2) Have faction loyalty, and areas of influence. Certain enemies are more likely to patrol their areas of influence. Taking bases from enemy hands decreases their influence, and these bases can be given to Diamond Dogs or even your comrades. Giving them to Diamond Dogs would give you the benefit of easier fast travel and level hubs other than Mother Base. Giving them to comrades improves their morale with Big Boss and makes them more willing to aid you. The more bases you take the more Diamond Dogs influence grows, and encounters with the enemy will become easier because they'll be able to move less freely

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With how easy it is to capture bases, players would be able to turn the entire map into a safe zone in no time at all.

That's true.
But if there was an active all out alert in a section of the map, you could play for sporadic dominance of the area between two factions could make for some interesting gameplay.
Like the section with the guerrillas in Act 2 of MGS4, but on the open world of MGS V.

EMN mines need to be changed so that they actually disable vehicles. They're great for trucks and 4x4s, but if you use them on a tank or APC it will stop it, but the gunner will instantly detect you even if you're not in his line of sight and swivel the gun around to shoot.

2) Have faction loyalty, and areas of influence. Certain enemies are more likely to patrol their areas of influence. Taking bases from enemy hands decreases their influence, and these bases can be given to Diamond Dogs or even your comrades. Giving them to Diamond Dogs would give you the benefit of easier fast travel and level hubs other than Mother Base. Giving them to comrades improves their morale with Big Boss and makes them more willing to aid you. The more bases you take the more Diamond Dogs influence grows, and encounters with the enemy will become easier because they'll be able to move less freely

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With how easy it is to capture bases, players would be able to turn the entire map into a safe zone in no time at all.

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Going back to this, I was thinking about it the other day, and thought about how it would work. My idea was to have more unique bases and outposts, like Far Cry 3 and 4, but instead of them being permanently captured, have them be recaptured by the enemy after a while. Depending on how you captured it, their equipment will change. They'll put up Claymores and security cameras, have snipers on a nearby hill, or an armored vehicle patrolling the perimeter. Smaller outposts might eventually have tons of security. Hell, if the base is important to XOF, they might even station some Skulls there.

Which brings me to my next idea:

Skulls in the open world, and the ability to stealth kill them. I thought about this a bit, and had the idea that you could develop a machete attachment to Big Boss' hand. Once you fultoned enough Skulls, you could develop a Skull Machete for him, which can slice through even heavily armored enemies, and would allow you to sneak up on Skulls and shank them silently. If you were good enough, you could stealth kill a whole squad of Skulls without triggering a fight. And if you manage to do it, you get a big heroism and GMP bonus.

Aren't real world CQC and Krav Maga fighting styles currently unbeatable? A Brazilian guy once told me that literally every single move in Krav Maga is specifically meant to kill the person you are fighting as quickly and in as few moves as possible. Every strike, every counter, every grab. It's why it's illegal to be taught to civilians, and therefore unbeatable except by another person who knows Krav Maga. Other than another person who also knows it, that one who knows Krav Maga would almost immediately kill any other person who uses any other fighting style on the planet, even if it's a mixture of multiple styles like MMA. Kung Fu, Tae Kwon Do, Jujitsu, Boxing, Kickboxing, Thai Kickboxing, Slugging / Brawling, Street Fighting, Karate, Grappling / Wrestling, Sikh Martial Arts w/ Katars, standard military / police takedown moves, various weapon fighting styles using swords / nun-chucks / kendo sticks, etc. The opponent is dead in seconds.

CQC is the MGS equivalent to that, though with non-lethal options. It has been demonstrated in universe that there is no counter unless the opponent also knows it.

Unless the Brazilian guy was wrong, which I have no reason to doubt him. As far as I know, only the Israeli military and various world special forces know the style.

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He was...
Quite simply; there is no 'best' martial art.
A martial artists who can beat another martial artists in a fair and controlled fight will win because of his superior skill, technique, physical and mental attributes.
If a martial artist bases his technique and skill to fight individuals who are not martial artists which is actually what Krav Maga teaches you; then they will actually be at a distinct disadvantage when they actually come up against a skilled fighter.

First of all, MORE. I know there is probably the same amount or more, but it really felt like there were less tapes than in Peace Walker. Maybe because they weren't separated into conversations between different people. Anyway, I feel like we really needed more.

I'd have:

More one-on-one conversations with the team. Miller, Ocelot, Huey, Code Talker, etc. Hell, maybe even cassette tapes of Eli and his shenanigans.

Cassette tapes talking about Big Boss's past. This would help serve many purposes, catching up on backstory, getting characters' perspectives on things, and finally helping to reinforce Venom's doublethink

A lot more cassette tapes from Skull Face. I was thinking that as you pursued him, he would know you were on his trail, but he'd be one step ahead, and he'd leave cassette tapes behind, almost like a taunt. Him giving a speech on something perhaps, like he likes to do, or an interrogation tape like in Ground Zeroes.

More music. I'm sure we all know great 80's songs that would fit. They didn't even have to be things that came out before 1984. 80's in general is fine. Who cares if it is an anachronism?

Something sorta like Big Boss' journal. Him cataloging his thoughts and stuff. It'd give something for Kiefer to do, for one thing, and it'd be interesting to see inside the mindset of a Big Boss who speaks less. Of course I'd have him speak more in game, but having him be a bit quieter and only really letting his true feelings show in his "journal" would be a really interesting look into his mindset.

They should remake the water elements, such as brooks and waterfalls.
-for lets face it, water in MGS5 looks like something out of PS2 game. Really crude.

Same goes for the seas around the mother base. Very dull looking at the mo. Amazing how there are no ships and boats on the move at all, given that the construction is going all round...

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You know, I think the Africa map in general looks kind of underwhelming TBH. Yeah, the water looks meh, but even the foliage and terrain look kind of unpolished. I obviously can't say for certain, but it almost feels like they had a "B-team" working on that map, or else it was super rushed. Because Afghanistan looks fucking amazing.

I get that the story to MGSV disappointed many people, but it had no shortage of emotional moments. Rescuing Kaz, Huey's Trial, Quiet in the Rain, A Quiet Exit, Taking Vengeance, Shining Lights Even In Death, The Man Who Sold The World, and it might have been cut from the game proper, but Kingdom of the Flies is still canon, so it counts.

I get that the story to MGSV disappointed many people, but it had no shortage of emotional moments. Rescuing Kaz, Huey's Trial, Quiet in the Rain

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Does a weird semi-erection count as "emotional?"

A Quiet Exit

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Does controller-smashing frustration count as "emotional?"

IDK, I wasn't hugely disappointed with MGS5 or anything, but I'm with Nick here. Shining Lights was the only mission that really got to me. The Man Who Sold the World might have, if it had had any build-up to it whatsoever, but nah.

I get that the story to MGSV disappointed many people, but it had no shortage of emotional moments. Rescuing Kaz, Huey's Trial, Quiet in the Rain

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Does a weird semi-erection count as "emotional?"

A Quiet Exit

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Does controller-smashing frustration count as "emotional?"

IDK, I wasn't hugely disappointed with MGS5 or anything, but I'm with Nick here. Shining Lights was the only mission that really got to me. The Man Who Sold the World might have, if it had had any build-up to it whatsoever, but nah.

This game really needed a Cobra Unit type thing of its own. It's obvious from a lot of the game that a lot of stuff was planned and then dropped during development due to budgetary and time concerns/rushing, but I think we still could have gotten more of the enjoyable Metal Gear experience that we come to expect if we had a little group of 4 to 5 interesting characters with strange supernatural (or mechanical) powers that we take on throughout the story. It would have added a lot of content and extra story that the game sorely needed.

The Afghanistan map also needed some easier ways to travel through the big mountains, or to get on top of them, or something. Instead it just felt like a maze of giant corridors, which, granted, I learned my way around by the end of the game, but they still failed to really capture the openness that they claimed. It felt more like a few smaller Peace Walker levels that were strung together, although occasionally the open world format did come into play in interesting ways. Africa, on the other hand, took more advantage of how an open world game allows you to freely roam, and had plenty of interesting areas that existed in between destinations, as well as many different ways to approach almost every location.

Major spoilers: For the last third of the game, although this is a really huge change, it really seemed that they were hinting at an ending where you would return to your base as Solid Snake and take yourself down in what would be a loose remake of the first Metal Gear. For this to have worked and felt special, we would have needed a more thorough base construction, which it seems that the game did have at one point but eventually it became the weird thing it is now instead of something where you truly tweaked and customized the placement and operation of everything. If this had been the last act, I think we would all be hailing MGSV as one of the greatest games of all time and an extremely fitting conclusion that wraps the game back around to the first. Instead, we got something that ALMOST does that, but falls flat because it's obvious that the ambition was higher than what Konami decided to allow.

Also, what the hell was up with Skullface? I kind of liked how at the ending he just got completely owned, but Ground Zeroes built him up as if he was going to be this incredible villain with a lot of depth to him and someone we would be seeing a lot during the game, and we actually barely saw him do anything. Really disappointing. If I tweaked this, I would have given him a few more beats in the story to show up before his ultimate demise.

I think I'd also have it take place over a longer period of time. Have Chapter 1 and 2 take place in '84 but then jump forward to '90 so we could have that older-looking Big Boss from the concept art.

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Visually, this was one of my nitpicky gripes with MGS5; Big Boss looked much too young. I don't even think we'd need to jump to 1990 to get a BB who looked as old as the guy in the concept art; I mean, he was 50 in 1984 and had led a brutally hard, chain-smoking life, but he looked pretty youthful still. Hell, he looked older in Ground Zeroes.

Yeah, he barely aged in those 9 years. I'm OK with that, honestly, I like Venom's design, but I'd like to see older Big Boss/Venom at some point in the game.

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IMO what should have happened is that Venom's appearance would be like it is (post-surgery) for most of the game, while BB would look significantly older when he woke up. Essentially, they rebuilt Venom to be a resurgence of Big Boss to build his legend, so it makes sense that they would have made him look like the Big Boss everyone knew before the chopper crash.

This game really needed a Cobra Unit type thing of its own. It's obvious from a lot of the game that a lot of stuff was planned and then dropped during development due to budgetary and time concerns/rushing, but I think we still could have gotten more of the enjoyable Metal Gear experience that we come to expect if we had a little group of 4 to 5 interesting characters with strange supernatural (or mechanical) powers that we take on throughout the story. It would have added a lot of content and extra story that the game sorely needed.

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Going back to this, I would have like to have seen the Parasite Unit have some actual boss characters rather than just the shambling zombies that are the Skulls.

Quiet has parasite powers without being a Skull, so it'd be cool to have some boss characters that were like her, with different powers and stuff.

I'm pretty certain that Skull Face was meant to have parasite powers in TPP, though not as extreme as Quiet, since his body isn't practically made up of them like hers is. Why else would he wear that mask if not to hide the marks around his eyes like Quiet and Code Talker get? Plus, that line "I'll show you my demon." He was talking about Sahelanthropus, but wouldn't it be cool if he had some parasite powers that reflected that statement?

Okay, extremely nitpicky on this one, but... the lack of a blood texture for the eyepatch bugs me. Snake's whole face, uniform, and scarf can drenched in blood but the eyepatch always remains perfectly pristine.

There's blood on the eyepatch as Demon Snake, but generally yeah, it's not on it.

I've never really thought about it before.

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I never actually saw the proper Demon Snake model when I had it, so I didn't notice. I mostly play as my avatar character. But even at that, I only had the Demon model for like ten minutes after developing a nuke; I must have had like zero Demon Points before that, because the blood/horn went away as soon as I fultoned the Skulls out of the Metallic Archaea mission.

some things that splurged out of my head while reading this stuff
Story Stuff
- Divided into two acts.
- Plot would be Big Boss vs the Patriots in an act of one upsmanship over who can do more heinous things to get a leg up on one another. The line between which side is the greater evil would be much blurrier than what we got.
- This escalates to the finale, where while Boss is away on a mission, his main base and the characters you get to know and love(like Quiet) get massacred by his clone, a younger Solidus(he uses his likeness to Big Boss to catch everyone off guard), Patriot forces, and a new prototype Metal Gear. This finale is similar to the end of Ground Zeroes except Boss isn't fleeing on a helicopter, he is there fighting a hopeless fight to save everything he built.
- Big Boss seemingly defeats him(a "death" similar to one of Liquid's many in the 1st game), though its revealed in the post credits phone call the he got away and was assigned to the ruining of Raiden's life part of things. This nasty encounter explains why Big Boss is so ruthless and diabolical to a young Solid Snake.
- His soldiers dead( and main base(he still has a small country's worth of resources from all the things you've accumulated over the course of the game) ruined, Big Boss decides to call a truce with the Patriots; though in reality he is plotting against them in a more devious way than before; with the idea of a new Metal Gear now in his head.
- The surprise(and much shorter) second act would be a remake of the first Metal Gear, with you controlling Solid Snake, infiltrating the country and bases you've built, and defeating Big Boss complete with epic final speech.

Gameplay Stuff
- Skippable helicopter rides
- No missions that are just harder repeats of previous missions(they could still be in there but not listed as part of the main story stuff)
- Takes place in 1 geographically diverse country, with you fighting for territory with the Patriots like Risk.

I agree with more cutscenes. I'd also get rid of the twist. I kind of like it now, but I still think it'd have been better without it.
I'd have actually showed us Zero. I'd have developed him a lot more.

Gameplay side, my two biggest things are I'd get rid of the headshot noise, at least for the tranqs. I don't know why, but it sounds so silly it feels out of place and annoys me. Compare the headshots in the GZ trailer at TGS.

Also, I'd tweak some of the gameplay features to be more like GZ. GZ felt smoother to me than TPP does. The CQC was better, stealing guns was easier, choking out was quicker, hold ups while running were more achievable, and I liked not having to hit an extra button to keep walking after a dive.

I gotten a PS4 just for this game, and not only that, I got the collectors edition bundle. After proclaiming that I will take the first year to play and beat MGSV, I did but 5 days over. As a departure of what I did for MGS4, its now time for me to dive back into MGO and play/finish my other backlog of single-player campaign runs. Now that I also excepted PW to be canon, time to fire up that game for the first time.

Truth be told, I never used any of the DLC codes that came with pre-order/collectors but I just watched the bonus disc and the best part were the interviews. After it's all said and done, I wish I had more. More gamplay, more bonus, just more MGS.

A developer who worked on MGSV had some stuff to say on 4Chan about the unfinished nature of MGSV, and holy shit, it's a doozy. I'll post all the screencaps I found on imgur here, but this is what stood out the most to me:

Being forced to make PS3/360 versions of the game neutered the full product on other platforms, and is responsible for pretty much all the cut content, adding to the rush they were in to get it out by September 1st. From how he tells it, Kojima practically begged the higher-ups to cancel the last gen versions. Since they had to scale back so much for those platforms, and optimize an engine that wasn't meant for them at all, a lot of stuff ended up being cut because of technical limitations of the weaker systems.

This includes: large-scale battles, like what would have been in Kingdom of the Flies, a full new urban area in the Soviet Union, and what would have been the eventual "true" Mother Base on land. The open world also has far less detail than they originally planned.

Also, the Fox Engine was initially a pretty broken engine, and Konami telling them to make it work for genres it wasn't designed for, like the PES games, really caused some issues.

He says that if they didn't have to work on a version for PS3/360, they could have focused their work on making the PS4/Xbone/PC versions bigger and better, and...well...complete.

Mother Base was originally completely customizable as the early trailers suggested, and you could meet Ocelot and Kaz around the place, and even race your soldiers own roads you built. He doesn't say why this was cut, but this is probably due to the last gen systems tech limitations.

There were originally five chapters planned. Chapter 4 was in the Soviet Union.

There was going to be a mission editor and a way to create your own missions and areas.

Battle Gear was originally going to be made playable in Episode 51. Afterward, it could be playable around the map and would function a lot like Metal Gear ZEKE in Peace Walker. You could build and customize new parts for it, and it would take damage like the AI Metal Gears did in PW.

The whole Skull Face encounter went through the inside of OKB Zero, where you would discover he was mass producing Metal Gears like Sahelanthropus. He even says "My Metal GearS" in the released version of the game. Sahelanthropus is just the biggest, best one. Instead of an awkward silence while Sins of the Father played, that song would have instead played as the scope of his plan was revealed.

HOLY.
FUCKING.
SHIT.

Now of course, you have to take everything with a grain of salt, but honestly, this makes perfect sense to me, and I'm shocked I never considered that the last gen systems holding them back was such a contributing factor before.

I... honestly don't know what to think about this. I knew the game was unfinished, but fuck me, man. FIVE chapters!!?!? With a third fucking open world? I have trouble believing that, honestly. If that was the case, maybe Kojima really is insane. I mean, I'm totally on board the FucKonami train, but if Kojima was aiming for a game that goddamn huge and only got like 1/4 of it done in 5+ years... Then they probably would have been right to cut him off. He'd have been hemorrhaging money from the company, and we wouldn't have seen TPP until 2020. So IDK if I can buy into this. Maybe I'm just choosing not to, to keep myself from dying on the inside.

I knew the PS360 versions were the reason the Africa map had a shit LOD and draw distance, but causing them to scrap like 3/5 of the game? Jesus H. I dunno, dude.

I... honestly don't know what to think about this. I knew the game was unfinished, but fuck me, man. FIVE chapters!!?!? With a third fucking open world? I have trouble believing that, honestly. If that was the case, maybe Kojima really is insane. I mean, I'm totally on board the FucKonami train, but if Kojima was aiming for a game that goddamn huge and only got like 1/4 of it done in 5+ years... Then they probably would have been right to cut him off. He'd have been hemorrhaging money from the company, and we wouldn't have seen TPP until 2020. So IDK if I can buy into this. Maybe I'm just choosing not to, to keep myself from dying on the inside.

I knew the PS360 versions were the reason the Africa map had a shit LOD and draw distance, but causing them to scrap like 3/5 of the game? Jesus H. I dunno, dude.

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Well, games change over the course of development. Odds are, not everything that was originally "planned" was carried that far into development. The Soviet Union chapter is something that apparently would have definitely made it in if they hadn't been so constricted. And I don't think it was him going over budget (although he obviously did) as much as he was simply unable to achieve what he wanted with the restrictions he had, and then got a deadline dropped on him to add another problem.

It's pretty obvious to me now that a lot of the budget had to have gone to developing these inferior versions. I don't think that's what caused 3/5ths of the game to be scrapped, I sure some stuff was dropped very early in development.

The stuff I can see having made it in if the budget wasn't used for inferior versions are definitely:

Chapter 3, whatever it was going to be (the guy seems to be saying that it would have been the return to Camp Omega)

Pretty much everything else I'm pretty sure wouldn't have made it in regardless, like a 5th chapter.

I can definitely say Kojima maybe stretched himself too far with this game, but at the same time, this finally explains the true reason behind the cuts. I had always wondered how so much got cut when they were working on the game for 5+ years, but now that I consider having to port it to extremely weak systems by today's standards, as well as dealing with corporate interference and a FOX Engine that didn't work properly for a while, I can see how it ended up like it did.