Board Thread:Metal Gear Solid V/@comment-4913740-20140918101511/@comment-4913740-20140921045120

The fact that they showed off so much of Afghanistan led me to believe the other areas we visit would be lacking in size. If you look at the TGS demonstration, you can see the map is large, similarly to Afghanistan, as the player has to zoom in just to identify the area he is moving around in (which was decent in size itself). My guess is that perhaps there will be areas you visit in other countries too that might be smaller still, but these two main locations seem to be expansive at the moment, so I'm okay with that.

Kojima believes it will be worth 100 hours of content and that you will still find new things after playing 100 hours, so I would have faith. MGS4, like the titles before it, is a very procedural game. They're all practically like puzzles in the end; the guards follow the same structure and it's always about solving their patterns to get through. MGSV strongly deviates from this formula, so it is drastically different. You won't always breeze through an area, especially with guards adjusting to your behaviour. Just from Ground Zeroes, I still get solid playtime from it because I'm always finding different ways of moving through that base and avoiding the guards and what not.

And I think the wolf thing will probably be critiqued by reviewers. But they're already critiquing things like the Fulton, so I don't really care about what they think. I already know I'm going to love the game.

I also think the wolf companion is designed to polarise Snake's personality. We already know he's going to be like a 'demon' and that he'll do questionable things. This dog companion shows his softer side, and it's going to create an interesting dynamic with Snake, especially if something happens to that dog to cause him to want revenge even more; there's something about animal companions getting hurt or killed that can just ruin people.