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I think Metal Gear Solid V would have been better had it had many smaller Ground-Zeroes-size levels instead of two giant but empty maps

AuthenticM

AuthenticM

Son Altesse Sérénissime
The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
30,014
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is a fantastic video game. Exquisite controls and gunplay, emergent gameplay, and tons to do. However, it became clearer to me the more I played the game that no part of the two giant maps were as interesting to explore or to play in than the smaller map of Ground Zeroes. The GZ map, while smaller, is denser and feels way more intricately-designed than anything in The Phantom Pain. There is a sense of place in Ground Zeroes that is absent from the full game. When I think about playing MGS V again, I picture Ground Zeroes in my mind, and not the places of Phantom pain. I think The Phantom Pain would have been even better had it had more of these smaller-but-better-designed levels instead of two giant-but-empty open-world maps.
 
Pankratous

Pankratous

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Oct 26, 2017
9,239
I agree with you 100%.

Ground Zeroes map was the perfect size for that gameplay.

The main MGSV map was boring and you constantly ended up invading the same bases again over and over anyway.
 
ZeroX

ZeroX

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
21,266
Speed Force
I said this back during TPP's launch and everyone was like "you're crazy, open world is much better, GZ sucks".

GZ had better design than any base in TPP because it was a confined area that didn't have to fit into an open world and was so intricately designed. I didn't get sick of the bonus missions because the map was damn good. The best areas in TPP were those that had limited entrances, a mixture of interiors and exteriors, etc and were more self contained as a result. Restrictions are a good thing for stealth design.

Cryptosporidium said:
Hitman 2 is everything MGSV wishes it could be
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And yeah Hitman 1 & 2 did it right.
 
Pyro

Pyro

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Jul 30, 2018
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Agreed. It's part of what made MGS1-3 so memorable. Shadow Moses, The Big Shell, & The Russian forests were characters in and of themselves.

Combining unique settings with small but dense levels would have been better. I got pretty bored and listened to a lot of in-game music on those horse rides.
 
Popetita

Popetita

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Oct 29, 2017
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So what you're saying it that smaller open world sections like a game like Dishonored does would be better for MGS.

Wasn't this what MGS4 did?
 

Eikemo

Alt-account
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Oct 20, 2018
184
Smaller and more tightly designed levels will always be preffered by me that's for sure
 

Deleted member 11976

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Oct 27, 2017
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This is precisely why I prefer GZ over TPP. GZ had way less filler and a more steady pace to its story delivery. I really liked the way the base was remixed and things like patrols and camera placements changed from mission to mission.

TPP had lots of cool locations I wish I could've condensed the entire game to the standout mission locations -- without the boring A-to-B travel and road checkpoints/camps in between.
 
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Mik2121

Mik2121

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Oct 25, 2017
2,941
Japan
Yep, Ground Zeroes sized maps would have been great. I still enjoyed MGSV a lot because of how damn well it controlled, but having to go through that open world was a bit boring to me sometimes.
 
Sabretooth

Sabretooth

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Oct 27, 2017
5,052
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I didn't mind TPP's open world so much, but I definitely liked how GZ played more. I think a good compromise could have been making one open world area, preferably Afghanistan, and then having Snake globe-hop to various smaller bases world over.
 
Zafir

Zafir

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,004
Agreed. The gameplay was great in Ground Zeroes(shame the story makes me never want to play it ever again though). Phantom Pain on the other hand had a empty repetitive open world with lots of busy work quests which inevitably meant I had no interest in finishing it.
 

Deleted member 47318

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Like almost every aspect of TPP, the open world is a testament to how much Kojima needed someone to reign him in. There wasn't a need to go fully open world, but yet he did and no one tried to hold him accountable for it. Same for using up the budget on big Hollywood actors and such, but that's dead horse.
 
ThroughtheVoid

ThroughtheVoid

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Oct 25, 2017
6,890
Yeah, but I think this is a pretty obvious choice in retrospect. It's way harder to have a concise and story heavy game when it's an open world game when so much shit can happen. A lot was lost in that decision, but I assume that was a risk they were willing to take given the MGS4 backlash.
 
signal

signal

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Oct 28, 2017
40,183
Meh. Thread premise is only correct if you assume every smaller contained area was amazing. TPP's problem was not that the world was open it's that there just wasn't enough interesting stuff going on in those areas. You might as well say MGSV would have been better if it had more going on, regardless of whether it was several isolated maps or the existing larger ones.

Anyway TPP also has a bunch of interesting isolated areas already that I think people purposely ignore and only focus on the barren open world parts. TPP is much better overall than GZ.
 
Robin

Robin

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Oct 25, 2017
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Eh. I agree but I don't think Ground Zeroes was as much of a darling as many make it out to be in the grand scheme, I'd still rather play Phantom Pain which felt more compelling to me with all of the sandbox elements clashing against each other. I'd rather have just had something more akin to Shadow Moses or Big Shell, sure, but Ground Zeroes wasn't really all that. And at the end of the day, the gameplay wasn't Phantom Pain's problem, it was the story and how it chose to parcel out it's narrative.
 
Twig

Twig

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Oct 25, 2017
7,486
I MOSTLY agree. V offered a whole lot of freedom in how you can approach things, much more freedom than GZ. I'm not entirely sure you could offer the same freedom with smaller levels.

I loved GZ, and I also lived V. Glaring flaws aside, of course. I dunno.
 
signal

signal

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Oct 28, 2017
40,183
Robin said:
Eh. I agree but I don't think Ground Zeroes was as much of a darling as many make it out to be in the grand scheme, I'd still rather play Phantom Pain which felt more compelling to me with all of the sandbox elements clashing against each other. I'd rather have just had something more akin to Shadow Moses or Big Shell, sure, but Ground Zeroes wasn't really all that. And at the end of the day, the gameplay wasn't Phantom Pain's problem, it was the story and how it chose to parcel out it's narrative.
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I don't think GZ was that great either tbh. I liked the afghan airfield area, OKB zero, the mansion, the African port area + oil field, etc. TPP had lots of cool places
 
packy17

packy17

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Oct 27, 2017
2,901
MGSV's map *is* a ton of smaller maps stitched together. The open world is an illusion.

Each of these smaller zones was carefully designed for the mission(s) inside of them.

While it's true that you *can* explore the map freely, the game was clearly designed for conventional/structured level play with a bit more freedom inside of those levels. In that regard, it succeeds tremendously.

It shouldn't have been marketed as having an open world.
 
Nooblet

Nooblet

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Oct 25, 2017
13,622
Absolutely !!
It'd keep the "approach however you want" emergent gameplay but also provide a focused level design. I feel like majority of MGSV's level suffer from the buildings being very small and rarely ever being multi leveled. Even that level where you go to find Dr. Emmirech is very flat but atleast it has a lot of nicely laid out buildings.

packy17 said:
MGSV's map *is* a ton of smaller maps stitched together. The open world is an illusion.

Each of these smaller zones was carefully designed for the mission(s) inside of them.

While it's true that you *can* explore the map freely, the game was clearly designed for conventional/structured level play with a bit more freedom inside of those levels. In that regard, it succeeds tremendously.

It shouldn't have been marketed as having an open world.
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True, it absolutely is tons of smaller maps connected by the "open world" which a lot of times is just extra wide hallways. But at the same time the quality of the smaller maps leaves a lot to be desired compared to something like Ground Zeroes. Additionally the narrative suffers due to this open world design, and I'm sure it'd have led to a more cohesive level design and narrative if they were basically just missions like Ground Zeros.
 

NuclearCake

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Oct 27, 2017
9,867
It sounds great and it would pretty much make it Peace Walker 2 the problem is that Camp Omega is based on a real life location and there are only so many bases that they could potentially draw inspiration from that are that densely packed. It's why they went with Afghanistan and Africa. Not to mention there are all the story justifications you would need to pull out of thing air to make it work. Everything about GZ is something you could realistically only do once. It's a area specifically designed to gather player feedback and showcase all the new features that would be present in TPP.
 
Richietto

Richietto

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Oct 25, 2017
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Yeah the quality of GZ map was fantastic. Cut out the open world and motherbase exploration and they would have probably had the budget to create a game that didn't have as many problems as V. Personally I attribute a ton of MGSV problems specifically to its open world. Ground Zeros was the perfect mix of sandbox and level design. They could have created a bunch of small maps that you would go to for a variety of missions and it could have led to even better gameplay opportunities and probably an even better story.
 
Nooblet

Nooblet

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Oct 25, 2017
13,622
Also I think mother base was a huge wasted potential and better off not being there at all. Most of the time there's nothing to do there and it's absolutely enormous. You do have an invasion mechanic in the game but I don't think it was good enough. I never even used it as mother base section was something I completely ignored in the game.

Twig said:
I MOSTLY agree. V offered a whole lot of freedom in how you can approach things, much more freedom than GZ. I'm not entirely sure you could offer the same freedom with smaller levels.

I loved GZ, and I also lived V. Glaring flaws aside, of course. I dunno.
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Have the maps be surrounded by an area that you can freely traverse rather than one or two specific starting locations like in GZ, that'd allow you to approach the camp with all the freedom you had in V. Basically what Hitman does.
 
EVA UNIT 01

EVA UNIT 01

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Oct 27, 2017
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100%

Shoulda gave us something like a dozen massive enemy bases/srongholds/mini islands full of shit and interactivity instead of the wide open nothing with 3 or 4 decent bases per map that we got.
 
sleepnaught

sleepnaught

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Oct 26, 2017
4,538
I really agree. Hand crafted areas like that would work so much better than a giant world

There's a lot of games I would like to see in open world, but MGS was never one of those.
 

Deleted member 1777

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Oct 25, 2017
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I like both a lot but overall I preferred TPP to GZ. But then I'm one of those strange creatures that likes 'negative space'. I enjoy the traversing to a mission, listening to the 80s tunes in a jeep with DDog by my side etc. Never got bored of it in 200 hours of gameplay and general messing about. I wouldn't have complained about a GZ style game but very much loved what we got.
 
-Tetsuo-

-Tetsuo-

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Oct 26, 2017
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This is obvious to anyone with common sense. That open world was terrible.
 
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