Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain Impressions - Kinda Funny Gamescast Special

Episode Date: June 9, 2015

Greg and GameSpot's Peter Brown played Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain for two days. This is how they feel about it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up everybody? Welcome to the Kind of Funny Gamescast special Metal Gear Solid 5, the Phantom Pain. I'm one of your host, Greg Miller, alongside GameSpots, Peter Brown. Thank you for having me. Thank you for coming. Get up on that microphone. Don't be afraid. Yeah.

You can screw your chair. There you'll get all into it. So, weeks ago, you and I went to L.A. We did. Got to play Metal Gear Solid 5, the Phantom Pain, for two days. Back to back. Yeah. What did you think?

So I'm a big Metal Gear fan, so I was really excited going into it. Was not disappointed. Yes. I'm going to say it right now and then I'll put all the caveats at the end. Game of the year so far, in parentheses so far. Right, because my game of the year list so far

is like Witcher 3. And now that Metal Gear's here, it's like better. Now where does Batman fall into that conversation? Where does Fallout fall in? I don't know. It all depends if they have horses, I think. Exactly. Well, that's the thing right now playing The Witcher. Because I'm riding around in this horse and I'm like, this is good, but Metal Gear's horse is so much better. Snake's horse is so much better.

It's smarter. It gets to you quicker when you call it in, but there's a lot to talk about for Metal Gear Solid 5, the Phantom Pain. We have a whole bunch of regulations from Konami. They don't want to spoiling the game for you. So you'll see me check this every so often to make sure I don't go off book. No plot elements, nothing like that. That's fine, whatever.

I was, I mean like, this is my notebook from the event. It'll one day be on eBay. And if you look at it, the first note I ever made, it's motherfucking peacewalker. This game is everything, everyone knows on kind of funny that I'm a huge peacewalker fan, right? Did you love Peace Walker? You know, I didn't get into it too much only because I wasn't

into playing it in a portable format. And then when it came out for the HD collection, I was too busy and missed it. Yeah, there's a million other things going on. But for me, sitting down to play this thing, like the presentation, the way they get into it, the way it's structured in terms of like, all right, we're going to go on these, you know, your side ops are over here, your main missions are over here, but then you start getting the base and building it out. And, you know, all right, now you need this R&D wing and you get all these different materials. You go on, I'm like, this is HD Peacewalker, this open world, going to these environments and sure, take care of the mission if you want to, or wander all over and fulsome and

gather resources and do this. I was like, I'm obsessed right now with thinking about it and getting that game again and just like the time I'm going to put into it, you know? Yeah, and it's interesting if you think about the amount of time that Kojima has put into it. Yeah, because Peace Walker was initially supposed to be a Metal Gear Solid 5, right? So it's not strange to see all these influences take place, but the game is gigantic. It's massive. And you have so much to play with using the mechanics that you were just talking about. I don't know if I'm ever going to finish that game, if I'm honest. See, my concern is that I'm going to lose myself to it.

Because this is like literally, it feels like the version of Metal Gear I've been waiting for my entire life. Because it's my favorite franchise. Metal Gear Solid, the original PlayStation 1 was my favorite game for a long time until I finally gave in, I was like, Peace Walker's my favorite game now. But to get it here where it's like, it has the trophies, it has a platinum from the jump, it's beautiful, the gameplay is solid, and there's so many reasons to replay it. It was interesting coming in, when ground zeros had hit, I had taken a day off work and I'm like, I'm going to sit here and get 100% in this game and I'm just destroy it.

And I jumped in and it never felt right to me. I felt like I was getting captured too easily. I was getting spotted. I wasn't having fun with it. And so that turned me off and I dropped away from it. I mean, I beat it, but I never went back for the 100%. And going into this, I was concerned if I was going to feel that way about Phantom Pain, right? But from the jump, just, I think the level of detail in each one of the levels and the ability to hide and get lost and get away from bad guys, that was the thing that is the game changer for me, right?

Where it's like it felt like in ground zero, somebody would see me and would get that like slow motion thing and I wouldn't be able to shoot them in time or I'd get caught on the way out. This one, it seemed like I was able to use that to my advantage to actually get away, hide, get in a cardboard box, get into a dumpster, do all these different things to get away from the people who are coming at me. Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, this is, the Phantom Pain is an open world game, right? But Ground Zero's didn't really have that aspect to it. It was more of an open format experience, but Camp Omega was pretty small, and there were, you know, guards everywhere. It was really hard to get away. But in the Phantom Pain, you really do have so many more different angles of attack, you know, or to sneak in and to sneak out if you really have to, just sort of, you know, reset that, that mission, if you will.

Sure. Yeah, that was the thing is like, I think it's, you know, it's so cliche now to be like, tackle mission any way you want. But it's true. This one really felt like that, right? Because I would go back and replay the missions, especially because it's just like, you know, Peace Walker where, all right, you have night vision goggles and then three hours later I've upgraded my night vision goggles and they do this on top of that.

So I go back to these other missions to try to get the VIPs I couldn't get or try to get through this with get an S ranking rather than this. And so to go back and suddenly be able to play it a completely different way, you know, to go back and, all right, now I want to do this mission at night rather. It took me a while to get my head wrapped around that of like, oh, like, I want to play every one of these missions at night and put on my Ignite Vision. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that, to me, you know, it's a game, Metal Gear is typically a game where you sort of progress, you know, through the story, you know, one segment after another, but you really do have the time and the freedom to do whatever you want. And if that's replaying a mission, you should do it because, you know, changing tonight doesn't only just make, give you the cover of darkness, but it also changes, you know, where guards are on the base, how they behave. Yeah.

What really struck me was when I started seeing guards wearing night vision goggles. Yeah. I was like, no, God. That was supposed to be easier, but yeah, no, it's a great game that is really challenging no matter how you play it. And that incentivizes you to go back because of that challenge. So now, the thing I've struggled with talking to the other kind of funny guys are just friends who are in the industry. I'm not breaking the embargo economy, I swear. About explaining Phantom Pain, right, is the fact that it's open world, but it's not open world in like the way Witcher is open world, right?

I'm going to all four in the corner and there's an exclamation over here and I get that mission while I'm still on my other mission and I can do whatever and switch them go rightly. Before you roll out from, you know, mother base or whatever, you are saying like, this is the mission I'm going out. And you can say you want to go out and just harvest resources. You can get dropped with no mission objective on top of you. Yeah. But I find it so hard to say, well, it's open world, but it's not open world, but it is open world. Because it's like, not everything's available on one map. You jump in and can go from point A to point B and do a million things. But there are missions that are like that,

and the environments are so big that you can go off and do different things. Getting ready for your preview, up on GameSpot right now, of course. Has it been hard for you to try to figure out how to phrase all of this and put it in? See, I guess I do see it as an open world,

but it's one that is, like, segmented because, you know, initially, right, you're in Afghanistan. Yeah. Which is a massive location. I mean, Kojima says that Fan Pan Pan is supposed to be 200 times larger than ground zeros.

I bet 50 of those Camp Omega's are in Afghanistan alone. And, you know, I actually spent a lot of time doing side ops and sort of taking those on. So I guess in that regard, I felt, I never felt pressured to do one thing or another. I felt as though I had the freedom to explore the territory,

you know, work on, you know, getting people back to Mother Base and upgrading that stuff. So it's, yeah, it's not exactly the open world that everyone usually thinks of when they think of something. When you say open world in a video, right, you think like GTA, like there's this map, there's missions all over and have fun,

which is what this is, but it's not like that the way they do it. Yeah, I mean, but you do unlock more missions, right? Yeah. And there is something to say about how you explore the map, because, you know, without going into story details, depending on where you are, you will trigger events that are independent of where you are in the mission timeline.

Right. I don't know if you experienced that. Yeah, again, not story. Yeah. We're not getting trouble for spoiling the story. But yeah, I was like, oh, I'm taking what I loved about it, right? Because for me, what was happening was I went the opposite way of how I played Peace Walker at the review event for Peace Walker,

back in the day. Because when I was like, I'm reviewing this, I'm going to play through all the story missions and I'll get to side ops later. Whereas this one, I'm like, I'm going to put two days of work into this, which is great, and I love it,

and not have my save ever. So I'm just going to do side ops and fool around and see how things work. So I'd be going off on side ops and be like, okay, now I'm going over here and you'd go up through the hill or whatever, and then bam, all of a sudden this person would interject that would create their mission

that you would have to go do to find that character, to flesh out that character. Yeah, it's that emergent stuff that we sometimes see in open world games. And, you know, personally, like, I enjoy just going about Afghanistan. And then all of a sudden discovering, oh, crap, there's an enemy outposts I didn't see coming. And that opens up a lot of gameplay possibilities as well that are outside of missions. So I was able to keep myself busy.

And, of course, as you go through the story missions, you then unlock more side ops. And as you explore and do things randomly, you also unlock more side ops. I was looking at the list of missions at the end of the second day. And there are numbers next to the mission. So you know, okay, there are this many. I unlocked one that was 145. Yeah, it was super peacewalkery. Where it's like, yeah, like here's side op mission, whatever, 100 something like, geez, Louise.

Right. So I'd like for those to open up a little bit more frequently. Yeah. But, you know, I have faith that like, give it another day with the game or another two that I would have 20, 30 missions that I was just waiting to attack. And I think that's going to be the difference, right? It's just the fact of like, I think when I'm playing on my save and I'm being very meticulous about building out my teams and research and getting my points where I need to and sending people out on the outer ops. Again, it's all just like Peacewalker,

but these systems put in there. That's when it'll be, I think, a little more organic in terms of like, well, now I want to play this story and I want to invest all this time in there. Because eventually it was like we were, I think, at dinner that night, and somebody was like, oh, and I did this and I found that person. I'm like, fuck, I got to start playing this goddamn story.

You know what I mean? Just to get to those points to see how it all flushes out and it flushes out and comes together. Not flushes together. Even though that would make sense too. Stemstells and the research we're doing, they could easily flesh together one day. So we're weeks removed from playing it.

What do you keep thinking about from the game? Hmm. Mother base. Yeah? Honestly. Yeah. Yeah. Because, you know, Afghanistan is its own thing, but Mother Base is yours.

And you put a lot of time and energy into developing it. And one of the things that struck me about it was when you start to build more and more struts that are attached to the main one. You have these long bridges. And I thought, oh, I'll just run across that bridge. Like, two minutes later, I'm still running. Yeah. It's like, I should have taken that Jeep in the beginning. Yeah.

Like, mother base is gigantic and being able to finally, like, have a tangible mother base to explore and, you know, see the fruits of your labor pay off. That's something like you were saying earlier. I want to be more meticulous about developing the different, you know, teams. Struts, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because it definitely helps when you're in the field. And so that relationship between, you know, Snake working solo, but also with a remote team that he's responsible for, that was one of my favorite parts. Yeah, that was weird. I, when we started doing it, I'm like, oh, it's like Peace Walker. I'm building on Motherbase Great.

I'm going to have all this dress or whatever. When it was finally like, all right, cool, now meet me, Snake on the medical bay. And you're like, okay, oh, it's all the way over there. Like, oh, crap, do I take the, should I get in a helicopter? No, that's a realistic consideration. Like, you actually can go everywhere and do everything on it. And, like, for me being the, you know, this metal gear nerd, right, I loved all the little things that were in there of, like, I think people've seen it in screenshots and stuff, but like when you're out in the battlefield

and you get shot, you get covered in blood, you get up dirty, you get filthy. That sticks with you until when you're at Mother Base, you go into one of the shower stalls. Right. and shower off and come out super clean. And like the fact you have to go through and like, you know, keep people's morale up by saluting them and talking on them. Oh, by saluting them. What?

Dude, you smack a soldier in the face. Thank you, thank you boss. I mean, and then it says loyalty up. Right. Like that is just such a little Metal Gear touch.

And Phant of Pain can be really melodramatic like any metal gear game. Yeah. But that's kind of what's nice. And then it's tempered with just the odd sort of humor that's peppered in there. Yeah, yeah. I really like that. Yeah. And like in Mother Base,

like some of the side ops were like Target practice. And I was like, okay, it'll be like normal target practice. And no, it's like you have to crawl, run up the side of mother base and there's all these things. And like the targets keep popping up all around. It's like, Jesus. It's like an obstacle course.

Yeah, it was challenging. Yeah, totally. Yeah, it sort of legitimized the presence of that even more. And I'm looking forward to how multiplayer plays out because when I understand, like the core strut will always be there. Right. Like you'll always have your mother base, but people can come in and destroy all the things you've made around it. So I really want to know how that plays out. We got no sense of that.

Yeah, exactly. The multiplayer The Metal Gear Online embargo is next week or whatever And that didn't include any information That was like something they mentioned and stuff But there's still so much to know about this game The game is so huge that even now

Like I just want to get it I'm like can we have it yet? Can we have it? Can we sit down? I just want to play this thing for hours and hours and hours Yeah, 15 hours in I think it was like 8% done Because it tells you on the title screen

Which is just insane Yeah, day one completion I think I wrote my note was 5% after a day of playing Yeah, I was at 4 Jeez Louise, you know what I mean let alone everything else. So for me, the thing I can't stop thinking about, and I think it's because, again, I'm playing the Witcher and stuff,

is the support system, the buddies. You know what I mean? When you start playing, you get the horse right away, you're like, oh, cool, I have a horse, and we're running, and it's just like roach and witcher. You can call it from any time. It'll run to you. It's not nearly as dumb as roach.

It'll appear like right over there, B to you. You don't have to worry about it. Yeah, exactly. Which is great. I don't need. No, it's fine. I don't need any sense of realism

where this goddamn horses are materializing from. But as you play then, like, did you unlock D-Dog? I did. Like there's this, yeah, I can't tell you, I guess, the mission of how it all happens or whatever.

But you eventually unlock this dog that you've seen his screenshots now that you use the same way. And I didn't understand when I, you unlock D-Dog that it's like, okay, that's one of your buddies. Like, that's your first introduction of like, the horse is a buddy that you can put in your load out

before you go out and D-D-dog is. So you can have one of the other. Yeah, and you don't realize you have a choice until D-D-Dog matures, let's say, to be, you know, strong enough to go into the field. And so you start with the horse. And the horse is, Yeah, it's a means of conveyance, but it's also a really good way to sneak around the world.

I mean, they've showed this in videos before where Snake is coming up and he sees an enemy outposts. So rather than get off the horse, you know, and sort of sneak through, he just sort of flips on to the side of it. Yeah. And that worked really well. I thought maybe it worked too well because no one's going to question a horse just casually trotting through. Yeah. With a whole bunch of gear on it. Yeah, but there's a lot of things that don't quite make sense when it comes to the mechanics of metal gear.

Sure. So that aside, I actually enjoyed being able to use the horse. for something useful other than getting from pointy to point. Well, that was the thing, too, is like, I jumped on. I'm like, oh, here comes a base. And I'm like, for the third time I went to the side ride. And I didn't notice there was another guy on that side too. So he's like, yeah, there's a guy on the side of that person.

God damn it. You know what I really want to know. I know we both encountered a bear in the wilderness. Oh, my God. So I wasn't able to use the Fulton recovery system to send him back. Yeah. Because you have to develop it to get something that large back to base. I really want to know if that bear can be your buddy.

If you're going to have a bear buddy. That's, I've never even, you're right. I never thought about that. If I can ride into battle on the back of a bear? Because that was the thing of like when I was unlocking all the struts, eventually did you get to the point where they're like, maybe I'm sending back so many coyotes and dogs or whatever, where they're like,

okay, cool, like now you have a zoo. Oh, no. Like I got a strut that's like, it's an animal sanctuary where you're sending things back and they're all in cages. You can just go there and walk around and read the little things about them and see them in there,

the things you've captured and sent back. That's so useless, but I like it. I know, right? It's so dumb. But I'm like, yeah,

Of course I want to do that and send a bear back. That bear kept killing me. Dude, yeah. I mean, the first time I saw him was like, whatever, I'll trank him in the head. Yeah. He's so fast. He took me 10 tranquilizer darts, and I was just near death. I kept tranking him, and then he'd get up and hit me.

And like, when you get, in Metal Gear, Phantom Pain, when you get hit really hard, like, not just like a gunshot, you have to, like, do a whole thing where you, like, pop your arm. Orr. Yeah. Like, I would get into that animation and get killed. I was like, great. But the dog. So the horse you can use to run around and do all these things.

You can use it as a scratch. distraction. I don't know if you ever did. Like, I left him in the road at one point and then ran off and then people come up like, what are you get? They're like laying on the horn. Like when it was one once where he had like attacked me like the convoy or whatever. He's like, oh, this is pretty good. That's actually really interesting. Blow everybody up or whatever.

But the dog then, so you lose the mobility of the horse. You have to be on foot the whole time. But the dog can't, we'll run with you and do like the little barks and then automatically tag people on your map. Right, which is super helpful. Super helpful. Like once I unlock him, I'm running with him the rest of the way, I think. And so I unlock some other buddy I don't even know about probably, right?

but like... I mean, they showed back at TGS, they showed quiet as a buddy and she just looks crazy because she can become invisible, she can like run at incredible speeds

and jump like two stories in the air. I unlocked her. I had her on my team for a while, but even then I'm like, I don't like killing people. So it's like, I don't have a trank,

sniper rifle to give you yet, so I'm gonna run with a dog who just sees people, distracts people, can run up and bite them and do all these different things. And I think you can level him up to be able to kill

or something like that. Because for mine, it was just like distraction still. But I'm pretty sure that there's somewhere along their lines so you can make them even better and crazier. But I mean, it's been,

I mean, I'm a Metal Gear fan and I've already said that. But so like, for me, it's just I can't get the game off my mind. You know what I mean? Even playing Witcher, I'm like, this is great. And I've been waiting for a game

to come along that was just a world that could get lost in. But I'm like, I really want to get lost in Metal Gear. You know what I mean? Just controlling Snake is such a, it feels really, really good. I mean, the way that the camera bobs

when you run. Yeah. You know, the way the controls are so tight and you can quickly go from a sprint, you know diving you know pop back up snip somebody you know keep sprinting around

I mean a lot of games let you do things like that but there's something about the way this game plays it just felt so freaking good yeah and I you know I made it past Afghanistan

and I sort of got a taste of what's next and that is what's killing me sure it's like okay I saw everything in Afghanistan what is what is there and you know we had to leave right I know

that was the huge you know fuck you of this event it was how much I loved it how crazy it was and how it was like you don't get your save back and you can't finish the game and I was like

ah god because there's so much cool stuff did you the other buddy I unlocked and did you get to the like the little but you've seen it in the trailers I don't know what they call it but in the metal gear online trailer that little mech guy you get in like when I got him I was like oh my god because it's like my favorite thing about Peace Walker was the ability

before we went into a mission to be like all right I'm only here for fultening guys out I want to be as sneaky as possible can be everything sneaky and then it was like I'm gonna replay this boss battle to get something cool out of it so I don't care give me all the you know the tech to kill people with Yeah. And so to have this goddamn tank you get in and run around and like run around like a stupid.

It's foolish as hell, man. Yeah, it doesn't. Yeah, totally like whatever. I won't, yeah. But even just for traversing the environment, right? Yeah. Like I unlocked it late in day two. So it was like, all right, well, I won't take, you know, D horse.

I'll take D-Robot or whatever the hell it's called and climb in it and just like skating across the sands of Afghanistan. I was like, yes. I saw somebody else using him and he sort of got into a battle with a bunch of soldiers and that thing was such a hindrance because he was trying to use it to escape. Yeah. Not happening. No, no, no, no. yeah. Yeah.

I'm curious to see how that evolves too, because if you can level up other buddies, I'm sure you can level up that guy. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, man, I was, like, I'm so ready for this game now. You know what I mean? And, like, that's what sucks is the fact that the story, here's, I mean, everything that seems to be happening with Konami and Kajima sucks, right?

Like, what is happening? Are they breaking up? Is he, are they unhappy? Who's, who's, what's happening? What are they doing anymore? You know what I mean? And it sucks that that that's been the narrative for this game that really feels like the culmination of everything.

thing Hadeo Kajima's built for Metal Gear. A little bit. It is kind of tragic. I had the unfortunate privilege of being the vector for a lot of that stuff. And, you know, like, it sucks because Kojima has done such a great job of making Metal Gear a series that people, like, really care about, you know, over a long period of time. And he's no doubt made Konami a lot of money. Okay, their business is changing, right? But assuming that everything I've heard and everyone now believes is true that he's just sort of

unceremoniously stripped of his executive position and became a contractor. Like, what a bitch way to get rid of someone who's done something, you know, for your company for years. Like maybe Konami is worried that he was getting too, you know, too big, right? And, uh, and, and Metal Gear was no longer Konami. It was just Kojima. And I'd say a lot of people probably thought that, but I still feel like there, there must have been something they could have done to work this out.

But you never know. I mean, maybe Kojima is like a jerk in the office. Yeah. For all we know. He's knocking coffee cups out of people's hands. Yeah. a complete asshole. Yeah.

No, that's the thing. It's just like, you know, I hope that now that people can talk about the game, and then once people get their hands on the game, at least that's the narrative people start talking about again. It's how good this is and how this seems like everything he's ever wanted to do with a Metal Gear. You know what I mean? You talk about Peace Walker originally trying to be like Metal Gear 5. And here we are.

We have this game that seems to be firing on all cylinders, right? Like when I think back of like this stuff I didn't like about it, I kind of blame the event, not in a bad way. But, like, you know, like, I didn't, I wasn't super connected to the story. You know what I mean? Like, I'm running around. I want to kill everything, fall some people out and see as much stuff as I can. But when I sit here and I'm got, you know, the surround sound on and the lights are down and I'm playing it,

I imagine I'm going to be more tied into what exactly is happening with Big Boss this time. Yeah, I mean, at the event, we had people like circling us to make sure certain things were transpiring or not transpiring. And it was a bit of an uncomfortable event, but that, you know, this is the missing chapter in the Middle Gear Solid saga. Yeah. Or just the Middle Gear saga. I mean, this takes place before the original. game. We get to see Big Boss transition into, you know, the, the demon that he is to Solid Snake. Yeah. And I hope that that is, you know, one element that really makes this game stand out after

it's released. And yes, people can talk about, wow, what a fantastic conclusion to the Metal Gear story. Yeah. You know, rather than, oh, how does this represent Kojima at this point in time? Like, sure, sure, sure, sure. He's interesting, but the game is more interesting. Totally. Yeah. So now, how did you feel about the way, we can't talk about story specific obviously, but the way they used Kiefer Sutherland in Snake. I like David Hater. It means, oh, I love David Hater.

Yeah, but I think he had a very campy quality to him that, you know, that's part and parcel with, you know, the role, yeah, and like, I appreciated that. But Kiefer Sutherland's voice, especially, like, in Ground Zero, I thought he did a good job. Like, he embodies someone who I imagined Snake to be outside of the

ridiculousness of Metal Gear. Sure. But you don't hear him talk very much. Right? That was the thing that blew my mind playing Phantom Pain and even Ground Zero's. But now that we got two days with Phantom Pain, right, is that there were cutscenes where this guy is talking to you. And he would take a breath.

And I was like, and here comes Snake. And then the other guy would keep going. And he would keep going. And it was one guy, like, all this exposition from one person with Snake never interrupting. And I was like, that feels so weird. Like, how is this working? What is going on? It's a bit strange, right?

But like, if you look back in Big Boss's history, he's been, can I swear? I don't know if I can swear. Yeah, you can totally swear. Okay, yeah. Fuck. He's been fucked over many times by people that he trusts. And, you know, then that culminates in him falling into a coma because he was deceived in ground zeros. And that guy's got to be shaken up like crazy.

Sure. You know, and so part of me, like those scenes where he's in the helicopter and the camera's kind of focused on him, you know, he's slumped over. He seems contemplative and solemn. And I kind of wonder if a lot of his silence is due to the fact that that guy has just been beaten the hell. Yeah. And he's tired. But it's hard to tell. I mean, is it because, I don't know, like they didn't want Kiefer to impart too much of himself on the character,

so they only used him in critical moments, or is there something related to the story that explains it. Well, what's fascinating for me, and it was another thing. I think it was on day two at lunch. We were sitting around talking. We were, I think it was Jose and I from IGN where we were talking about this. And he's like, yeah, but I love the fact that they're using the briefing cassettes to replace codec conversations. And I'm like, what do you mean? And he's like, before you go on admission, you can click square or whatever and listen to this tape that's basically a codec conversation.

And so when I sat down and did it, he said, did that. That's where it's all key for Sutherland, right? Where he's like, he's talking, talking, talking, they're having a conversation. And so, I don't know if it was the desire to get you in and out of gameplay faster. Like, you know what I mean? Like, for years, Kajima's taken it on the chin, right? That I'm watching a move you. I'm not putting it in the game. It's like, well, fuck you, here you go. You know what I mean? Right. Here's this optional story. You get to go this way. We've, you know, in mission, it is, there is no code. Like, I'm going to sit and to talk to you. It's like, all right, hey, uh, Ocelot's telling you something. Miller's

telling you something. This information is being delivered to your ear. You're not talking back to them really just go do your thing yeah and that was a cool it took me a while to get used to that because I you know whenever I remember in ground zero right when for the first time snake talks and it's like that's just so weird it's so weird not to have it be hater

but now to have it like what you're talking about be a different character in a way right like he's not in the same place solid snake was let alone where naked snake was in Metal Gear 3 I'm not making excuses I love hater I wish he stuck around but it does feel like a very different big boss a different snake that we're playing as Yeah, he's definitely a more serious character, which I think honestly plays to this game in favor.

Because I'm ready for a metal gear that is even more melodramatic if that's possible, you know? Yeah. So I think he is doing a pretty good job. I know I'm going to get a lot of hate for it. I don't care or whatever. I mean, I think he's doing a good job too. It's just wrapping your head around that. Yeah.

I mean, like that's still so weird every time because I'll forget about it. Yeah. And then you'll see a trailer. You'll play the, we get to play the game. And it's like, oh, right. There are moments in the story where, like, you know, the action. really calls for the sort of reaction you get out of Kiefer, and then when you have that relatability to the character, I think that's when it clicked for me. More than just the sort of

casual side conversations. Sure, sure, sure, sure. Yeah, they're doing a lot of good characterization stuff. I'm flipping through my nose to see what I can talk about that. I can talk about, meow, meow, meow, meow. I'd love to talk more about quiet, but I don't want to spoil anything. Yeah. She's, she's interesting. I like the, I like, you're talking about this a little bit, doubling back to mother base, the customization stuff of it. The ability to, make it yours, color-wise, logo-wise, have your logo pop-up, do that stuff. And then for me, it was like going through and doing all the ridiculous stuff of developing new camo patterns. And then eventually getting the sneaking suit.

Yeah, right. So metal your solid one. I was like, yes. Fuck all the fatigues. I want him in that. That took so many credits to buy. But that was the only thing I cared about at that point. And that was interesting thing, too.

I thought it was when you first started playing, I felt like I was swimming in credits. And I'm like, oh, this is so easy. Right. You know, this is even easier than Peacewalker. And then eventually the grind hits. Yeah. where all of a sudden it's like, oh, you want the sneaking suit. Well, yeah, I mean, you can get the base components, like, for, you know, all the equipment you need to actually do a good job.

But if you want to feel, like, that much more empowered, like, in the battlefield, like, yeah, you got to put some work in. Yeah. Like, like, all that stuff. And, like, like, searching for diamonds, like, in the environment. Right. I guess I never really searched for them, but I would always find them, like, in the weirdest scenarios. Like, maybe I was going to hide underneath a bridge with soldiers sneaking over me. And while I was crouched down, I'd see, oh, wait, there's a little glimmer.

Yeah. Yeah. 10,000 credits right there. Yep, yep, yep, yep. Those guides are going to be invaluable when people start putting those together. Because like when you're out there in the field, you're gathering resources to come back and use. And like there's medical resources and food resources and all stuff to use on your base and do all this stuff. But then, yeah, there are diamonds littered around that you can then use for your diamond dogs and do all this stuff and get all your resource points or GMP they call them, right?

Right. And then put them into, you know, researching this and burning that and doing this. And it's like that's where it's really going to come down to because on your map it starts displaying where things are going to be in the area. Yeah, your Intel develops and they can tell you, like, like, yeah, oh, you found this around here. We've seen that around there. And for me, that feels like the rabbit hole of mining planets in Mass Effect or Exobite farming and DC Universe online, where I'm going to be like, I don't feel like doing any

the missions right now, but I want to make progress. So I'm going to go into the open world map and just run around for an hour listening to a podcast doing that. I really want to see how deep that system can go in terms of what you can unlock. Because the things that I saw during our gameplay session, like you had a grid of different equipment in different grades, but I felt like, you know, if I put another 10, 15 hours into this, I'll unlock everything. But for all tens of purposes, this game may be 100 hours. And I would really like to be able to continue to unlock stuff. Yeah. Um, but we'll see. Did you get to the

point where you could upgrade your box to have the woman on it? The bikini-clad woman? I upgraded it to, uh, a soldier. Okay. I had a soldier on it instead of a woman. I had, I put the bikini clad woman on it from the trailers or whatever. And I remember seeing the trailer and be like, what a, what a dumb Konami Kodima thing. It's dumb. But then, but then, but it's so, but it's so. But it's so. satisfying to you. You know what I mean? It is. You'll pop up and the guy

runs over and he's like, oh, and then you can like do the slow motion, throw it open, draw your gun and drink them. I'm like, oh, that feels so good. The coolest thing that happened to me with the box was a total accident, but you can run around with it sort of on your torso.

Yeah. And then you can dive out of it. So I was running over to like the precipice of a hill. Yeah. And I did the diving mechanic, but rather than like dive out of the box, he dove with the box and it was like a sled. I went down the hill inside the box.

Yeah. See, there's so many little things like that I want to find and stuff. I thought it was very interesting the way they varied enemy encounters because for the while it is like oh there's the outposts, there's four guys, trick them all, whatever,

folding them out, yay. But then there was the one mission or whatever you want to call it where there was like that giant bridge. Yeah. And that gave me such trouble because you have to get through there but you have to get something

or I think it was maybe interrogate somebody and it gave me such trouble because there were so many people and they were all in things. But then when I had the box later on I came back and did that again and it was like a completely different mission now because I can distract the guards who were giving me trouble, take them out, and then,

you know, infiltrate a different way. Yeah. I mean, the game starts you off with pretty modest, you know, missions, but yeah, eventually you come across things that the scale is just so intimidating, you're like, I don't know why I was confident going into this. Yeah, exactly. I was screwed. And then when you hit that moment where it all works, though, right?

There was, like, one that I was like, for me, it was like one of those, like lead-up to the GTA heist things where it was like, I think we had to C-4 on this tanker and then you need to blow that, but also across the other side of the map, you know, tinker or tinker with this thing. And so when I finally did it, that's when people on the other side by the tanker were waking up. And something's wrong. And I'm like, and I'm like,

color all through the windows. And I'm like, that was awesome. And it was like frantic running while everyone's in panic mode to get out and get loose. Did you ever do, um, did you ever like take out everyone at a location? Like not just an outpost,

but like a big mission location. So I was going through one mission and I couldn't find this. You have to like look for a document, I think. Sure. And I kept looking and looking. and I couldn't find it, and guys kept crossing my path, and I would take them out. Eventually, it was like, you now own this area.

I was like, what? Yeah. Talking to other people, I learned that if you take out the outposts that are along the road and the communication relays, you actually isolate an environment where they can't call in backup. So you can totally dominate massive military bases in this game if you want to play it that way, or you can sneak in and no one knows you're there.

That makes sense, because I was doing the thing where I was on the outposts, I'd take out an outpost, and then I'd come back on another, I was expecting, like, far cry, right? Where I've taken out the outpost, I own it. Yeah. This is mine now. But I'd come back in another mission and everybody would be back. I was like, well, that's kind of lame.

But for what you're talking about, that makes sense. Yeah. Take everybody out, cut them off and then go and do it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's every one of these things, man. Like, I distracted the convoy with the horse that one time. That was great.

And then, like, on that mission, before I got to that point, right? Like, I had set up C4 and I'm like, I'm going to blow them all up at once. And I blew it only got two of them and two of them got away. And it's like, ah, like. Yeah, because they'll see the explosion be like, no, I'm not gonna, I'm not an idiot. There's all this problem solving that goes into actually trying to figure it out. But then, yeah, to climb the hill, the snipe, to do all this stuff, to really tackle it however you want to. Yeah, I mean, I like ground zeros for that.

You know, it was a small location, but I played that game for almost 20 hours because it was just fun to just go in and experiment with different ways of accomplishing things. There are so many systems in play in so many ways to combine them that, I mean, I'm scared for how long I'm going to play this game. But I'm also excited as hell. Yeah, that's the thing. Yeah, I feel like I'm going to be way lost in this one. Like, I'm lost in The Witcher. I'm having a good time. But, like, I have no, one day, probably when Batman comes, I'm going to stop playing

the Witcher and then pick it up later when there's, when I feel like jumping back in. But like, Metal Gear feels like I'm going to shut everything off. You know what I mean? Like, this is all I'm going to do. If I'm at home, I'm doing this or, you know, take a goddamn portable game screen with me and play with somewhere else. What haven't we covered that you want to talk about with Metal Gear? Anything else is standing out to you?

That we can't talk about. I know. So that's just the thing. Like, I know. all the things I want to talk about, like really badly, we can't. The one thing they put on here, we can't mention, let me make sure I get this right. So we can't, well, I don't even know if that's right or wrong. I was going to say, hold on, look at number, I want you to look here at number four.

Because number four is confirmed, but not the actual thing. So we can say something about that, I believe, right? Yeah. Because I know number four has news stories about it already. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of stuff that has new stories in this that we can't talk about. But that one, I think, is fine. You can't specifically say the licensed music tracks in this. Right.

But when they were making a big deal about, oh, you're going in 1984 or whatever, and like the shirts they had were like the neon 84 colors, whatever. I was like, oh, that's cool, but why would that matter to metal gear? And then when you're there and people are listening to boom boxes with licensed 1980 music, that is awesome. And you can take the tape and then you can put it in a year cassette thing. And you can, I didn't know this. Jose told me this after the fact when we were drinking beers.

The fact that you can set it to be your like helicopter's singing song. So your theme song comes, or your helicopter comes in playing your favorite song from the 80s? I was like, that is awesome. I mean, you can also have like a really impactful, like, military-related song, you know, that sort of announces you're coming, or just be a jerk and roll in playing something like super poppy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and that's what I'm gonna do for sure. Yeah, but once I figured out you could take tapes, it was everything I could do to find every boombox out there. It's like, and that was the best thing too, you know, eventually I, uh, upgrade the binoculars so that they have the sound too. So you're listening in the conversations,

and then you'll be going, what was that? What was that? You'll just catch like the faint and you're like, wait, where is the boom box? Forget what I was doing. That is point number one. I'm getting that boombox and getting out of here safely. Yeah. So anything else? I just can't wait. I just want to play the game. Me too, man.

And I want to talk about the story with other people. Yeah. I want to, I just want it. I want the game. Soon enough, Peter Brown. Okay.

Are you sure? I mean, September 9th? Is that right? Is that right? September. First? That was close.

September. It's close enough. Yeah, yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, that's what we think. Well, Middle Gear Solid 5, the Phantom Pain. You can tell us what you think

in the comments from what we talked about. If you're watching this live as I've posted it. I'm over on Twitch.tv.tv slash kind of funny games, answering your questions. If you've already missed that, somebody probably already asked your question, you can go to Twitch.tv slash Kind of Funny Games and watch the

On Demand Archive, and you'll catch up on everything I said there. I probably violated the embargo and flush my whole career down the toilet. Somebody trapped me. They're like, oh, over here on GameSpot, Peter said, I was like, oh, if Peter's saying it. I'll check that an hour later, like, damn it! You got me Twitch chat. Peter, thank you so much for coming by. Yeah, buddy. Thanks for

having me. Your Twitter's been up the whole time so people can follow you on Twitter. Do it. Go over to GameSpot, read your article. Do you assume you have some kind of video thing going up to? Well, we're working, you know, we had a small video feature planned. We weren't allowed. I was going to go film at Konami Studio. They're like, no.

Yeah, no. You can't capture another like that. No new B-roll. So I'm actually, I'm creating a video feature with Mary Kish, I think you know. Yeah. And so it's about creators and how we perceive them as fans and how maybe they perceive themselves. And this is sort of springboarded from the Kojima thing.

But for Phantom Pain, I've got a story about, you know, 15 hours in Afghanistan, everything I did that was unusual and fun. And another one on giving birth to Motherbase. Yeah. All right. We'll check that out at GameSpot.com. Until next time, ladies and you gentlemen, it's been our pleasure to serve you.