Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
is a 2015 action-adventure stealth game developed and published by Konami. Directed, written, and produced by Hideo Kojima, it is the ninth installment in the Metal Gear franchise, following Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, a stand-alone prologue released the previous year. Set in 1984, nine years after the events of Ground Zeroes, the story follows mercenary leader Punished "Venom" Snake as he ventures into Soviet-occupied Afghanistan and the Angola–Zaire border region to exact revenge on those who destroyed his forces and almost killed him during the climax of Ground Zeroes.
The game is played from a third-person perspective in an open world which can be explored either on foot or by modes of transport. Snake can use a wide repertoire of weapons and items and receive assistance from several AI companions, allowing the player to combat enemies either stealthily or directly. Enemy soldiers and resources found in the world can be transported to Snake's headquarters, allowing for its expansion and the development of further technology. The game includes two separate multiplayer modes, Metal Gear Online and Forward Operating Bases ; the latter mode allows players to develop FOBs, which can then be invaded by other players.
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain was released for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Windows, Xbox 360, and Xbox One on September 1, 2015. It received critical acclaim, with praise for its gameplay, open world, graphics, themes, and performances. Its narrative and certain changes to the series formula divided critics, while the appearance of the character Quiet drew criticism. The game's repeated missions, ending, and evidence of removed content led some to label it unfinished. The Phantom Pain shipped 6 million units by December 2015. It received several awards and is considered to be one of the greatest stealth games of all time. Metal Gear Solid V: The Definitive Experience, a bundle that includes both The Phantom Pain and Ground Zeroes, along with all additional content for both games, was released in October 2016.
Gameplay
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is a stealth game in which players take the role of Punished "Venom" Snake from a third-person perspective in an open world. Gameplay elements are largely unchanged from Ground Zeroes, meaning that players must stealthily traverse several areas in the game world, avoiding enemy guards and remaining undetected. Included in Snake's repertoire are binoculars, a variety of weapons, explosives, and stealth-based items such as cardboard boxes and decoys. Following one of the series traditions, The Phantom Pain encourages players to progress through the game without killing, using non-lethal weapons such as tranquilizer darts to subdue enemies. Players may traverse the game world with vehicles such as jeeps and tanks, in addition to traveling on foot or on horseback, and as certain locations are mountainous, players may opt to go rock climbing as a shortcut. They may call for helicopter support against enemy soldiers or request airstrikes that can bombard the target area or change the weather. Snake can call on one of a few AI "buddy" companions: D-Horse, a horse capable of wearing armor and hiding Snake during travel; D-Dog, a wolf pup raised to assist Snake in the field; Quiet, a mute female sniper with supernatural abilities; and D-Walker, a manned, highly agile mobile weapons platform that can provide heavy weapons support. The companions' abilities and their effectiveness depends on the player's relationship with them. There is a large emphasis on tactics in The Phantom Pain.As in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, The Phantom Pain features a base-building system that allows players to develop weapons and items from their headquarters, Mother Base. Recruitment of enemy soldiers and prisoners has returned for this purpose, allowing the base to grow through organization. The player is given the option to access their base from their real-life smartphones and other devices via a companion app. Unlike in Peace Walker, where players can only view Mother Base from the air, The Phantom Pain allows players to control Snake as he explores the complex on foot. The Fulton surface-to-air recovery system, an item introduced into gameplay in Peace Walker, returns as well, with players able to transport captured soldiers and other objects such as animals and vehicles back to Mother Base. An in-game currency called GMP is used for upgrading Mother Base's defenses and technology, and can be collected from objects found all over the map, such as rough diamonds, shipping containers, and special blueprint boxes, as well as sending recruited soldiers on combat missions around the world. The income is invested in upgrades to the appearance and abilities, weapons and equipment of Snake, his companions, and vehicles. For example, Snake's prosthetic arm can be modified with a taser, echolocation function, or remote controls that allow it to fly as a missile-like drone.
Game design direction allows the player to choose in what order the story events take place by selecting missions in any order they like, and yet still "understand the encompassing message by the end". The enemy AI has improved in terms of situational awareness. If players frequently use particular weapons or tactics to subdue enemy soldiers, enemies will increase in number and be outfitted with better equipment; for example, frequent use of headshots will result in enemy soldiers donning metal helmets to make targeting the head harder. Other actions from the player can affect the wider game world further; for example, sabotaging a radar installation will open up a new landing zone.
The game has a dynamic weather system and day-night cycle that runs in real-time. The cycle is able to be fast-forwarded when Snake lights a "Phantom Cigar", a type of electronic cigar; a digital silver Seiko watch panel appears on screen to denote time. The passage of time enables players to analyze the movement of marked enemy forces in the area, such as shifts in sentry patrols and individual patrol routes. Weather conditions, such as sandstorms and rain, affect the gameplay environment by reducing visibility or masking the sound of footsteps.
Multiplayer
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain includes two multiplayer modes: first, the new Metal Gear Online 3, developed by Kojima Productions' newly formed Los Angeles division. The second multiplayer mode is an extension of the Mother Base base-building feature. Players are able to expand their operations to include Forward Operating Bases, which can be used to generate resources and income for the single-player campaign. These facilities can be attacked by other players, making a player-versus-player mode available whereby the attacking team attempts to steal resources and/or soldiers and the defending team tries to protect the Forward Operating Base from the intruder. Defenders are able to call on their friends to aid in the defense, especially if their Forward Operating Base is attacked during a story mission. Players are able to customize the security, staffing, and layout of their Forward Operating Bases, allowing for a large number of compound configurations. Following the success or failure of the intrusion, the location of the attacking player's Forward Operating Base is revealed to the defending player; however, defending players can only launch a retaliatory strike if the attacker was discovered during their infiltration. The Forward Operating Base feature is a separate multiplayer experience to Metal Gear Online 3 and is needed to increase the number of combat units the player can deploy.Synopsis
Setting
In the aftermath of the events of Ground Zeroes and the destruction of Militaires Sans Frontières, Big Boss falls into a coma. Nine years later, he awakens and helps lead a new mercenary group, Diamond Dogs. Adopting the codename "Venom Snake", he ventures into Afghanistan during the Soviet–Afghan War and the Angola—Zaire border region during the Angolan Civil War to track down the people responsible for MSF's destruction. Along the way, he becomes reacquainted with his former rival Ocelot and encounters Quiet, an assassin and sniper with supernatural abilities. While he and Kazuhira Miller are initially driven to exact revenge, Snake unearths a plot by the Cipher organization to develop a new model of the Metal Gear system known as the ST-84 "Sahelanthropus".Characters
In contrast to previous Metal Gear installments, Kojima Productions conducted the voice acting and motion capture with English-speaking actors and stuntmen first. While facial motion capture was used before for Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, it was done separately from the actual voice acting. The Japanese voice acting was dubbed over the English cast's performance afterward, in contrast to previous releases in the series since Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, which had the characters' vocal and facial expressions lip-synched specifically to both, Japanese and English voice acting.At E3 2013, Konami confirmed that actor Kiefer Sutherland would provide Snake's voice and motion capture work for the game, taking a role over voice actor David Hayter. Kojima's reason for replacing Hayter was to "have a more subdued performance expressed through subtle facial movements and tone of voice rather than words", and that he "needed someone who could genuinely convey both the facial and vocal qualities of a man in his late 40s". Hollywood producer and director Avi Arad suggested to Kojima that Sutherland could fulfill his requirements. Akio Ōtsuka was unaffected by this casting change and continued to voice Snake in the Japanese version. On March 4, 2015, Kojima revealed that Snake would have less dialogue in The Phantom Pain than previous installments. The reasoning behind it was to make Snake come across as an extension to the player and that he "will act based on rather than doing things like making spontaneous comments or flirting with women."
Other members of the voice cast include Troy Baker as Ocelot, Jay Tavare as Code Talker, James Horan as Skull Face, Robin Atkin Downes as Kazuhira Miller, Christopher Randolph as Dr. Emmerich, and Piers Stubbs as Eli. The Japanese dub features Tomokazu Sugita as Miller, Hideyuki Tanaka as Emmerich, Takaya Hashi as Skull Face, Satoshi Mikami as Ocelot, Osamu Saka as Code Talker, and Yūtarō Honjō as Eli. Dutch model Stefanie Joosten provides the likeness, voice and motion capture for the new character Quiet, a mute sniper with supernatural abilities who may assist Snake on missions depending on the player's actions during a certain mission. She provides the vocals for "Quiet's Theme".