I know a lot of people like myself were introduced to the Metal Gear series with V and that not everyone went back to play the older games so while there's already a good amount of videos covering why this game is so disappointing in spite of how amazing it is I want to touch on that so we're all on the same page for the rest of this essay the first and this is the most apparent change from the rest of the numbered series formula is that V is now open-world and nonlinear the side games portable ops and Peace Walker worked with a similar non-linear formula and made a bit more sense since those were PSP games to be played on the go however with the longer play sessions that come with console and PC gaming it only serves to hurt the game spacing the original series didn't have this problem the cutscenes and codec calls were long-winded sure but I still consider those games very well paced narrative Lee I can't say the same for V secondly our beloved and talkative protagonist snake has been replaced with a delusional character who thinks he's the real snake almost all players also believed they were playing to make but there's one major difference between the real snake and this guy save for the change in voice actor the new snake venom snake is only a few steps away from a silent protagonist whereas the real snake big boss was always willing to trip in some light-hearted jokes or discussion about guns and tactics and even some action movie one-liners that takes care of the cremation Big Boss and by extension Venom's descent into evil is a huge part of these story yet venom almost never talks thirdly the codec calls that explained to the story have been replaced by cassette tapes practically hidden away in a menu when the older games for his time and made you listen to the codec calls if somehow felt less annoying than be allowing you to listen to them at any time listening to them in game play makes playing the game harder and it makes it harder to absorb what's going on and the cassette so if you're anything like me you'll probably just end up going to the aerial command center and fiddling around in your menus while listening to the cassettes there's a lot of genuinely interesting stuff going on in these cassettes but they're just presented with so little confidence as if the essential story beats hidden inside are only meant for the hardcore Metal Gear fanatics I know I didn't bother with him on my first playthrough before I'd touched the other games fourthly and in my opinion this is what holds the game back from being something different but almost as good as mgs 2 and 3 is the side ops while I don't think the gameplay is quite as fun or interesting as 2 or 3 there's no denying it's fantastic easily the best open-world stealth I've ever played and this is the tightest snake is ever controlled compared to the clunky but effective controls of the original games but these side ops just suck the life out of me there are a handful maybe 15 or so different objectives that get copy-pasted to 157 side-ops and in the case of every one of them you'll just want to knock out everybody and fulton extract everything the reason for the side ops is that there's no ranking system on them so you don't have to worry about using wild strategies like aerial sleeping gas dispersal or riding in with Dee Walker and ranking everyone in battle rather than stealth you can use any of the wide variety of tools of your disposal without worrying about the game judging you other than the invisible karma system if you're using lethal tactics sounds great right here's the actuality of it go in neutralize everybody however you see fit extract everyone and everything that's valuable to you and go on to the next one and do that a hundred and fifty times I always start my play sessions going into one of the two open worlds and just running around doing all the side ops that are available before starting a story mission so I'd spend maybe forty-five minutes going around the map before returning to the aerial command center not here list updated I felt more like Sisyphus pushing a rock uphill eternally than a powerful mercenary changing the face of the world every time I went on to do a story mission I felt like I was doing something wrong since I still had side-ops to do and each story mission would only add more while the short-term gameplay is fantastically fun on the long-term and thanks almost exclusively to these side-ops was more like a chore on an ever-expanding to-do list oh and the entire third act just isn't in the game leaving countless story beats unresolved so while I know I wasn't briefed those are the things that I think made Metal Gear Solid V disappointing and with that framework in place we can get to the meat of this video speculating on why Kojima made these decisions and what artistic purpose they're meant to serve hence the name the main theme of this game is phantom pain when somebody loses a limb they'll often feel pain where that limb would be if they still had it this is phantom pain and while that certainly does apply to cos and venom it also applies to the player things that were lost Envy that I described earlier or the limb that we've lost and we're left feeling for them the entire time as I said earlier the open-world and mission by mission structure does much more to hurt the story than it does to enhance the gameplay and just as act 1 is ending we're treated to four missions that all end in a to be continued right in the middle of the action were magically teleported to the ACC to develop weapons change our loadouts and maybe even do some side ops before selecting the next mission and going right back to where we left off if you're like me you'll immediately select the next mission as the previous ended in a cliffhanger for these four missions we get the original Metal Gear Solid experience the first is a careful walk through a valley of snipers followed by a stealth romp through a mansion which felt more like the originals than anything else in five followed by a daring escape when the occupants turned to pseudo zombies then our escape dropper goes down in an airfield for the second mission in which we have a mini boss fight against four members of the school unit who are incredibly powerful and we're stealth is of little value once that's done we move on to the third mission another stealth section through school fascias fortress ok b02 the metal gear skull face is built and lastly the fourth mission a bombastic boss fight against the metal gear with all of Diamond Dogs forces back in you these four missions are brilliantly paced assuming you play them back-to-back and hark back to the original Metal Gear Solid games and their linearity and clear order of events in my mind this is meant to remind the player just how incredible a linear Metal Gear Solid V could have been almost criticizing the player for wanting all of that freedom the game gives you to ignore the pressing issues of the story and do whatever you want whenever which is further driven home by the magical teleports back to the ACC between missions the game reminds us of what we've lost here so that we're left feeling for it after the end of that fourth mission we also see a switch in cutscenes to a snappier mode of direction where before this the cutscenes were mostly composed of floaty and interesting long takes here we see much more hard cuts for an ultimately more cinematic experience and they're used to great effect cutting between distant and close objects showcasing the power of the engine and giving us exciting shots of helicopters taking off and soldiers getting wiped out by the Metal Gear this game easily has the highest production value of anything I've ever played something the Metal Gear Solid series has always been known for and to see Hideo Kojima doing what he did in the original games directing a tight story with a pre constructed course of events with that kind of production value is absolutely incredible it's hard not to miss that even one mission later when we're back to the same repetitive song and dance we've been doing up until this point Kojima saw the industry shift towards open-world player driven experiences and it seems to me that by reminding us of just how good linearity can be he's lashing out at the sort of player the measures of the games worth and freedom so onto the second issue venom snake everyone loves David Hayter and his portrayal of snake and on a surface level it seems like the main reason for the twist of finding out in the venom is a totally different character is to acknowledge that any random gamer can be a badass Metal Gear fighting master of stealth much like riding an mgs2 eventually throwing away the dog tags with the player's name at the end of the game at the end of this game we see venom snake firing up an Amiga to play through the original Metal Gear however on another level when Kojima replaces David Hayter with Kiefer Sutherland it's meant to build on the phantom pain idea we see David Hayter in the beginning playing the man we'd later find out as the real Big Boss and then the short time we have with him he still spouts out information in action-movie one-liners with the same flair that we've always known snake for then when we get to the meat of the game we have Kiefer Sutherland's rather dry perform and shown to us parsley and Venom's very few lines throughout the game we want to hear snake saying awesome stuff but instead we hardly get anything this is driven home in the first mission after the prologue where we have to rescue Koz from his captors in Afghanistan he practically begged snake to say one of his catchphrases kept you waiting huh magic spot can't you waiting on the venom just refuses to opting instead to say nothing at all just like the player causes feeling for something that's gone missing snakes big mouth it's clever that causes the one who has this moment since he's also one of the two characters to feel the literal phantom pain of his missing limbs another major story beat that the game spends a lot of time on is the vocal cord parasites which grow when a certain language is spoken by the host school face intends to use them to eradicate language specifically English the world's lingua franca in order to divide the world liberating us as he puts it from the merging of social consciousness brought on by such a prominent language he intends to replace spoken language with the language of deterrence selling nukes to every nation and pf' in the world a very twisted interpretation of the bosses will separating people from blindly following their nationalities in creating world where the tides of war shift so rapidly that the change in the times that turns neighbors to enemies happen so often that people start taking on a more worldly view like she had to me on top of the obvious parallel between the eradication of language and venomous snakes sparse dialogue this Kojima is saying do you think my earlier games had too much dialogue and too little action well now your enemy is someone who thinks the exact same another attack on the players this time sarcastically giving them what they asked for opposite of mgs2 where he exaggeratedly used codec calls in the most long-winded way possible re-explaining controls to Ryden after we've already learned how to play the game with snake after receiving backlash for the frequent use of codec calls in mgs1 and mgs2 he sarcastically doubled down on codec calls and an mgsv he sarcastically under uses them and makes a plot about choosing action over language which segues me to the third disappointment I mentioned the replacement of codec calls with cassette tapes the long-winded exposition of previous games is still there in all its glory only this time snake barely speaks and the player can listen to them during missions what I mentioned earlier about how it's hard to digest the exposition during gameplay encouraging players to just sit in the ACC for 15 minutes listening to cassettes seems like another attack on the player freedom that's a equally demanded of modern game devs as well as further building on that idea of action over dialogue it's like he's saying sure you can play the game while listening to codec calls but you're gonna miss a lot and ultimately end up confused for all your boorishness and impatience fourthly and this one gets me really steamed the repetitive is all hell side-ops this seems like the commentary against players who judge a games worth by its length considering how short the other mainline mgs games are as well as an attack on completionists doing these missions is essential to getting the best gear and properly advancing the players move set and there can only be so many active at once so say you just finished the first act the side aapke the legendary jackal appears on your list and once you do that side up you can get the wormhole fulton one of the best upgrades in the game but if you have too many side ops in Africa that you still haven't finished you'll have to do those first then return to the ACC so that the new side ops activate and hope to god that you've done enough to queue up the jackal on top I'm sure plenty of players who aren't completionists like myself turned up their noses to the long list of say me side ops and in turn didn't get to use some of the awesome upgrades even when they were much farther in the story than you're meant to get them so from the completionist perspective it seems this game was ment to be played from the players left feeling empty inside doing the same missions over and over for basically no reason even narrative Lee the side ops are just random jobs you take up for some other group that has no connection to the story whatsoever as opposed to the other mgs games in which every action brought a gameplay and narrative consequence while this is a small detail I also think this is why the Snake Eater theme song appears in the game another reminder of what we've lost more phantom pain I think if there is anything to be read into the shortcoming of the game this would be it although in middlee I may be reaching lastly and this is the most obvious point the entire third act just isn't in the game its absence leaving tons of story beats unresolved you can watch a rough copy of some of the third act cutscenes on youtube or on a DVD that came with a collector's edition of the game and it seems like these cutscenes somewhat complete the missing link that this game was promised to be we find out how liquid and Psycho Mantis come to power and how venom snake becomes the evil villain of Metal Gear 1 we learn what happens to sylenth Rufus how the English strained the vocal cord parasite was destroyed what Eli and the boys uprising was all leading to and just generally wrap up the themes of the story in a satisfying way it's hard to say if this act was cut because of budgetary constraints Kojima's phantom pain mindset behind the game's design or Kojima spite for the fans and for the Metal Gear series in general or if it was just a combination of the three I have to wonder if he intended for the game to induce phantom pain from the beginning or if he decided on that after learning just how much Konami was going to control and sterilizes game but either way this is the most clear-cut example of the game leaving players with a lasting phantom pain as kojima promised so why did Kojima even want to leave us with the phantom pain why not a bombastic tribute to his talents as he wraps up the series as he intended to do with Metal Gear Solid 3 I've got one major idea revenge revenge is one of the most prominent themes in mgs V though a lot of its presence is hidden away in those cassette tapes firstly the whole reason venom is brought back to life from his coma is so that he can get revenge on skull face and cypher for destroying the old mother base and as a consequence the entirety of the games events can be summarized as Diamond Dogs getting revenge and then cleaning up the mess caused by their revenge volgen also known as the man on fire is completely driven by revenge against big boss after he destroyed the shag Ahad and foiled Williams plans in mgs3 a lust for it's so powerful that it took over Psycho Mantis his mind causing him to control the man on fire who was long past dead but when man on fire finally gets a good look at snake and realizes he's not the real big boss he just seizes up and goes back to being dead the vocal cord parasite once lived in harmony with man creating the sound chambers and our throats that allow us to vocalize so that the parasites could attract humans to one another as mates until man turned that vocalization into language and drove the parasite extinct then skull face with the help of code talker brings the parasites back to life so that they can exact their revenge for humanity as he puts it he said the ethnic lenses project was sure to succeed after all the parasites and a grudge begins does humans to think we evoke them after such a long slumber just so they could fake their thirst for vengeance emmerich wants revenge on skull-faced and cypher for taking away his child Hal also known as Otacon so there is a child I've never seen his face what do you take us for hey cook it all even my child and he eventually gets it when he executes the wounded skull face and Eli or a liquid snake wants revenge on venom who he thinks is his father big boss because he thinks he's the recessive clone and blames big boss for his creation wishing to have instead never been born I was created by cypher my house floor my face was written my genes I'm the loser you oh because of you revenge is everywhere in this game and I think the game as a whole is Kojima exacting revenge on his audience Kojima didn't want to make Metal Gear 2 when he found out Konami was planning to without him he quickly rode up to the entire script on a subway ride home he wanted to make Metal Gear Solid have only to take advantage of the ability to truly direct cutscenes utilizing a 3d space but from then on every game has been something he didn't originally intend to make with mgs 2 and 3 he still seemingly had a great time making them and used those games to expand on the themes of mgs one mgs one is about how you can't let your genes control your destiny mgs 2 is about how memes are much more important to who we are than genes and how memes are beginning to be passed on irresponsibly and mgs3 is all about scenes how the current state of the world can warp our perspective of reality listen to me jack just because soldiers are on the same side right now doesn't mean they always will be having personal feelings about your comrades is one of the worst sins you can commit politics determine who you face on the battlefield and politics are a living thing they change along with the times yesterday's good might be tomorrow's evil the times as boss puts it turn what is in actuality an enemy only relatively speaking and only for a short period of time and to the sole source of evil in the world and the people's eyes Ivan played mgs4 or portable ops or most of peace Walker but from everything I've heard that attention to the Metal Gear Solid series having a message as a whole rather than an individual game someone died around this point and as George from super bunnyhop puts it it seems like four is when the games began being made with a sigh instead of a smile the fans and the corporate pressure kept on driving Kojima back to the Metal Gear Solid series when all he wanted to do was move on to greener pastures an i theorize that he knew he was going to leave Konami one way or the other after VIII and so he took that opportunity to exact his final revenge on the dedicated fans and on the Metal Gear series itself again in his super bunny hop puts it it seems like this game was made to intentionally get Tenten across the board believe the actual Metal Gear Solid fans wanting more Kojima always like to make individual characters in this games analogues for himself it takes like Oh mantis for example the entire time I played mgs one I kept thinking it's like Kojima can read my mind I would think about needing an item and then I turned the corner and find that item Psycho Mantis showcasing his ability to read the players memory card and vibrate the controller all sort of seemed like Kojima showing off as a bill at least used the ps1 Hardware creatively hell he even wanted to coat the mgs one CD with a substance that would make the room smell like blood when you got to the psycho mantis fight not to mention the fact that we see Psycho Mantis lined up with a portrait of Kojima during his cutscenes it's much more visible in the GameCube remake the Twin Snakes but it's there in the ps1 version as well it seems like in this game code talker is meant to be an analog for Kojima while skull face is meant to be an analog for the fans now hear me out code talker is forced by skull face to revive the vocal cord parasite back from the dead and replaced the world's conversation with a language of deterrence of violence just as Kojima was forced by the fans to revive Metal Gear Solid and turned it into a game of action instead of dialogue code talker sheds all sorts of wisdom on the players and diamond dogs while personally wanting only to save his people the Dannette he wants out of this whole mess he only followed skull face because he was promised a way to save his people from the radiation caused by mining for uranium before skull face turned his back on him forcing him to revive the parasite now I don't know who Kojima's people are they could represent his family the Metal Gear series after its degradation from 4 onward his creative integrity that was calling him away from Metal Gear or any number of other things but however you read into this it seems that Kojima really wanted to do something righteous but was dragged into making another Metal Gear game he really didn't want to make and one that was filled with action rather than language I will never tell you what have you done you made me do that you black-hearted settle down don't use it again well that is up to you Kojima is code talker skull-face is the fan base and the Dannette are Kojima's ideals again this like the rest of this essay are all just my theories maybe I sound like a Kojima fanboy rationalizing away all of the blatant issues in mgsv as an artistic message because eva is such a meticulous creator and there are just too many coincidences for me to think this game is simply a train wreck with no artistic intent behind it however there are some real issues I'd like to mention ones that I don't think build on the game's themes in any way shape or form obviously this is where my poetic reading of the game pretty much stops so feel free to leave if you're not interested in hearing a more objective look at the game strengths and shortcomings firstly why can't I ride a helicopter from one L Z to another on top of how awesome it would be to see the open world from that perspective it would dramatically help pacing seeing as I want to have to call down my helicopter wait for it to land take off load to the ACC select a new landing point load to the open world and land it it could easily have been one smooth flight from one point to the next with no loading screens in between secondly the players should be able to fold and extract themselves and go straight to the ACC the player can still do this by getting on top of a cargo container Fulton extracting it and grabbing on to the balloon but it just seems strange that you need a cargo container to do it my first thought was that it would make it too easy to get out of a dangerous situation but just make the enemy shoot the balloon if they see you're doing it if you do it from stealth your punishment instead would be the fact that you wasted all of the effort it took to get you where you were and we'll have to re-inflate again this would drastically improve the pacing of the gameplay thirdly the microtransactions I get that this is all Konami's doing and that Kojima probably fought against it but microtransactions sir are ugly especially in a $60 game I really do like the f OB system that has you infiltrating other players bases but the presentation of these Mike transactions unimportant as they are is a huge turnoff of fo B gameplay for me fourthly all of the waiting aside from waiting for helicopters to appear in land waiting for development of items to complete just seems like a vector for micro transactions to me I can sort of understand some items taking a half hour or even an hour to complete but when I'm being asked to sit in the ACC when items have 10 more minutes to develop so I don't have to deploy without my best gear it seems like the development system is just stepping on its own toes it takes long enough to meet the requirements for new items that when you do you're super excited but that excitement is immediately undercut when you realize you'll have to wait two and a half hours to even use them I also think it sucks that interrogations aren't voice acted like an mgs3 there's less variety in guard responses than an MTS 3 so I really don't see why the lines had to be replaced with the series of grunts especially considering the relatively small in fact it would have had on this game's gigantic script that combined with the large levels and farther seeing guards mixer interactions with the enemies feel much less personal than they did in previous games where in Metal Gear Solid 2 for example every button pressed and every extra guard on a map dramatically changed the situation in this game it feels like you can make plenty of mistakes or they could add ten more guards to an outpost without really changing much you were always so close to the guards in the earlier games always just two feet away from being caught and that's just not the case here I think it would be great if there was a mission failed on alert mode like an mgs two and three because in spite of how fun the combat is it's still the low point of the gameplay the stealth is so complicated and layered that it could easily carry the game on its own it would be a big clunky er seeing as we move from screens to checkpoints but I think I would still prefer to play it this way I really tried to stay away from negativity in my videos and while this one has been almost exclusively me turning the negativity of mgs V into positivity I'd also like to talk about some of the things I think the game gets so right firstly aside from all the obvious stuff like visuals and the jaw-droppingly smooth fox engine I love having a wide array of non-lethal options I went through this entire game without directly killing anybody but I still felt like there was a huge variety in tactics I could use both loud and quiet I think the pace at which you unlock new items is great while the game is way too long if you all the side quests right around the time I was getting fed up with a weapon shortcomings I would be ready to unlock a new one or an upgrade for it that would largely fix those issues I think it's absolutely brilliant how the outpost ramped up security based on the tactics you heavily rely on asking you to switch up your strategies frequently while I don't like that you never really feel like you're in deep [ __ ] like you do in the earlier games I think it's really fun to have a team of 100 people backing you up from other base and providing support while you're going in on a solo mission not to mention all the little touches like interrogating guards at gunpoint that makes make better to control than he's ever been before by a large margin it's been a long long time since I put this many hours into a game solely because it's just plain fun to play while I've had a good time dissecting its themes and intent it's the fun that keeps calling back to me usually the only games I play for this long are things like fallout or Planescape torment not fun at all in the traditional sense the games with such great stories that they're all I want to think about but man Metal Gear Solid V is just so much fun that I almost feel like it has me trapped I think it'll take even longer than mgs - for people to start really appreciating this game for its themes as well as its gameplay but I think we'll get there someday all I know is that thematic content or no 157 side quests is way way too many and that that's probably going to be one of the main things holding people back from even trying to analyze this game deeply if I could say one thing to Kojima about this game it would be that even when you're making a message about overindulgence sometimes less is more [Music] [Music]

Channel: Leadhead

Views: 94,665

Keywords: Kojima, hideo, metal, gear, solid, disappointment, venom snake, solid snake, analysis, essay, themes, details, fox engine, cinematic, ludology, flawed, gaming

Id: UNGo63_Xn5w

Length: 27min 30sec (1650 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 26 2018