r/gaming • u/Lanky_Relation1171 • 7h ago
I’m afraid it’s been 11 years…
Despite being unfinished and half baked, it still has one of the greatest (if not the greatest) third person tactical gameplay in the stealth genre. The Fox engine is a timeless technical marvel that sadly hasn’t been used on that scale since.
Happy 11th anniversary to MGSV The Phantom Pain!
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u/doublethink_1984 7h ago
The core gameplay was versatile and fantastic
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u/9_toes_3_balls 6h ago
Nice purple ring
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u/doublethink_1984 6h ago
Wallstreet allowed massive corruption to steal value from a stock because the wrong people were winning.
I've not sold a single share and I prolly never will
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u/9_toes_3_balls 5h ago
Same man. I’m selling for life changing money and that’s it
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u/Ramboxious 5h ago
Lmao, I thought all the people who were scammed by superstonk would have deleted their accounts out of shame by now, this is great
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u/doublethink_1984 4h ago
Retail investors were not the scammers and there is overwhelming evidence thst it was Robinhood and Citadel that robbed the people
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u/F1shB0wl816 4h ago
Scammed? Is that where the goal post have moved to? I remember the company was supposed to have been dead several times over now yet it never happened and the financials are good.
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u/nyg420 7h ago
One of the greatest games of all time that wasn't finished.
It would be like if the Sopranos or Breaking Bad didn't release the final episode and still published the show.
A goddamn shame.
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u/Shanbo88 6h ago
I felt like that too man, and I don't doubt that the original plan was for it to be in a much more final state than it was released in.
But somewhere along the way, I realised that the state the story was left in has left us all with a pain and longing for something that isn't there. While simultaneously giving us enough to have a rough sequence of events between Phantom Pain and Metal Gear.
Some might call it... a Phantom Pain? 👀
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u/Unabated_Blade 7h ago
I don't believe for a second that the game is finished. I think there are a lot of people bound under very heavy contracts to say that the game was finished so it wouldn't further tank Konami when they were sucking on fumes in the gaming industry in 2015.
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u/Krazykraka0 6h ago
I mean look up the final act online… they made rough cutscenes for it where you go to a jungle island to get the metal gear back from liquid. The island is full of traps and stuff iirc.
But there are official cutscenes out there that are worth a watch
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u/hazish 6h ago
AAA games have so much cut content it would make your head spin. Showing that stuff was a marketing blunder on Konami’s part, because the audience ended up think they’d been short changed.
It was finished and ended up being a weird meta-ry satire on open world systemic games. It’s fucking great though.
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u/k-albasi 6h ago
It feels extremely unfinished even without knowing about the cutscenes and seems unlikely they would push out a longstanding iconic game director and scrub his name from the product if not to force the development to finish early.
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u/ShutUpAboutCanon 6h ago
Having to replay the tutorial mission in its entirety at the end of the game didn't feel like a finished AAA game to me
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u/VelociCatTurd 4h ago
It doesn’t matter whether it’s actually unfinished or not. At the end of the day it feels unfinished.
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u/Kylestache 7h ago
The Sopranos famously didn’t finish filming the final scene, that’s why it cuts to black. David Chase’s hard drive ran out of memory for footage.
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u/ThreeTreesForTheePls 6h ago
This is the funniest theory I’ve ever heard and will be stealing it going forward.
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u/deadhawk12 6h ago
This also happened with Deus Ex: Mankind Divided around the same time. It's sad to see possibly legendary games cut short near the finish line over the realities of corporate development.
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u/Burnah4STeeeD 5h ago
Why do so many people think the game was unfinished? Kojima was said multiple times the game was complete
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u/Javerage 7h ago
Honestly the commitment to getting this run on PS3/360. Also kinda funny cause I saw an old post about this today where people were pissed by the physical PC copy only having on 8mb file to download a 28GB game.
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u/Umlunguboy420 6h ago
It's an extremely well optimized game, I'm actually playing it on my phone via pc emulation lol, running smooth locked to 40 fps(feels like 60 on a phone).
The engine they used is so good.
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u/raffey_goode 5h ago
The engine they used is so good.
Now companies just use unreal slop because its cheaper and easier to hire 18 month contractors you can cycle out than to hire capable, great people to learn and develop in-house engines (that you need to probably pay well, give benefits to, etc)
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u/smellysurfwax 7h ago edited 4h ago
I never got past the first giant robot encounter and took a multi year break from this game. One day I’ll go back when I emotionally heal from the trauma of finally reaching the rescue helicopter then having it snatched out of the sky
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u/SweetCosmicPope 7h ago
I never got past the point when the skulls drop in when you’re fultoning that truck in the convoy.
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u/Theflowyo 6h ago
Hardest part of the game and the rest is kind of a breeze, but hardly worth pushing through imo (MGS is my favorite series of all time and while the gameplay in v is outstanding it never felt like a metal gear game after the opening mission)
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u/DarkMatterM4 4h ago
To be fair, you're not missing much after that. After that, missions start repeating on higher difficulty to artificially pad the game's length. There is one really good mission toward the end until the game just sort of....Ends.
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u/MountainMuffin1980 7h ago edited 7h ago
Mechanically brilliant. Narratively shit.
I can't believe how much story was basically post game in cassettes you had to listen to in the field. Kiefer barely bloody spoke in cutscenes!
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u/HeSheMeWumbo387 7h ago edited 2h ago
One of my favorite parts of the MGS franchise are the long, elaborate cut scenes. I enjoyed MGS V and always appreciate when a franchise does something different, but I was definitely disappointed with the thin story.
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u/Upbeat_Shock_6807 5h ago
Yeah I replayed MGS 4 earlier this year for the first time since 2008. Literally half that damn game is elaborate cutscenes, and I loved every minute of it. I then picked up MGS V as soon as I finished, first time playing since 2015, and as I got deeper into the game, i got increasingly disappointed at the lack of cutscenes.
The gameplay is peak, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t enough to keep me going. To this day, it is still the only MGS game I haven’t completed. I’ll finish it someday though, hopefully.
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u/Xayton 7h ago
This is the same opinion I have. Mechanically the best MGS same. Fulton-ing people never gets old, cows especially. But god, the story is such a mess and ends so poorly. Fuck Komani.
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u/sovietbearcav 3h ago
See im the exact opposite..i like the combat and action, the exploration, the multiple ways you can tackle encounters. I got so damn tired of the fulton and resource/people management.
The best part about the game was when they took some random dude and was like "hey youre big boss. Now now ...no arguing...youre big boss. You how to cqc right?"
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u/buttbuttlolbuttbutt 3h ago
Amd that loops around to Raiden and MGS2, where they tried to do it again!
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u/WinnebagoMontana 6h ago
Kojima wanted to stop at MGS2. They twisted his arm for MGS3, and incredibly, it's often cited as the best one.
Then MGS4 gets demanded. There's a reason why Snake is old; he's making a point about this getting dragged on far too long, and at the same time trying to find a way to ultimately "kill off" Snake so Konami can't ask for more.
So they make him do a follow-up to MGS3, and Metal Gear Solid V is born. (Technically not MGS5!)
You know. The one where you can find Hideo Kojima in a literal prison cell, held captive against his will.
Which I'm sure is just a silly, silly joke and not reflective of anything in reality. /s13
u/Upbeat_Shock_6807 5h ago
I’m a bit fuzzy on the MGS timeline, but isn’t Peacewalker TECHNICALLY MGS 5, and the direct follow up to MGS 3?
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u/Somnambulist815 4h ago
Id argue that if it were allowed to flesh out it's ending, itd be the best narrative of all the MG games.
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u/JadowArcadia 6h ago
That's how I felt until I went back through all the Metal Gear games back to back. With the context things all end up making a lot of sense. The lack of Snake actually talking was dogshit though. Ridiculous that Kojima was so desperate for Kiefer and didn't just stick with Hayter. Cheaper, matches all the voice acting in the previous games. Just makes more sense
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u/SaveADay89 7h ago
Best gameplay ever. Ever.
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u/Sad-Indication2128 4h ago
Sneaking up on someone, attaching a balloon to them and yeeting them into the sky never got old
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u/Varmatyr 7h ago
Somehow I missed the series entirely growing up. If I wanted to get into it, should I actually go back to the beginning, or can I just start Phantom Pain?
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u/on_campaign 6h ago
Start with Metal Gear Solid 1, for sure. The main draw of the series is its over-the-top writing. Of course, the gameplay is good across the series as well, but nothing holds a candle to the info-dumping, bigger-than-life characters and crazy military fantasy plots. It's a big ride.
Honestly, if you really had to, you could probably get away with watching the first 3 or 4. I watched the first 3 when I had no money, loved every second.
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u/killinbylove 4h ago
I played 5 directly and instantly fell in love. Just go V theres alot explained and it also eases you in.
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u/LutherOfTheRogues 5h ago
I will get flamed for this but for my first play through recently I started with delta snake eater and then went to peace walker and then V and I loved every second of it so far
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u/Journalist_Candid 5h ago
You are going to have so many thoughts on this. My suggestion would be forget the time chronological order, play it as they were released, 1-5. Genuinely one the the best series. Lean into it.
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u/SpecificSwimming6364 7h ago edited 6h ago
I've had it sitting there and never finished it...never actually played more than a few hours.
I reinstalled it yesterday, to finally, hopefully, maybe finish. But it is....weird.... Really weird. I don't get it.
Floating fire people, David Bowie, some chick who breathes through her skin.....
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u/Corkman90 7h ago
Yeah, it’s like a fever dream 😂
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u/SpecificSwimming6364 6h ago edited 6h ago
I genuinely thought I was missing something, some inside information, that for me at least, just didn't click.
When it came out it was getting 10 out of 10s across the board, so I bought it....and just...couldn't understand.
I was and still am confused, maybe even a little bit apprehensive, some might even say frightened, by this strange Japanese juggernaut of gaming.
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u/Buddy_Dakota 6h ago
Have you played any other game in the franchise?
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u/Corkman90 6h ago
It’s like nothing else though.
I loved MGS 1,2,&3. 2&3 especially.
Didn’t own a ps3, so never played 4.
Ground Zeroes was good, if short.
And Phantom Pain was just nuts.
Mechanically good, and then something insane would happen and I’d be left laughing at how ridiculous it all was.3
u/SpecificSwimming6364 6h ago
Nope, I was more into the witcher 1-2-3, Morrowind/Oblivion when I was in my teens.
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u/Buddy_Dakota 6h ago
I can see it being hard to get into then. Story wise it kinda ties together a bunch of prequel games together with the modern day set games. It gets messy.
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u/try_to_ENJOY 4h ago
Honestly V shouldn't be your first MGS then. I've played all games in franchise and when it comes to V even I was a bit confused( mostly by why tf fire man was resembling Volgin so much( it was him ), and why tf red hair femboy was resembling psycho mantis so much( it was him too ).
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u/ItsRainingTrees 6h ago
First mission is weird, but it gets better. Still a lot of nonsense, but it feels incredible to play.
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u/JadowArcadia 6h ago
Helps if you play the previous games first. I'm not surprised someone wouldn't get what's going on if they jump straight into 5. Would be like skipping all the Marvel movies and going straight to Infinity War
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u/SpecificSwimming6364 6h ago
Yeah, I'm not really that worried about it to be honest, I'll finish it or I won't. 🤷
I'm old enough that I spend half my time walking around confused anyway.
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u/PlayboiZay300 7h ago
“Why are we still here? Just to suffer?”
Will always live rent free in my head.
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u/matthew07 55m ago
So many crazy good lines.
"I won't scatter your sorrow to the heartless sea. I will always be with you."
"Kaz, I’m already a demon.”
"I won’t see you end as ashes. You’re all diamonds.”
"We’ll make diamonds from their ashes. Take them into battle with us.”
“We are Diamond Dogs.”
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u/Aggrokid 7h ago
Normally a Kojima game over-explains everything. So it's a jarring that players had to comb through MGSV, theorycraft and piece the crumbs together like a FROM game.
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u/Newfaceofrev 5h ago
I still think it's the worst Metal Gear Solid game.
But that's like the worst marble sculpture by Michelangelo.
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u/Enrich_Doomsayer 5h ago
It's a great game.
It's a terrible Metal Gear.
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u/f-150Coyotev8 5h ago
The game play itself was possibly the best I have ever played and it’s the only game that I nearly completed it to 100% (I wasn’t going to find all those damn animals). But you are right. The story was awful. Without even talking about how it wasn’t finished, the story was just kind of cheesy. It started out great, but then they had to throw in vocal cord parasites. Really? Even for metal gear that’s pretty silly.
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u/badger906 PC 6h ago
I was disappointed by this. It was a spectacular game with a game engine and world that stands up today. But it wasn’t a MGS game. There was no 30 minute codex calls, or theatrics.
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u/McG4rn4gle 6h ago
I played the shit out of this game and I can't for the life of me recall what it was about.
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u/vonrobin Xbox 7h ago
I still recall i played this game on ps3. Lots of weekend playthrough that last till morning. Also i was single then, but now i am a father with 2 sons. Barely gaming but still finding time to play my backlog of games after work hrs.
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u/Calhalen 6h ago
Mechanically it’s still one of the best games I’ve ever played. I remember being so let down by the story though after how cinematic and epic MGS4 was, and overall it’s a massive letdown. I know the cutscenes get a bad rap in that game but there’s some sick cutscenes (the Canal scene when Liquid takes control of the Patriots or the end fight)
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u/tarnished_19 6h ago
Back when it was released, I was spoiled for the true ending very early in the game (my mistake), but kept playing as if I know nothing.
Loved the game and what Kojima brought in it, though lacking on the boss fights Quality and the villain was meh.
And man, the trailers for it were wild
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u/penuchicoup 6h ago
I love this game despite its half baked story. It’s just so much damn fun. Absolutely incredible gameplay.
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u/Feisty-Pattern-951 6h ago
My wet dream is for them to be able to finish it. Never will happen but a boy can dream.
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u/Bogus1989 5h ago
To this day, i still rant and rave about, well first being able to mount outward facing PSYOP speaker system….
And being able to make it blast “Ride of the Valkyries” out of them when you request for your UH-60 blackhawk to come extract you.
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u/ProfessionalRandom21 5h ago
i ran home after playing the prologue on my friends account and was blow away.
little did i know that was the best part of the game by far, the rest is cassette tape play over the same mission again and again.
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u/BagZCubed 5h ago
For as much as I love the MGS series, I still haven't beaten the Phantom Pain yet.
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u/Enrich_Doomsayer 5h ago
To be fair, it's an unfinished game. It ends on a massive cliffhanger that never goes anywhere because Kojima kept wanting to add more and more and more. So it's not really worth "finishing."
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u/BagZCubed 4h ago
I would like to finish it sometime, but I'm planning on replaying most of the series first.
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u/lord_dude 5h ago
Maybe its because i only played mgs1 before but the game was a 10/10 for me in gameplay, narrative and presentation. One of the few games with good aftermath in my head for months.
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u/kokrec 4h ago
Holy. I played it religiously for hours every day. Don't know for multiple weeks. I tried not to kill people, stealthed my way around, abducted a bunch of people, built my base. One day I laid down the pad. This game has no real story. I am punishing myself for no reason. I stoped enjoying it from one moment to another. Never ever touched a Kojima game again, didn't replay the old ones, no Death Stranding. Yes. That guy can do cinematics and has a crazy eye for detail, alas he can't tell good stories. People now praise MGS 2 for the AI/Surveillance foreshadowing. I don't know why. It is not how I remember it. Long story short. Enjoy whatever you want, even if it is objectively bs and pretentious, just don't tell people your shit doesn't stink.
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u/TheBlackthroneGaming 3h ago
This was the first game I ever got to 100% completion. I will follow Kojima wherever that crazy bastard wants to go. The fox engine blew my mind the entire time i was playing the game. The physics interactions you can pull off in MGS:V made me realize most games just don't have that level of complexity sadly.
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u/Mountain_Town5759 31m ago
I remember 2013 watching the trailer nonstop. Not your kind of people by garbage was the song. Crazy how time flies.
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u/killy666 6h ago
I think people are too hard on the game calling it unfinished and half baked. It is my fave MGS by a mile, the open world gameplay is so fun. And for a "half baked" game, there is easily a triple digit number of horus of content if you wanna 100% it.
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u/Enrich_Doomsayer 5h ago
People call it unfinished because it's literally unfinished. Kojima kept wanting to add more and more, until the company was running out of money and HAD to release it. And they never let Kojima back in to complete the game. It ends on a massive cliffhanger and then just stops.
Still a great game, but definitely deserves being called what it is.
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u/Chapi_Chan 3h ago
Designed levels: proof of concept. Level design: repetitive. Plot: a draft. Cutscenes: awkward. Sutherland's acting: not to be found. Quiet's presence: uncomfortable. Retconnig: infuriating. Gameplay: it felt actually good. Customisation: that was good too.
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u/SachielBrasil 2h ago
This.
The game feels like the most amazing game engine ever, but got no content inside it.
They spent 90% of the resources polishing the engine, and 10% filling it with placeholders.
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u/PaladinPrime 7h ago
What is unfinished and half baked about it?
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u/Javerage 7h ago
Nothing like watching a bonus bluray to see the final chapter that wasn't fully rendered.
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u/Tetra_Gramaton 7h ago
Well the plot wasn’t fully finished and they had to rush the game out. It’s not something I can summarise so you’re best off watching something on YouTube surrounding the development but there are large chapters of plot missing or unfinished. Add to that the personal drama around Kojima and Konami and it really wasn’t the best of environments to be finishing your much anticipated magnum opus in.
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u/PaladinPrime 7h ago
That sucks.
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u/JeanLucPicardAND 4h ago
There's an entire section of the Africa map that straight-up isn't on the disc at all, so if you manage to enter it somehow, the game crashes.
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u/summons72 7h ago
Half baked, not at all. Unfinished, most certainly the whole 3rd act was cut from the game.
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u/HeSheMeWumbo387 7h ago
It's the only game I've played where the unlockable "true ending" is really the only ending. I remember being so whelmed when I finished all the main missions and I was just like "Wait, what? It's over?".
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u/Lanky_Relation1171 7h ago
I think this has been discussed many times before at this point
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u/PaladinPrime 7h ago
Okay
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u/Blvck_Lvngs 6h ago
God I hate when people expect others to just know exactly what they’re talking about.
Apparently the 3rd act from the game was removed and modders found evidence through data mining
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u/HeadBowl4915 6h ago
Unfinished and half baked ? Bro, that’s just Kojima’s way of saying “Mission failed successfully “
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u/shakycrae 6h ago
I started this on PC years ago, and had a run in the pandemic. Then my pc broke, and I moved to playstation. Played half the game again and got too busy. Came back this year and finished it - so glad I did. Story is a mess but intriguing. Gameplay might be my favourite of any game. So much creativity and freedom.
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u/Hitman7128 PC 6h ago
I will always remember that it released the same day as Mad Max and overshadowed its release.
Both amazing games nonetheless. I greatly enjoyed the 100+ hours I poured into MGSV and doing all the mission tasks.
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u/ElectronicControl762 6h ago
I loved the actual gameplay but i cant finish due to it just walking in basically linear empty roads due to all the plateaus
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u/autonimity 6h ago
It's actually incredible that this game was on available on disc for PS3
I didn't enjoy it as a metal gear entry and so only played a small number of hours, but it is an impressive feat of a game.
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u/Chimpstrider 5h ago
Great game. That preview version where you rescue people from some usa torture site was very cool too.
My only complaint it that it's not possible to restart the game. Want to play it again? Tough. You can only continue. Such a weird decision.
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u/ArcasTheel 5h ago
I never played a MGS game before, I was in awe of how good this game was
I have played all the games since
I am in awe of how awesome this game is
And yeah it has a shitton of problems but seriously how fuckin smooth was that gameplay and holy hell FOB infiltration and stealing people's NUKES I was so in love with that game
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u/badpiggy490 5h ago
A very fun stealth action sandbox game with an admittedly unfinished story that I still love to play through
That said, I still think that everything that had to do with Venom snake made for a solid ( heh ... ) story
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u/Compton528 5h ago
The midnight release for this game was so enjoyable at my gamestop. I miss those days.
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u/NachoNutritious 5h ago
Hideo Kojima Presents
A Hideo Kojima Production
of a Hideo Kojima Game
Hideo Kojima's The Phantom Pain
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u/TheJinManCan 5h ago
I ended up getting to the scene where I'm on horseback after the opening scene and ... I never went back to it. Something just didn't grab me about it.
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u/Too_Tall_64 5h ago
I keep going back to it as a little 'burst of stealth action' gameplay. I'm still trying to unlock stuff, but I'm at the point now where everything requires more S++ soldiers and absurd resource needs. Still, the FOB weekly missions usually mixes things up.
God I'd love to see a re-release with multiplayer, and enemy bases appearing across the otherwise PRETTY EMPTY MAP...
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u/runarleo 4h ago
I never played a Kojima game before but I’m about 20% into mgsv and I’m having the time of my life.
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u/LupusCanis42 4h ago
The only game I ever played almost up to the end and then sold before I finished it.
The last 5% we're so disappointing that I just gave up and never looked at it again.
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u/captain_son 4h ago
The only Metal Gear game I've played. At first I didn't know what I was doing (probably because I didn't read the information at the start of the game). Played it last year to 100% completion and really enjoyed it by the end.
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u/New_Repeat2050 4h ago
I so loved playing this one and i think it was the one before it. I haven't tried the older games yet though. But MGS might be one of the best stealth games i've played in my gaming life so far
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u/superkickpunch 4h ago
A fun game, great gameplay, but easily my least favorite Metal Gear game. I never felt the need to finish it.
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u/Impossible_Expert461 3h ago
Amazing game!
I always tell people who haven't played this "At the end of the game you will realise the Phantom Pain you were living all along"
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u/Nscope90 3h ago edited 3h ago
It was such a fuck you from Konami to the fans to let this game go out in the way it did. Ahead of release, I think a lot lf fans hoped for this game to be a real bridge between the Big Boss and Solid Snake eras. I think there was a degree of speculation that Solid Snake would be the final Boss.
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u/Goosetale 3h ago
What could have been... This game had the best controls by far and adding the Fulton/ mother base system from peace walker was great. I could not get into the multiplayer at all. I felt like the structure of ground zeroes nailed the missions perfectly and the open world in this was barren as hell. Still a good game but yeah Konami dun goofed hard
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u/VoidHunterRaymond 3h ago
11 years fly fast, any word on the sequel or dlc? I would sell my soul to play the original planned fight against kingdom of flies, apparently we were going to fight the orphan leader as he used a robot suit on an island.
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u/SuddenDepact 3h ago
One of my favorite things about this game was importing the Eye and the Finger over to this game. They became my most played characters
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u/Easy_Jux 3h ago
I wanted to like this game so bad but I just couldn’t get into it. You can just gun down everything in your path with ease. It felt impossible to die
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u/RelentlessIVS 3h ago
Phantom Pain was fantastic (even though it was very unfinished). One of the few games I chose to 100% on Steam.
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u/RelentlessIVS 3h ago
I still remember the #FuckKonami movement. They screwed up by mistreating Kojima.
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u/CutieAloy 3h ago
The story is weird as shit, but the game is so fun and satisfying to play. I so wish it would live up to the e3 trailer with the song "nuclear" in it.
Peace walker is the MGS 5 that never was story-wise (it was actually supposed to be MGS 5 originally before being locked on PSP). Someday, PW will be remade in MGS 5 style. Or am I too high on copium xD
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u/Jokkitch 3h ago edited 3h ago
MGS ran so Death Stranding could walk...
Get it? I'll see myself out.
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u/Nettysocks 7h ago
What a strange game this ended up being