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Comment by sergiotapia | Hacker News Reader

On that note what the hell happened to MGS V? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills but isn't it very obvious they only finished one level (the first) to the quality they were aiming for?

The first level is most definitely a MGS game. Unique voice acting, level design, action, gameplay mechanics. The works.

Then you finish that intro and it's a complete 180 - now it's open world, no more voice acting, no more cutscenes, no more story. Just open world diarrhea with assets they most likely finished and could use in the game.

It's as if the studio finished the first level, Konami pulled the plug and cut funding, they told Kojima wrap up with what you have and we ended up with this totally shallow game.

I felt like the game was a bait n switch. How far off base am I?

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The Collector's Edition of the game came with a bonus disc featuring a 20-minute video of unfinished content not present in the final game, the development seemingly went through quite a bit of trouble, most obvious by Kojima splitting from Konami after it was finished.

It's not that unthinkable that Kojima's grand ambitions ran into budget constraints and they had to cut down the story content. I can easily imagine dozens of more hours of voiced and animated cutscenes polishing out the content that's already in there, but voicing and animation are expensive.

What remains is imho still quite good and entertaining, I really enjoyed the open world parts, the base management, hunting for new soldiers or grooming favorites.

The multiplayer part made it all a bit grindy, without some story fluff in-between, but I think it was a smart game mechanic to add to a sneaking game where you have the option for non-lethal take-downs/straight up bypassing of enemies, especially in the context of the "lore".

The mp was a grind to get more money out of people, for a game that shipped unfinished. It had great moments and bones, but was an unfinished cash-grab by the end. Kojima was wasted on Konami.

Regarding your comment about animation being expensive, I feel that at least some of the audio tapes in the game were probably meant to be cutscenes. Despite the criticisms people lay on this game, it is probably my favorite game of this decade.

That's a good point I never really thought about, guess I had an easy enough time simply imagining the visuals.

But having at least some of these tapes as actual cutscenes would probably have changed a lot about the game feeling "unfinished". A lot of important main story beats are revealed through those tapes, of which there are so many that going through them feels like a chore at times. That's probably why so many people consider the game so light on story: Those tapes are easily skipped by players so they can progress further through the game, but barely anybody would skip a full blown cutscene with said tapes content.

I think it's a mix. Kojima was pretty clear that he wanted to make MGSV about the player creating their own stories and de-emphasizing an explicit plot. The opening is meant to be a bridge with the older games, hence it having a structure more similar to them (and specifically to MGS4).

But on the other hand I got the impression that the game was definitely not finished plot wise and even stylistically, at least not to the point that Kojima and his core team had originally envisioned. It felt like we got 90%, but that last 10% was the bit that was supposed to fill in the gaps in the plot and leave the player feeling satisfied. Compared to e.g. the ending of MGS4 (which is my favorite in the series), the latter third of MGSV was just so... unfulfilling.

I suspect friction over Kojima's vision versus Konami wanting to get the game to market was why they parted ways, even though Konami was very clearly killing the golden goose.

The nature of the mission list/tapes makes far more sense when you consider that it is a follow-up to Peace Walker (not to MGS4) which used a similar structure. Arguably, it's part of the reason that it's MGS_V_, not MGS_5_ - Peace Walker was at one point known as "Metal Gear Solid 5: Peace Walker"[0].

It does definitely go overboard though, with the missions that are there being repeated and many of them not being that memorable. There are also plot threads that are clearly just dropped (e.g. major character disappearing with an important item that is only addressed in an unfinished state on a bonus disc/cutscenes that seemingly have no way to be unlocked in-game),and given how Konami just dropped Kojima Productions it's a reasonable assumption that it wrapped early (though whether that is due to Konami plugging the plug early or because it overran budget/time estimates is less clear).

[0] http://ameblo.jp/kp-blogcast/entry-10466416389.html#main

Not sure what you are talking about. MGS V has 31 main (51 total) mission across 2 worlds (afghanistan and africa), complete with interesting story and beautiful cutscenes.

Hospital mission is not even longest one, nor most detailed.

I think he's referring to the fact that first chapter had a very coherent story, then in chapter 2, it's just random stuff happening with some occasional story taking place in Mother Base...and then the game just suddenly ends.

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