bugsonglass said:

Is there continuity in the missions or is it more like Peace Walker.  Sounds like Koji fleshed out several ideas he was messing about with from Peace Walker

Very much like Peace Walker in that there's no continuity at the moment.  You're thrown into this huge playground with a objectives that you tackle however you see fit.  The goal is to gather Intel, gather resources for Mother Base and recruit soldiers.  A lot of these missions are "Take out the commanding officer" or " Extract prisoner A." Each mission can last anywhere  from about ten minutes to well over an hour and have their own beginning and end credits.  The missions are fun but I really hate the credits.  They will spoil who you will see in each particular mission which ruins the surprise.

Strangely, you can go hours without a cut scene so it can feel very different/odd if you're expecting MGS of old.

Birthday video https://youtu.be/hVsLSR6x_MM

Yeah, I don't expect to finish the game with over 35%.  I'm twelve hours in and only 5% complete.

Dvader said:

I have been invading and getting Invaded. It's not as complex as I'd hope, every base is the same layout but if you get another human it gets crazy. The home field advantage is ridiculous.

How far into the game before you can invade?

Try petting DD and accidentally slapping him.

Foolz said:

Reading your impressions I kinda feel like if it wasn't called MGS the issues with pacing might not actually be issues, because it sounds like it does break things up (due to how spontaneous the gameplay is), just not in the same way you'd expect from MGS.

2 things


A: Nah, the rhythm of the game suffers from similar type of pacing issues that other open world games have


B : The notion that MGS has good pacing, needs to come with a fucking asterisk or qualifier "gameplay pacing" because that stuff by itself is fine, but the pacing in MGS has always been atrocious because of this ridiculous, overwritten, shit barrel cutscenes from a guy who couldn't write a decent porno plot, much less an actual story with something to fucking say, but he'll fucking pretend his cheeseball wankfest trainwreck has something to say.

That and there are large stretches of MGS1, MGS2, and MGS4 gameplay wise that fucking SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK by any measure. You have to sip some major Kojima Kool Aid to forgive some of his shit.

The gameplay loop is just so fucking brilliant, that even obvious filler side missions that didn't need to be about 150 missions worth of them, are mostly enjoyable because of the sandbox nature of them, and how you might unlock a new toy to fuck with at the time. Plus the base building has a mixture of positive and negative effects on gameplay. On one hand it's clearly a grindy thing, on the other hand it creates a more intrinsic reward for being sneaky that you can get right away. Beyond just playing for a rank. Which I think helps, because while I like scoring systems, I tend to go for the scores on the 2nd playthrough when I understand the game and dig the game.

I was wondering why I had flies buzzing around me. When I landed at Mother Base I found out why.

So I reached the first ending the final missions are absolutely incredible. The last base you go into is one of the best designed areas I have ever played. And the story picks up big time, almost too many cutscenes. The so called final boss is fantastic, I would rank it only behind the boss as best final bosses in this series. Though I guess this is not the true final boss. As great as the final missions were it fails to compare to MGS3 in terms of excitement. Also the story is kind of weird, its not as good as past MGS games.

I have also been messing around with FOBs which are pretty fun. So once you open your FOB you are open to invasions and you can invade others for soldiers and materials. All bases are the same layout but you get to decide how strong your defenses are and where things defense should be focused. Invading is tough, against people who have not added much security it's a cake walk, you goal is to reach a room in the main strut. People with high defenses make it super hard to get through. And if the person is online they can come and defend their base, which has a huge home field advantage. They can't die, only be knocked out for a few moments. And they have tons of allies. It's thrilling and the whole cycle of being invaded and getting revenge is sweet. FOB is worth it cause you get loads of resources and money.

So I still have the second half of the story which should answer some questions. In terms of missions it seems most will be hard modes of older missions, sorry solid your air strikes are no longer allowed (cause they are cheats!). But it's all good as the missions offer so much diversity and options. I have so many gadgets and weapons to mess around with just doing side ops is a blast.

I am enjoying the base building, now that I am reaching high level stuff there are some high goals to reach. Extracting high level guys is more important than ever. It's a constant feedback loop of progression, it's great.

one of the most impressive things about the game is the adaptive AI. Now enemies are fully geared to take on me, helmets, they target Fultons, they don't fall for my distraction tactics as they used to. Even though the main campaign was disappointing the gameplay is beyond anything I have ever played

Nice impressions.  I'm glad to know the cut scenes come back with a vengeance.  Can't wait to hear about the final, final boss.  On a scale of 1-10, how crazy did the story become?