Board Thread:Metal Gear Solid V/@comment-109.193.182.64-20150909104238

I don't know, what you guys think, but as an MGS fan from the earliest days I'm rather disappointed with MGSV for a variety of reasons after playing through about 30% of the game. I don't think it was a mistage to introduce differences, every MGS game was different from its predecessor, yet still I always felt like I'm playing an MGS game that's part of the MGS canon. In MGSV I feel like I'm playing a mixture of Splinter Cell and other Stealth action shooters, but the MGS magic is all gone.

1. Snake doesn't feel like Snake anymore, he feels like Gordon Freeman - he's pretty much mute for the most part of the game, while Kaz is the only one who never seems to shut up. I don't necessarily believe, it was a mistake to hire Sutherland for the Role, but I can't imagine he spent a lot of time recording his lines. It's the most passive acting of an MGS protagonist in the entire series, that's really not how it should be imo.

2. The main OPs and the stroy are often unconnected seemingly. I play OP after OP after OP and everytime I hope, ok in the next OP something big must happen, c'mon the plot must be moving now, but no, nothing. Many of the main OPs feel like side OPs, they don't drive a story forward, they're only loosely connected with each other, if at all and it feels like the story is just happening incidentially in between - like a necessity that had to be added only to appease the fan community of the old games. The former games - even if divided in ops, like peace walker - had ONE main mission for the entire game. Now I just rush through OPs and get increasingly pissed, not knowing why it's necessary to do them, because I'm not an achievement hunter.

3. We all knew the story wouldn't be shown as extendedly as in previous MGS games, cuz they told us. I thought the story-gameplay-proportion would be slimmed down to be something like in Peace Walker, which was really ok, even though I liked the proportions of MGS3 best so far - but it's ridiculous to give MGSV to MGS-fans... it's virtually empty.

4. They talked about deep personalities in MGSV and that we would be able to witness the personality development of individual characters throughout the game - what a f... joke, we barely ever get to see anyone and then it's only for like one minute - ocelot is barely ever seen - compare that to MGS3 where we learned how he became a fan of Snake or MGS4 where he was probably the fullest villain in all MGS games - in MGSV personality is just a joke. Remember that women used to play very charismatic and heavy roles in the past? Strong female heroines and/or villains were almost traditional in MGS games (The Boss, Eva, Meryl, Dr. Naomi a.o.) - the only important female in MGSV is a bikini model who stfu the entire game - so much for the personalities...

5. Spectacularity is what set MGS apart from ALL the other stealth action shooters in the past. While the others tried to be as much about realism as possible, MGS threw all that over board and gave us a game experience, that was always boombastic - gameplay stages alternating with spectacular and rather extended cutscenes unfolding stories that were always even more fantastic than what the player expected, when the game started - even though some of the cutscenes where extremely long (like in MGS4), this kind of stuff was what made MGS so special and so much loved by the community - gone now - all we get for compensation is a pile of audio cassettes.

I think I could go on forever here, but the truth is, I'm very disappointed, because all the things that made MGS so special in the past are virtually gone or shrinked down to a ridiculous scale. Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike changes - in fact every MGS game had major changes to its predecessor, yet I always felt like I was playing MGS. In MGSV I feel that if the name on the cover was different, I wouldn't have bought it - why? - because I didn't buy Splinter Cell and Hitman either - achievement hunting is not what I play games for.

That's the main problem with MGSV imo - it doesn't have much left to set itself apart from its competitors now - it's just another stealth action shooter with lots of achievements that you can show off with online, queueing into the line of games, that offer nothing but a lot of time consumption. The game is long allright, but pretty empty at the same time and frankly: I'd rather play my legacy collection for the 10th time, before I go through MGSV a second one.

P.S.: I don't know if this was all Kojimas doing (which would surprise me btw.), but I'm afraid we won't see much difference in the future, because that's the kind of game that sells best these days - little story, but a lot of possibilities to kill off a lot of time, getting achievements, collecting all sorts of stuff and leveling. So if MGSV is as much of a success as Konami hopes for, the next game will probably be similar and if it's not that successful, I fear MGS is dead - Kojima himself I believe won't force another title.

P.P.S.: I know it's rather unlikely but if MGSV is the first MGS game for the gentle reader of this thread, I warmly recommend MGS 1-4+PW - it's a world's difference between those and MGSV.

Puh... so enough ranting for now. Does anyone agree with some of the above? 