Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain was suppose to be this epic final act of Metal Gear Saga. It was going to answer many questions but it left a Phantom Pain inside every Metal Gear fan.
The game itself was great but unfinished.
The editing was so pure that you can actually tell which parts or sections of the game had been cut down due to different reasons. Konami had been under fire for so long and today’s article will surely not help it out of its current image and reputation.
Konami’s CEO is a businessman whose understanding of videogames industry is under question. The company cancelled Silent Hills, fired Hideo Kojima, and forced developers to chop MGSV. And now they are working on a Metal Gear: Survive Zombie game.
However, there is much more we don’t yet know about what happened and why.
We recently came across different posts from a MGS V developer who said quite a lot on 4Chan. Keep in mind to take his posts and details with a grain of salt.
According to this person, Metal Gear Solid V’s current state is due to issues with Fox Engine. Back in 2013, 2 years before the final release of the game, optimization and physics were broken. Konami wanting compatibility for more and more genres that had nothing to do with third person shooters, didn’t help matter at all.
The developer mentioned that pretty much everything about the game is unfinished.
Many of the game’s problems would have gone away if there weren’t any versions in development for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Konami execs failed to realize just how old this hardware is in terms of its ram and vram. Hideo Kojima set up numerous meetings to ask Konami to cancel last-gen versions.
Having PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions resulted in an empty open world as the game was based on these platforms. Not to mention, poor textures and poly count, no more than 10 NPCs on screen at a time. Even at highest settings on a PC the game suffered from texture issues on occasion.
Also See: 5 Ways Metal Gear Solid Series Can Move Forward
Due to PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, plans for massive open world battles and dynamic events were cancelled. In fact, OKB Zero was suppose to host a massive assault between the enemy and Diamond Dogs with many choppers and soldiers.
Meanwhile, the area around OKB Zero was suppose to be a vast open environment for confrontations like the ones we saw in Kingdom of the Flies video.
Moving on to Mother Base, each section of the base is spread wide one from another. This was done to give consoles time to unload one platform and load the other. It doesn’t require much horsepower on PC but it is a completly different story for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 due to their extremely limited amount of RAM and VRAM.
The Mother base was going to be much more customizable and accessible compared to what it is now. There were plans to add road construction to allow the player to race Diamond Dogs. There was also a MGS 3 like cinematic planned featuring a snake spitting venom out of his mouth.
The cinematic was suppose to play right after we hear “V Has Come Too.” In order for this to happen they needed to develop a new song as Kojima didn’t want to use “Sins of the Father” too much. In the end, the idea was scrapped.
The FOBs were going to be designed in a way that would make it easier to extract nukes. This would have made Nuclear Disarmament easier for players after which they’ll have access to chapter 3. In total, there were 5 chapters in Metal Gear Solid V.
The final chapter involved Outer Heaven but the game was never going to step into Metal Gear 1. It always going to set things up for the next event, which was Metal Gear 1.
Chapter 4 was set in the Soviet Union and its map was complete. However, they never got to the point of actually adding it to the game but even if they had, they would have needed to redo the map due to hardware limitations on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
The map was set in and around a military base in the Soviet Union. Both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 would have had a hard time running this map. It was a contrast of previous two maps featuring wilderness and large buildings to explore.
Hideo Kojima really liked the map and wanted to add a very unsettling location. A location with no side ops or missions but just for the player to roam around. It eventually morphed into “The Devil’s House” and the Episode “Voices” due to shortage of time and pressure from Konami.
Furthermore, Sahelanthropus was originally designed to look more demonic.
Chapter 3 was going to take players to a fully renovated Camp Omega as well. The mission was about obtaining some files from one of its computers.
Hideo Kojima worked on a level editor as well which was also discovered by a fan while digging through MGSV files. Players could create their own missions and share them with friends online. Unfortunately, that too never made it to the final game.
Venom Snake’s Arm had space for one extra finger. This space was going to be used for different abilities such as lighting a real cigar that would give a reflex boost. The arm can still be found in the game.
Here’s a side by side comparison of the two (current and scrapped).
Battle Gear was actually a buddy that we would be able to use for the first time in Episode 51, Kingdom of the Flies, againts Sahelanthropus.
The story would have further developed on how Kaz hated Big Boss and wanted him dead while Venom Snake accepted that he is Big Boss too and idealized the real Big Boss. The plot was leading to how both parties parted ways right after Venom punched the mirror and Kaz is heard saying that he will train BB’s clones and use Venom to kill Big Boss.
Another cut feature was Venom being able to attract different animals using baits. This would have made it easier to catch animals for the zoo on Motherbase.
