Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain Analysis

Overview

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is a third-person open world action stealth game developed and published by Konami in September 2015. It is a single player game, with limited options for multiplayer.

Formal Elements

Players

In the game, you play as "Venom" or "Punished" Snake, and many characters will refer to you as Big Boss. You are the leader of a private military force, and you've just woken up after a coma of 9 years. You lost the lower half of your left arm, and you have a huge piece of shrapnel embedded in your forehead. You control Big Boss from a third-person perspective, but you can aim down the sights of your weapons in first person, and when you crawl through small spaces the camera also switches to this perspective.

You can play some missions as soldiers that you convert to your army.

Rules

Combat and Movement

As Big Boss, you get your left arm replaced by a robotic one before your first mission. You can thus use larger, two-handed weapons like rifles and rocket launchers. The movement system is limited to walking, running, crouching, crawling, and climbing on some surfaces. You can only walk or run up slopes of a certain angle, and this will lead to a lot of periodic frustration, as slopes that look climbable are sometimes not, and you will repeatedly slip down them. Crouching and crawling reduce your visibility, making it easier to sneak by enemies.

Most knee-high or wait-high ledges can be climbed over, and if there is a sharp edge or ledge, you can even jump up to head-high ledges. You can discover vertical cracks in many locations that can be crack-climbed.

Besides moving around under your own power, you can make use of a horse, D-Horse, different kinds of trucks, tanks, and later on, D-Walkers. There are two main maps, Afghanistan and Africa, in the game, and both are quite large and rugged. You can run from one area to another, but the maps are so large that it will take 5-10 minutes of sprinting. Vehicles function quite realistically, generating light and noise that will alert enemies nearby. They also have varying degrees of difficulty in traversing the rugged terrain. Vehicles take damage realistically as well, and if they take enough damage they will become immovable and eventually blow up.

There are two more ways of moving around. The first is by using your support helicopter. As you play, you will probably destroy enemy radar dishes which will unlock new landing zones. You can call your support helicopter to come and pick you up. Once you return to your aerial command center, you can pick an alternative landing zone closer to your goal.

Another way is by picking up shipping invoices at enemy bases. You can attach these labels to your cardboard box, if you have it equipped, and you can ship yourself from one enemy base to another using this method of "fast travel." This only works if you are at a shipping station, of course.

Moving on to combat, MGS V features both ranged and melee combat, but the primary focus is on stealth combat. As you attempt to complete a mission, you will usually approach an enemy base and do some scouting. You can use your companions to help you identify enemies and other points of interest, and you can also use a special scope to place markers or tag enemies. Although you are not punished for engaging in combat, there are a number of indirect costs. As you encounter enemies, you can take them out in a number of ways. For example, depending on which companion you have, you might be able to distract them, stun them, or kill them without getting your hands dirty. You can approach them in a stealthy manner, get behind them and choke them out. Once choked out, you could use your Fulton extraction device to send them back to Mother Base, kill them, and/or hide the body. You could use different weapons to eliminate them, either lethally or non-lethally. Depending on the weapon you use, this may alert other nearby guards. If you don't hide the body, it is possible that patrolling guards may find it, and raise the alert level of the base. If you draw your weapon and approach a guard, they will lay down their weapon and you can choke them out or pursue the other options outlined above. Besides choking an enemy out, you can interrogate them (provided you have an interpreter for the language) and get information about the base, high value targets, or valuable resources.

Depending on your stance, your camouflage, the amount of light, the surrounding shrubbery, the amount of noise you make, and even how smelly you are, you will attract attention. This is shown by a white fuzzy ring around your character pointing in the direction of enemy attention. This can make the enemy leave their post or abandon their patrol to investigate the area. If the amount of suspicion crosses a limit, the enemy will "detect" or "spot" you.

If an enemy spots you and no other enemies in this area have been alerted, you will get a brief period of "reflex time," where time slows down and you can quickly close the distance and choke them out, tranquilize them with your tran gun, or use another means of silencing them.

You can also go loud if you are discovered, or you can back off and try to hide. The base guards will try to find you based on your last-sighted position, as well as noises and suspicious sights.

As you interact with the bases, enemies will begin to adapt to your tactics. For example, many bases will begin to place land mines in strategic locations, enemies will begin to wear body armor or helmets, depending on your preferred target. If you mostly attack at night, more spot lights will be placed and enemies with night vision goggles will spawn in.

Base Development

As you play the game, you will extract soldiers, vehicles, placed guns, and resource containers using your Fulton extraction device. This starts out as a balloon that you can use only on soldiers, but you can upgrade it for placed guns, then for vehicles and resource containers, and through a hidden path, you can even develop a black hole version. Soldiers each have unique names, and random special abilities, as well as being ranked in categories like combat, base development, support, communications, medicine, and research. These soldiers can be convinced to join your private army, and they will contribute to the productivity and level of the section they are assigned to. 

 

 

Certain soldiers have specific traits that affect other staff, or that allow specific development options. For example, a staff member might have a "troublemaker" trait, which increases the chances of fighting among staff, whereas "diplomat" effectively cancels this. In terms of development, if you want to develop certain Fulton upgrades, you will need a soldier with "Transportation Specialist." There are close to 30 of these specialist traits.

In terms of staff contributions, if you capture a soldier with an A rank in research (as an example), you can assign that soldier to that section, and they will increase the level of that section, allowing you research more advanced weapons or equipment. Assigning a solider to base development effects the speed with which unprocessed resources get processed. As some technologies require a certain number of processed resources, this of course comes in handy. Alternatively, assigning a soldier to intel increases the number and accuracy of intel reports you receive when in the field. These could concern the placement of enemies, updates about the weather, etc. 

 

 

Each section has a limited number of positions available, and you must build dedicated base platforms for each section, and upgrade each one in order to expand the potential number of staff for each one. Each platform can be upgraded to level four, further expanding the staff limit of the section by 10 each time, except for the command platform, which increases the staff limit for all sections by 5. Each upgrade costs exponentially more money, time, and resources. If you want to go beyond these limits, you will need to purchase further FOBs (forward operating bases) around the world. Each FOB costs exponentially more "Mother Base" coins, encouraging the player to engage with the microtransaction system KONAMI has created.

Once purchased, the FOB works essentially the same as Mother Base. You must build a command center platform, and then you can build and upgrade platforms for the other sections. With FOBs, the exponential costs have been doubled down on, so each upgrade requires much more money, time, and resources than the one before it. It is not easier to acquire these, however, creating a strong FU feeling in the player.

You can travel to Mother Base and explore it, and you can also interact with the soldiers there. When a soldier sees you, it will raise their morale, making fights among staff less common.

Inventory

MSG V features a simple inventory system. The player may carry two main weapons, one rifle and one sniper rifle/grenade launcher/missile launcher. You may also have two secondary weapons, a pistol or SMG of some kind, and a modification of your prosthetic arm. You can carry 8 support weapons, and 8 items. Support weapons are items like different kinds of grenades, decoys, or mines, while items are things active camouflage, night vision goggles, or your phantom cigar, which allows you to speed up time until particular times of day. Your companions and vehicles also count as inventory items, and you may only have one of each at a time. If during a mission you need more ammo, you can call in a resupply drop, which acts like the reverse of a Fulton extraction: you get a box dropping out of the sky on a parachute to the location that you designated. As many players have noted, you can actually use this to knock out guards!

You can also request different vehicles, buddies, and weapons using this air drop system.

One point to mention about deploying to an area is that each item, weapon, vehicle, and buddy has a deployment cost. The higher the level of the item, the more it will cost you. This applies to the items you bring with you on the initial deployment, as well as those air dropped in during deployment.

You can equip any weapon or item that enemies drop, but this will cause you to drop your currently equipped item. So, for example, if I have a sniper rifle, but I want to take out a helicopter, I can pick up a rocket launcher that an enemy has dropped. Since sniper rifles and rocket launchers occupy the same slot, I will drop the rifle and equip the launcher.

Procedures

Watching a cut-scene

This is a Hideo Kojima production after all. There are cut-scenes in the game, although from what I understand they are somewhat restrained compared to previous Hideo Kojima titles.

Trading

Using your iDroid device, you can sell resources and items you have at your Mother Base. Unfortunately, and quite illogically, for the player, you cannot buy resources. This again is probably to force engagement with the microtransactions that KONAMI has created.

Complete a mission

There are 50 main story missions, and 157 side ops. The main story missions all open with a cut scene and voice over explaining the context and the goals, while the side ops are open world filler of the kind that Ubisoft made famous. The main missions are timed, and each has a number of hidden optional objectives. For example, you might be trying to extract a scientist, and to complete the mission you must of course do this objective. However, you might have a bonus objective of extracting him using the Fulton device in a particular way, or there might be an bonus objective to rescue a prisoner nearby, etc.

Completing the mission within certain time limits, without being seen, without killing soldiers, and without raising the alarm all give you bonuses, as do completing the optional objectives. The missions have a large variety of settings and optional objectives, and there are many twists that appear during story missions.

The side ops are a trash heap. As an example, you can clear mines from mine fields. This involves going to the location, and then walking around shooting the mines until the area is clear. There are 10 of these. Ten! Or, there are 16 side ops which ask you to eliminate groups of heavy infantry. These are heavily armored soldiers that are not vulnerable to most small caliber weapons. You can use tanks, missile launchers, or you may sneak up on them, choke them out, and Fulton extract them to your Mother Base if you deem fit. But there are 16 of these missions! The number of the soldiers is slightly different, and they are in different parts of the map, but it is essentially the same challenge. Then there are the missions about extracting a wandering mother base soldier, extracting a prisoner, extracting a valuable soldier, or eliminating tank or armored-vehicle units. All of these appear in double digit numbers, are repetitive, and quite boring after the first few in each group. They do provide a decent amount of GMP in the higher ranks, but you can still earn more passively doing combat deployment.

Manage Mother Base

Mother Base is where you can check up on your soldiers, take a shower, and raise the morale of your staff. Mother Base requires a lot of management, and the game does a great job of simulating this. You can view all your staff via a menu, and sort them according to various characteristics. You can switch their section, and you can even enter direct contracts with them or dismiss them. Direct contracts prevents them from dying, being abducted from FOBs, or being sent out on dispatch missions.

Besides this, you will be able to build new platforms to expand your military capacity and increase the level of your different sections. You can also begin different research projects to unlock new weapons and items.

Assign Combat deployment

Using your iDroid device, you can also assign different combat teams to take on combat missions. Some of these can counteract the AI's adaptation to the your play-style. For example, if enemies have taken to wearing helmets all the time, you can send some of your soldiers on a mission to destroy the enemy's supply of helmets, making it easier for you to play the way you've become accustomed to. 

 

 

Alternatively, you can send your staff on combat missions to recruit new staff members with certain proficiency, gather plants or other resources, or just to engage in different lucrative missions, such as protecting a VIP or contracting to keep the peace in some war-torn area of the world. These missions vary roughly lineally in difficulty, benefits, and time required.

Listen to music or interview

There are hundreds of tapes scattered throughout the map, and many can additionally be picked up automatically by completing story missions. These give the player the opportunity to hear extra information. Many of these are exactly the same as the mission briefing tapes, but there are still some interesting revelations.

Resources

There are a large number of different resources.

• Health: Your avatar has rechargeable health like in many shooter games that came out after Gears of War. If you continue to take damage, you will eventually die, but if you can hide, your health will slowly recharge.
• Staff: Your staff are an important resource that influences the power and efficiency of your private military organization. You can send the combat section on deployment missions to earn GMP, more staff, or resources. They can be killed during these missions, and other players can attack your FOBs and steal them from you.
• GMP: GMP stands for gross military product, and it appears to be a kind of terminological joke by Hideo Kojima. It is the money in the game, and serves several purposes. First, you receive it as a reward for completing missions. You can spend it on base development, research projects, and on deployment to the two fields of operations.
• Ammo: You can only carry a limited amount of ammo for each weapon at a time, but you can replenish this by walking over similar class weapons, finding ammo packs in a base, or by calling in a supply drop.
• Vehicles: You eventually gain the ability to Fulton extract vehicles and bring them back to your Mother base, and you can then deploy with these during main missions and side ops.
• Mother Base Coins: You receive a small number of mother base coins for each day you log in to the game, but this number is purposefully kept minuscule in relation to what you need to purchase in order to encourage microtransaction purchases. Fuck you Konami!
• Private Force Points: Each day your soldiers will engage in in pitched battles against other players', and you will receive private force points for your victories. You can exchange these to purchase high-level staff, and different amounts of resources.
• Weapons: Your weapons are critical resources. You need to consider the parameters of the mission and what you are likely to face, but you will probably develop a liking for a particular play-style revolving around certain weapons.
• Plants: As you explore, you will find different varieties of plants growing in the world. When you pick them up, they get sent to Mother Base automatically. To increase the amount of plants you get more quickly, you can send your soldiers out on dispatch missions, or you can purchase them by exchanging PF points.
  • wormwood
  • black carrot
  • golden crescent
  • tarragon
  • African peach
  • digitalis purpurea
  • digitalis lutea
  • Haoma
• Materials/Resources: There are several kinds of materials:
  • Common metal
  • Precious metal
  • Biological resources
  • Fuel resources
  • Minor metal
These resources can be acquired in several ways. You can often find small containers of the different metals and other resources around enemy bases. However, you will also find large cargo containers of the resources at enemy bases, which you can extract using your Fulton device after it has been upgraded enough.
• Base Section Level: Each base section has a level, and this is controlled by the number and quality of the staff assigned in each section.
• Base Section Platform Number: Each section can be upgraded to four platforms in one base.
• Number of Bases: Besides Mother Base, you can purchase offshore waters in which to build FOBs. These allow you to build more command, intel, research, etc platforms and continue to increase the section level and hire more store, potentially unlocking more research options. As mentioned before, additional FOBs are purchased with Mother Base coins, which are extremely limited. You get 15 per day, and buying an additional FOB location might cost over 1100 coins. Again, fuck you Konami.

Conflicts

There are a number of interesting conflicts going on in MGS V. For one, there is the conflict between being stealthy and going loud. It is possible to complete the game without killing anyone, for example, and instead always using a tranq gun or other non-lethal means of subduing them. If you traq an enemy, you can Fulton extract them out to Mother Base, where they will become one of your loyal soldiers. This provides a diagetic motivation for at least not killing everyone. You also receive post-mission bonuses for being non-lethal, and for maintaining perfect stealth. However, the game is much, much easier if you occasionally kill soldiers, and if you allow yourself to go loud.

There is also a conflict between continuing and developing your preferred playstyle, and the AI system's continuous adaptations to that. If you really like taking headshots from a distance, the enemies will start to wear helmets, and later on full body armor with face-plated helmets. It is still possible to eliminate these soldiers with headshots, but it requires extreme precision and timing in the former case, and anti-vehicle sniper rifles in the latter.

Boundaries

There are strict inventory limits. As discussed before, you can only have one rifle/SMG/shotgun and one larger two-handed weapon equipped at a time. This, together with ammo limitations, serves to restrict your playing options in interesting ways. Of course, it is possible to pick up an enemy's weapon, and to request a weapon air drop, but these are not always feasible in the heat of the moment.

Outcomes

Like many open world games, there is no definitive end to the game. However, if you complete the main story missions, you will destroy the main villains and prevent their plans for world destruction/domination from reaching fruition. The mission called The Truth, however, turns all this horrifying on its head, but more on that later.

Dynamic Elements

The dynamic friction pattern appears pervasively. In terms of base section level, it takes more and more staff at higher and higher competencies in order to increase the level of the base section. This requires a large number of FOB bases, each of which costs exponentially more than the previously purchased one. Building the platforms and upgrading the platforms in each FOB requires exponentially more time, GMP, and resources. Just as a small example, in terms of time, the first upgrade in Mother Base takes about 30 minutes of in-game time. When you upgrade one of the platforms to level 2 in your second FOB, it takes 6 days! That's a 288X increase in time cost.

Besides the cycle of night and day, there is a cycle in terms of tension. When you are out exploring, the tension is typically low. As you get closer to an enemy outpost, the tension will increase some, and if you are proceeding with a mission, it will ratchet up accordingly as you try to avoid detection.

The playstyle reinforcement pattern appears in a negative form in the fact that enemies in bases react to how you infiltrate them and how to eliminate them in order to guard against you. Instead of encouraging the player to stick to the same tactics, you are forced to explore the play space and try alternatives to the same strategies. In its positive form, if you prefer to play in a loud, aggressive way, you can use your resources to research more assault rifles, grenade launchers, etc. When you clear out a base, you can then Fulton the resources back to Mother Base, allowing you to unlock more aggressive research options.

The worker placement pattern appears as literally assigning staff to different sections and receiving benefits based on the assignments.

The trade pattern appears in a limited way. As mentioned before, you can only sell resources to receive GMP, and never buy them using GMP. If you want to buy resources, you need to purchase them using real money. Fuck you, Konami.

The converter engine appears in a few forms. First, and most obviously, the number and level of platforms in a particular section determine the productivity and effectiveness of that section. In particular, the base development section takes unprocessed resources and converts them to processed ones. The rate at which it does this is controlled by how advanced the section is, so you can control the efficacy by your investments.

The stopping mechanism appears mainly in the form of boundaries and limits on marking soldiers, time limits for supply drops, and limits on your mission rank based on your equipment and helicopter support. If you equip the stealth camouflage, which effective makes you invisible for short periods of time, you are restricted to A rank or lower for that mission.

 

Dramatic Elements

Characters and Story

Upon escaping from the hospital where you were held, you are flown to the Seychelles where remnants of your force have created a "Mother Base," which looks like an oil rig or drilling platform. You are fitted with a prosthetic arm to replace your lost left arm, and one of your companions, Ocelot, tasks you with rescuing Lt. Kazuhira Miller, also called Kaz. He is being held prisoner in a Russian military base in Afghanistan. Upon rescuing him, you will be given further missions relating to the incident shown in what is called the playable demo to Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes. In this playable demo, you infiltrate an XOF (the counterpart to the FOX group that Snake belonged to) base and make some discoveries, following which the mother base you had been building in the Caribbean is destroyed by XOF. Your helicopter is blown up, and you suffer from grievous injuries, resulting in the 9 year coma you awaken from at the beginning of the game.

Miller thirsts for revenge, as his dreams were destroyed, and he lost both an arm and leg to torture. The rest of the game plays out with you basically running errands for Ocelot and Miller in Africa and Afghanistan in order to gather more information about XOF, who is leading it, what they have been doing in the 9 years since they destroyed your base, and what they plan to do now. As a first time player to the Metal Gear Solid franchise, it is really, really fucking confusing. Although this is the last game released, it happens roughly in the middle of the chronology of this game universe.

• 1964 - Snake Eater (Released in 2004)
• 1974 - Peace Walker (Released in 2010)
• 1975 - Ground Zeroes (Released in 2014)
• 1984 - The Phantom Pain (Released in 2015)
• 1995 - Metal Gear (Released in 1987)
• 1999 - Solid Snake (Released in 1990)
• 2005 - Metal Gear Solid (Released in 1998)
• 2007 - Sons of Liberty (Released in 2001)
• 2014 - Guns of the Patriots (Released in 2008)

As you complete these missions, you learn about several different plots revolving around parasites, both parasites that live on the skin, and ones that inhabit the vocal chords. The vocal chord parasites appear to be part of a plan to either eliminate all languages except English, or perhaps to eliminate only English. Different people say different things at different times. The skin parasites have been used to create two units called Skulls, a stealth Skull unit, seen below, and a combat Skull unit. They will appear at several points throughout the game to increase the tension and difficulty of a mission. There is also a plot about metal gears, the large bipedal robots that give the series its name.

 

 

To spoil the game a bit, as you continue playing story missions, you will eventually unlock a mission called "The Truth," in which you learn that you are not actually Big Boss. Although you played as Big Boss in Ground Zeroes, when you wake up in 1984, you are the medic on the helicopter. Essentially, you've been brainwashed into believing that you are Big Boss, besides undergoing cosmetic surgery to alter your appearance to match that of Big Boss. Ocelot and Miller are both aware of this, and this ties into the events of the first game in the franchise, Metal Gear, released in 1987. In that game, you play as Solid Snake, who receives orders from someone who we can presume to be the real Big Boss. He orders you to infiltrate a base called Outer Heaven and destroy a metal gear. Eventually, you will discover the leader of Outer Heaven to be Big Boss...but this Big Boss is actually the body double that you play as in The Phantom Pain. For some reason, Big Boss has decided to take out his body double. Although it might make sense in some way, in general the story is really overly complicated and does not stand up well to close scrutiny. 

 

To return to analyzing the story of MGS V, it essentially tells the story of you, the player/medic, becoming Big Boss, who is the villain of the next game! So, it turns this fantasy on its head, saying, "You want to be like Big Boss? Here you go. By the way, you realize he's an evil fuck, right?" Even the way that you recruit new soldiers is highly morally suspect. You kidnap these people, then torture them and brainwash them to believe in the Diamond Dogs private military force. These people become your staff!

Besides this reversal, there are not at all subtle references to literature which further establish these themes. Your helicopter is named the Pequod, and in the beginning, the patient who helps you escape the hospital says to you "Call me Ishmael," the famous opening line of Moby Dick. There are also times when you are called Ahab, although it might be more appropriate to name Miller Ahab, as he is one who is driving the thirst for revenge throughout the game. Still, both the game and the book show how a good leader and man can become twisted into something evil by the pursuit of revenge.

A more general reference is the year when the story happens, 1984, after the famous book by George Orwell. As you can tell from the byzantine descriptions above, the game definitely deals with complex political arrangements, where things are bluffed, double bluffed, and there always seems to be another layer underneath, where the truth can be found.

 

 

Conclusion

There are a lot of gameplay and UI design choices at work in The Phantom Pain that are similar to those of Red Dead Redemption 2, and they produce similar effects. If you want to leave a combat area and return to Mother Base or your helicopter, you must pick a landing zone, wait for the helicopter to arrive, get in, and wait for it to depart. These are rendered in real-time/in-engine, and the camera is under your control while you are waiting for the helicopter to depart. You may even switch from one side to another and use a minigun to fire at enemies. But it still takes too much time. Yes, it adds in realism and atmosphere to the experience, but why does it require so much work and so much real world player time investment? Why can't you just Fulton yourself out? Similar choices regarding how you search cupboards in Red Dead Redemption 2 come to mind, where you must hold a certain button for longer than a second to begin searching, then hold a different button for longer than a second to pick up a single item, wait for the animation to finish, then hold it again to pick up a second item, etc.

While the systemic effects of sight, sound, smell and the enemy AI produce interesting stealth game-play, and the way that Mother Base management, research progress, and the Fulton extraction of resources and soldiers all interconnect produces great synergy, there are many areas where the design seems purposefully against the player. The main instance that comes to mind is the higher research items, which require extremely high section levels, GMP, resources, and time to unlock. These balancing choices effectively force the player to either grind away for hours and hours, or to give in and buy Konami's in-game currency. When player's have already invested $80 for a full game, it seems piratical to ask for even more money in this way.

 

I don't want to come off as too negative in this conclusion, however. Hideo Kojima and his team of designers, artists, and programmers have produced one of the greatest open world games with a strong focus on stealth, and intimately interlocking gameplay systems. I've completed the main story and many dozens of side missions and dispatch ops over two complete playthroughs, one in 2014 and one in 2020, totaling about 171 hours of play. I quite enjoyed both my playthroughs, and I would not rule out playing it a third time in the future. The game's graphics have aged relatively well, and the gameplay is as sound as ever. It truly is a masterpiece.