Second Screen Support:
Following in the footsteps of Metal Gear Peace Walker, MGS5 will allow players to create a base of operations for Snake, where items and weapons can be researched and upgraded. This isn’t exactly new to the MGS series but is being heavily improved upon.
What is new is the fact that the player’s base will be available from smartphones and tablets, allowing players to manage their base and equipment wherever they are; adding to the persistent and constantly changing feel of the game. While it’s not a core feature of the game it is certainly something that is a game changer.
Voice Actors:
Historically Snake has been voiced by David Hayter, a voice most if not all of us would recognize. In MGS5 Snake is now being voiced by Kiefer Sutherland. Changing from David Hayter to Kiefer Sutherland is a big leap, however we are playing as the man who later becomes Big Boss, not who people identify as “Snake,” it makes sense that there would be a division and from what we’ve heard Kiefer, he certainly does a damned good job at voicing Punished Snake.
This departure is a fresh change from what we’ve seen in the previous MGS titles. Most open world titles gives us options to design a character that is very much defined by their actions instead of their personalities. With Punished Snake’s personality being defined in previous titles it’s going to be interesting to see how the past experiences affect our protagonist moving forward.
Kojima is still very much interested in telling amazing and in-depth story and is committed to bringing us it in an open environment. Adding Kiefer Sutherland to the role shows he’s not willing to compromise on any part of this title.
Environments:
With Metal Gear moving to the open world it’s obviously going to get better and a lot bigger. It is going to be great to see what Kojima and his team can do, they have always been able to bring us wonderfully constructed levels before, though they’ve never tried a game that has been so open or continuously large before.
If Kojima is getting his inspiration from games like Grand Theft Auto though, he should have plenty of things populating it. From what we’ve seen so far one of the sections in the game takes place in mid-80’s Afghanistan. This makes it the perfect, cold war location for Punished Snake and with the war torn history that this country has, there will be plenty of places things to explore, like small villages, caves and chasms, hopefully full of all sorts of Soviet war goodies.
As an added bonus, not only does the game have this wonderfully large world, it will also have a weather system. We’ve seen Snake being bombarded by sun only to have a freak sandstorm blow in. The weather effects also seem to mask your cover from enemy troops, which adds to the new and in-depth stealth mechanics.
Transportation:
Since the game is going to be bigger it stands to reason we’re sure as hell not walking everywhere like we did in previous Metal Gear games. We’ve already seen a few transportation choices, from horses, to military vehicles and helicopters.
It seems like these vehicles will have their owns strengths too just like other sandbox games. The horse, while most likely slower than the motorized counterparts, it looks like they can get into more places, like tight and winding mountain passes as well as having the advantage of being able to quietly slip passed enemy soldiers.
