Open-world games always have to compromise between scale and local detail – which is why GTA’s core gameplay is such a masterstroke, because it encourages driving. But this alternate-universe Afghanistan is dense in a previously unseen way, not only packed with stuff but underpinned by an integrity of structure that means everything is a prop for interaction. It’s not a sprawling Just Cause-type map that requires jet planes to transverse. And so with MGSV, except with one difference that changes everything. What is brilliant about that game is how it allows players to create their own stories. This is why, though GTA has a campaign, when you talk to people about GTA it’s never mentioned.
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In essence, the player chooses how to play. The promise of an open-world game, unachievable though this may be, is that players can go anywhere and do anything. We’re familiar with the concept from games like Grand Theft Auto, but the term is a general one – referring not to scale so much as potential. MGSV has an importance even beyond this and its (very sizeable) niche: it promises a new take on the open-world genre. This will be his last Metal Gear entry in charge.
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Such details may seem like trivialities when discussing MGSV, one of the biggest sequels of the decade and now one that bears an extra weight of expectation: though no one is quite sure of the details, series creator and presiding spirit Hideo Kojima has become estranged from publisher Konami and finished the game on contract. Then it shot upwards with a surprised yowl, and all I could do was smile. This time the balloon lifted it up by one ankle and, as the bear’s sad face turned towards me, I almost felt guilty. It took 12 tranq rounds to the face, and a lot of Benny Hill-ing around the uneven rocks, before finally settling it down. Over two days with a preview build of MGSV, I not only kidnapped goats, but managed to bag sheep, a bird (which lead character Snake unfussily pocketed rather than wasting a balloon on), and eventually found myself isolated in a canyon facing a bear.
Say what you will about Kojima Productions, the studio behind the Metal Gear Solid series, but no one could ever accuse them of lacking humour. The sound effect, a strangled cross between a bleat and a scream, trailed off as it disappeared into the heavens (where a plane would pick it up). At this point the goat woke up, looking pretty startled, and had a few seconds to hang there eyeballing me hatefully, before the balloon shot off into the sky with its cargo. I attached a cord to the prone beast, from which a giant balloon inflated, and lifted it a few feet in the air. To capture my caprine victim, I crept forwards on my belly, lined up the perfect headshot, and poomf! down it went. The animals are beautifully realised and, because this is a video game, they can also be collected. The latest title in Konami’s 40m-selling stealth action series is set in a remarkable open world loosely based on 1980s Afghanistan, and wildlife dots the landscape.
I fell in love with Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain the moment I tranquillised a goat and then kidnapped it.