TOM FRANCIS
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Metal Gear Solid V’s Failure Spectrum

This post is part of a series. I mention abilities and tools but no story spoilers.

Being an outsider to the Metal Gear series, I was only cautiously optimistic about V. All I heard about the last one was that it had 90-minute cut-scenes. I watched enough of one of them on YouTube to determine that it was… not my cup of tea. Of V, I’d seen some fun stuff in videos, but I was half-assuming the story would barge in and ruin it.

Well, the story does barge in. But only for the intro and a few brief intrusions, spread out over the vast, ridiculous amount of time I’ve played the game for so far – at least thirty hours, I think. That’s a ridiculously tiny fraction, and the rest is extraordinarily good.

So many things about it are surprising or different or interesting and I want to write about all of them. So I think I’ll do that, one post at a time, starting with this:

MGS V is extremely forgiving

Outside of those few scripted intrusions, I’ve only actually died a handful of times in those thirty hours. The game has an enormous failure spectrum – I mentioned these in respect to Invisible Inc, but here’s the gist:

MGS V has most of the stealth genre’s most generous failsafes, plus an incredibly generous one of its own inserted at the crucial moment – Reflex Mode. The result is something like this:

• If a guard sees you, you get an ‘awareness’ indicator showing you where they are. If you reduce your visibility, that goes away completely and the guard won’t even investigate.
• If you stay in sight and/or make yourself more visible, the guard will very, very slowly come over to investigate. Even then, this alerts no-one else and doesn’t count against you in any score or performance metrics, and you don’t even have to move: going prone and using a ‘hide’ button makes you damn nearly invisible – I’ve had a guard stood 2 feet from me shining a torch directly on my body without spotting me in that mode.
• If they DO definitively see you and recognise you as an intruder, Reflex Mode puts the world in slowmo and you get a huuuuuuuuge amount of time to do something about it. Your view is snapped to the person who saw you, the yelp of recognition they make seems to be inaudible to other guards, and if you shoot them in the head with a quiet weapon (you start with two) in this ample time, no alert is triggered.
• If you fail to take them out in this time, or someone else sees them die, the surviving guard will yell. Others in earshot will be alerted, but no-one beyond that at this stage. Your default weapon is rapid fire, accurate and silenced, and if you can take out everyone who heard before they have a chance to radio, the alert is contained.
• Even if you do give them time to radio, it will do nothing if you’ve already taken out their communications equipment.
• Even if they manage to radio for reinforcements, it’s easy to run away and they won’t give chase.
• Even if you don’t run away, it’s quite possible to kill everyone without taking a hit.
• Even if you take a hit, your health regenerates for free.
• Even if you get hit a LOT – even if you get hit by a mortar – you only go into a ‘wounded’ state that restricts your movement but still gives you a chance to take everyone out.
• If you fuck that up, yeah, you’re dead.

Listing it like that makes it sound absurd, but I really think this is one of the main reasons I and so many people end up having such a great time. Moving to these messier states creates stories of panic and improvisation, instead of frustrating game-overs. It’s the same reason it works in Invisible Inc:

More Metal Gear Solid V, What Works And Why