Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain has been at every major gaming conference this year, releasing glimpses of everything from sandy Afghanistan to multiplayer possibilities. Konami, the publisher of every Metal Gear Solid title to date, has often had to walk between not showing off too much of the story-centric title and keeping the content fresh for conference attendees and online viewers. As well as a single-player offering, The Phantom Pain will also have a multiplayer facet that looks to pit one fully customizable base against a single infiltrating player.
Gamescom attendees not only saw a gameplay video, but were able to play a multiplayer snippet wherein a version of Big Boss, the story protagonist, had to infiltrate another version of his home base called Mother Base. Thanks to parts collected in the single-player areas, any player can build up the mulitplayer defenses and base to specific preferences with posted guards, cameras, automated turrets, U.A.Vs., and many other pieces.
An infiltrating player, then, must navigate an opposing base and avoid whatever traps are set for him. His goal will be locate and gather up supplies strewn around the base such as armored vehicles, guns, and storage containers to use for his own means through the Fulton Recovery system.
Before the multiplayer portion of the Phantom Pain Gamescom video, more features of the single-player mission were released. The presentation, held in front of a live crowd, showed the same area as an earlier demo from E3, but with many changed factors. This was shown in an effort to demonstrate the “power of the Fox Engine,” as guards had adapted to certain tendencies such as producing metal helmets to stop headshots. There were also some humorous segments such as horse manure causing a jeep to spin out of control and crash.
Hideo Kojima, creator of Metal Gear Solid and head of Kojima Studios, has given the public few definitive statements regarding the main portion of Metal Gear Solid V. Ground Zeroes, the prologue to Phantom Pain, highlights one base and a handful of missions that many gamers complained was far too short with completion possible in less than 10 minutes.
In a counter to that complaint, Kojima was quoted saying that the upcoming title would be “about 200 times the size” of Ground Zeroes. He then brandished a map showing the paltry size of the previous games in comparison to the land real estate within the main part of Metal Gear Solid V.
Phantom Pain, in both single and multiplayer states, has just glimpses to show, for now, as the release date is still unknown. The E3 video showed “Coming 1984,” but that date has yet to show any significance. There is speculation due to a message on the Ground Zeroes registration page that the game could be coming sometime in early 2015.
Konami has not commented on that message directly, saying instead that there will be an announcement “at the proper time.” Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes is available now for Playstation 4, Playstation 3, Xbox One, and Xbox 360. There will be a Steam version of both Phantom Pain and Ground Zeroes as well, but no release dates have been set for those versions.
By Myles Gann
Sources:
CVG
Gamespot
Twinfinite
