Metal Gear has been some what of a legend is the gaming industry. The first Metal Gear released way back on July 7, 1987 and now we're getting the latest installment later this year with Metal Gear 5 : The Phantom Pain on September 1, 2015. With this being Kojimas last game in the series, plus tying all story elements together, he's going out with a bunch of new features to blow players away. Here's everything you need to know before E3 2015.
Story
The Phantom Pain starts sometime in 1984 and lasts until 1995 where we would presumably meet the 'unsung' hero, Solid Snake from the original MSX game. The game starts off with Big Boss waking up from a coma that lasted 9 years. At the end of Ground Zeroes players experienced a major blow to Mother Base, resulting in Big Boss' coma. Waking up, Big Boss must find who's responsible for the death of his team, destruction of his base and the person who put him in a coma for 9 years. The story turns into more of a revenge story for Big Boss, and for players who kept up with the stories lore so far, know that Big Boss is the main villain for Solid Snake, a genetic modified clone of himself. The Phantom Pain will show Big Boss' slow transition from Hero to Villain, and will fill in the gaps from the Metal Gear timeline. But before that, players will see firsthand what made Big Boss go over the deep end. This is the bare bones premise of The Phantom Pain, without spoiling too much.
Open World
Metal Gear games have always been a linear experience, almost to the point to where the game could be called a playable movie, but now with the Phantom Pain players will have the ability to explore the open world that Kojima and his team created. The game will take place in various places like Afghanistan and Africa, two totally different sceneries. How players decide to play the game is all up to them. The mission structure is similar, if not identical to 'Peace Walker'. A set of missions will be placed at your disposal allowing you to move the story at your pace, this could easily be one of the biggest changes for a Metal Gear game in a positive way. Kojima stated that the game would be more like an episodic TV series than the original movie format we are all used to.
According to Kojima, The Phantom Pain is to be 200x bigger than Ground Zeroes. For all of you that didn't play Ground Zeroes, it was relatively a small area, it was basically just a demo for the core fans of the franchise, demonstrating how the new Metal Gear was going to play. (P.S. anyone who is a PS Plus member gets Ground Zeroes free for the month of June.)
Besides the open world, Kojima went the extra mile and made a day and night cycle. Now this is important as the player has the ability to start his or her mission during the morning or at night via the Phantom Cigar. This will affect how the guards patrol the area, for first time players will have to strategically plan out how they want to infiltrate a base without being seen, bringing a whole new depth of stealth. Now as this is an 'open world' Metal Gear, there is something that needs to be addressed. The open world aspect could best be described as an untraditional open world, meaning players wont just be walking the vast landscapes of Afghanistan, but more of a segmented open world. When dropped into missions, players will have full control on how and when they choose to start 'said' mission, but once the mission is complete, Big Boss will have to return to Mother Base.
Mother Base
Mother Base is a huge factor in The Phantom Pain, this is where players can create a home base for the soldiers they recruit, vehicles fultoned back and a place for Big Boss to rest. The customization is unbelievable, and players will have more access than ever before. The ability to create your logo, color scheme and layout structures are just some of the things you can do while at Mother Base. Diamond Dogs, Big Boss' new military team, will be present on the Base and when Big Boss returns from missions, the soldiers morales go up, leading them fight harder when their on missions. All the little things like this, makes the player immensely immersed.
No two Mother Bases will look the same, with the vast amount of customizable items, players could make what they want with the resources they have, differentiating them from other players. Besides creating struts that fit to your liking, there is something really interesting about this Mother Base feature. Online players can invade your base, Yes they can invade the base you built with the your hard earned resources. If you happen to not be there, the online player could sneak in or go in guns blazing and take items and kill part of your team. But if you are at your Mother Base, you have a chance to stop them before they cause to much damage. This is a brand new concept that has only been brought up a couple of times by Kojima, but hopefully Kojima gives a little more detail to this new idea of invading other players bases at E3.
These are really the big pinnacle points that plan to push The Phantom Pain further than any game before. There are many more little features that are mentionable and will be pointed out down below. The Phantom Pain should appear either on Sony or Microsoft's E3 press conference this year, showing off some new gameplay. The worldwide release date for Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain is September 1, 2015. Make sure to check back at GameZone for all the latest news on The Phantom Pain after E3 2015!
Mentionable Features :
- Drivable Cars, Tanks, Horses.
- Multiplayer Is Back, MGO
- Buddy System, Bring Comrades like D- Dog, D-Horse and Quiet into missions with you
- Kiefer Sutherland Voicing Big Boss
- FOX Engine
