Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes
[The scene opens up to a rainy day on a shady camp, with an army of shady dudes with raincoats and guns guarding some metal cages that have human beings inside them. A Harvey Dent lookalike walks in, and is promptly saluted by everyone not in a cage. The lookalike then proceeds to a cage wherein a kid resides, but a guard has his SMG pointed at him, you know, just in case.]
HARVEY DENT LOOKALIKE: She told us everything. I totally kept my word, though. She didn't suffer long. [Hands the kid a Walkman] The time for wargames is over, kid. You're a real soldier now.
[While the kid listens to the Walkman, thus guaranteeing a lifelong affliction with PTSD, the Harvey Dent lookalike and his minions go into a jeep towards a military airstrip, while a conversation between the original "Big Boss" Snake and Miller occurs in the background.]
MILLER: Reports surfaced ten days ago that Paz had been captured.
BIG BOSS: Wait, she survived the events of that PlayStation Portable game nobody cares about?
MILLER: To be fair, it did sell well in Japan. But yes, she was discovered by some European fisherman floating off the coast. Like Jason Bourne, without the amnesia.
BIG BOSS: So what do we do, silence her before she compromises us?
MILLER: I've got other plans. It turns out we weren't the only ones Paz intended to double-cross. Our friends at Cipher have locked her down at the Black Site.
BIG BOSS: Ah, a slice of American Pie on Communist, aka Cuban soil.
MILLER: And conveniently, the US has no legal jurisdiction there. On top of which we've got the U.N breathing down our necks. The timing of the inspection's too perfect.
BIG BOSS: You mean the one on the ship, with the...er...nuke? If the truth about that gets out, we'll have the whole world trying to shut us down. Though a nuke wouldn't have been an issue if I hadn't insisted on this whole "Army Without a Nation" thing.
MILLER: They're probably trying to corroborate Paz's leak. Cipher's the one who sent her to us in the first place, and having American intelligence involved in this is bad news.
BIG BOSS: Paz knows Cipher's true nature. If she's alive, we can only have her on one side-ours.
[Once the Harvey Dent lookalike and his minions reach the airstrip and disembark, the Harvey Dent lookalike puts on a pretentious and feminine hat, just because. Also, he uses some cool device that wipes out the "XOF" logo on a helicopter.]
HARVEY DENT LOOKALIKE: We're about to do some shady shit which I'm not going to talk about much because it would spoil the game's already miniscule plot. Let's just say Operation Whatever's a go!
[The Harvey Dent lookalike and his minions go into the chopper. As it ascends, they rip out the XOF insignias out of their uniform and toss them into the sky. The camera follows one XOF patch on its downfall, before shifting focus to a guy climbing up a hill, wearing a sexy (by the standards of those attracted to men, anyway) stealth suit, and some weird...glowing thing on his eyes. He steadily crawls up, and approaches the camera, taking off that weird thingy so that we can finally see his eye and eyepatch.]
BIG BOSS: Kept you waiting, huh?
[Big Boss looks over to the article's intro.]
Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes is a stealth-action-adventure demo game directed and produced by Hideo Kojima and published by Konami, and serves as the demo first part of Metal Gear Solid V, with the release date of the full version second part, The Phantom Pain being September 2015.
This is the first game since Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker to feature Naked Snake aka Big Boss-
b-r-r-rp...b-r-r-r-rp...
MILLER: Remember, use your EYES and BRAIN to read and understand this article.
-as the protagonist.
Though originally both parts of Meta Gear Solid V were to be released together, the game's long development cycle prompted Kojima to give Ground Zeroes an early release as a favor to his fans.
Gameplay[edit | edit source]
Metal Gear Solid V features some of the most dramatic changes to the series' core gameplay since the release of the original Metal Gear Solid. For one-
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MILLER: Remember, you can always SCROLL if you run out of words on the screen.
-thing, the game is nonlinear, in that the player can choose how to go about accomplishing the mission at hand. For instance, you can break into the enemy base by crawling over its surrounding hills, stowing away on a transport vehicle, or following after said transport vehicle through the gates, hoping the guards are stupid enough not to notice you. This is in stark contrast to the previous Metal Gear Solid games, wherein the only "choice" you could ever make was whether you wanted to break into that armory closet or not. In fact, this is cited by Kojima as a key reason for splitting the game in two, with him stating- "There are a lot of changes that Metal Gear Solid V will bring to the core gameplay design, so we decided it was best to split the game into two to ease the fans into the experience."
Though how the player goes about things is entirely up to him, the "things" he can actually do strongly resemble the things he could do in previous MGS games, with a few improvements. For instance, the headlock, which resulted in the enemy's death in the original Metal Gear Solid, and the enemy's death or KO in the sequels, can still accomplish both purposes, but now they bring up a menu for you to choose from and everything!
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MILLER: You can also interrogate the enemy for valuable information. This is particularly important as the game has removed the on-screen Soliton radar of the previous installments.
Other adjustments include the removal of the camouflage system introduced in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, and the introduction of those weird, glowy binoculars that can be used to mark enemies on-screen, because unlike the previous MGS games, there's no persistent on-screen radar to do that for you.
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MILLER: Hey, I pointed that out already!
As always, the mission is primarily a stealth one, meaning the best way to accomplish it is to avoid detection by the enemy. If you fail to do this, the game will enter Alert Mo-
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ALERT
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-Alert Mode, but in a new addition to the gameplay, Alert Mode is also accompanied by Slow Mode, wherein time slows down for a bit, making it easier for you to silence the guard alerted to your presence-
[Snake unloads a tranquilizer mag into the guard's torso.]
BING!
-and quickly get back in the clear. Of course, the player can always choose to actually run away and find a place to hide like in previous MGS installments, but let's face it, shooting a guy's head off in slow-mo is way cooler.
If the player so desires, he can actually shoot his way through the guards to complete the game, as the gunplay has been improved considerably from preceding MGS titles. However, doing so makes him a shitty sissy-ass wimp, as the game's rating system will no doubt make clear.
Other changes to the gameplay include an improved AI, which often spots you from a distance, and varies their patrolling patterns in response to how "suspicious" they think things are. Another feature that makes the game more realistic, unpredictable and challenging are guards who don't bother to do their patrols properly, making it possible to "accidentally" enter Alert Mode-
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ALERT
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EVASION
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CAUTION
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BING!
-again. Such incidents have been known to cause many bouts of frustration amongst Metal Gear fans, increasing the play time from 90 minutes to almost 4 hours in some cases.
Plot[edit | edit source]
Hideo Kojima wanted to take the Metal Gear franchise into darker territory with Metal Gear Solid V, focusing on taboo topics and an amoral protagonist, never mind that Grand Theft Auto already has them both. Ground Zeroes serves as a prelude to the events of The Phantom Pain.
After the events of Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, a U.N inspection has been set to occur for the original "Big Boss" Snake's Militaire Sans Frontiers Mother Base. While preparations are underway for the inspection, Big Boss is assigned to rescue Paz Ortega Andrade, who had seemingly died at the end of Peace Walker, but is in fact being held prisoner at Camp Omega, a black site on Cuba used for extraordinary rendition as the United States Government has, conveniently, no legal jurisdiction there. He also tries to rescue Ricardo "Chico" Valentino Libre, a child soldier who was also featured in Peace Walker, and who had also gotten himself captured. Big Boss initially finds Chico locked up in a cage-
[Big Boss finds himself in a field surrounded by metal cages with human beings inside of them. He looks for the one with a 12-year old boy inside, and finds it soon enough.]
BIG BOSS: Chico? Chico? Damn, that makes me sound like a pedophile.
CHICO: [looking up] No! NO GET AWAY FROM ME!
OTHER PRISONERS: Hey, is that a pedophile? Hey, help! Help! We can fuck him together! I know some really cool techniques!
[flustered by all the noise and the dire risk of being discovered, Snake uses that signature Spock move to knock Chico out, shutting all the other prisoners up in the process.]
-and when Chico sees him-
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MILLER: Yeah, yeah, we know, you knocked him out with that signature Spock move. Get on with it!
BIG BOSS: Miller, this is a Metal Gear article. Of course it's going to go into long-winded and convoluted explanations about everything!
MILLER: But even Hideo Kojima feels those ridiculously long cutscenes are getting out of date. Get a move on!
BIG BOSS: Fine...
-Basically, Big Boss asks Chico about Paz. Chico, in an exceedingly traumatized voice, tells him that Paz is dead. Big Boss then takes that walkman Chico was given, and proceeds to further traumatize himself by listening to it. Though it does seem that Paz is in terrible shape, Big Boss concludes that she is alive, and after calling for a helicopter to airlift Chico out of the base-
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MILLER: You can actually choose exactly where you want to call the helicopter! Seriously, this demo-I mean-totally proper game is awesome! Please buy it.
-he proceeds to search for Paz. Doing so requires him to venture even deeper into the base, and it is at this stage that the player is most likely to get into Alert Mo-
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ALERT
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EVASION
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CAUTION
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BING!
-Alert Mode. Anyway, after avoiding patrolling guards-
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ALERT
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EVASION
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CAUTION
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BING!
-Big Boss finds his way-
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ALERT
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EVASION
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CAUTION
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BING!
-to-
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ALERT
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EVASION
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CAUTION
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BING!
-a dimly lit, desolate room. There, he finds Paz, dressed up in overalls so that we don't see how fucked up she is, and barely conscious. He then proceeds to cut her restraints, which are made of rope instead of something more durable that couldn't be cut with a knife, and walks right out of the room without triggering any alarms.
That is, until a delirious Paz begins to babble about her wonderful experiences at the camp.
PAZ: HURT ME! HURT ME MORE!
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ALERT
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EVASION
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CAUTION
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BING!
Hence, Big Boss is forced into the uncomfortable position of having to carry this...talkative girl out of the camp. Maybe he could have tranquilized her, but she was probably very close to death anyway so-
PAZ: PAIN IS AN ILLUSION! AN ILLUSION, YOU HEAR ME MOTHERF-
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ALERT
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EVASION
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CAUTION
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BING!
-he endures multiple Alert Mo-
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ALERT
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EVASION
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CAUTION
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BING!
-Alert Modes before finally losing the guards. He then calls for a chopper, and the same one which airlifted Chico out of the base now comes to airlift Paz and him out of the base, and back to the Mother Base. Mission accomplished.
Also, Paz has a bomb surgically sewn into her abdomen, which Big Boss and Chico are forced to remove with their bare hands, and the player is forced to watch them do this in a very graphic cutscene. Oh, and that U.N inspection was actually a cover for the Harvey Dent lookalike and his XOF minions, who are now blowing the Mother Base to smithereens. Big Boss manages to save his comrade Kaz Miller before he can be slaughtered like the rest of the MSF, but then Paz manages to regain enough of her consciousness to tell everybody that she still has a bomb inside her. She then jumps out of the chopper and explodes, and this explosion causes the unfortunate MSF chopper to crash into a pursuing XOF chopper.
We then learn of the global reaction to this turn of events, which basically amounts to, "We never had anything to do with those MSF guys! At all! Ever! Also, I heard they suck cocks." It also turns out that the reason the Harvey Dent lookalike was so interested in Paz was that-
HARVEY DENT LOOKALIKE: I never had to choose. That freedom never belonged to me. But you can choose. Right now. You can choose whether or not to tell me where Cipher is.
PAZ: C-c-c-ipher...?
HARVEY DENT LOOKALIKE: Yes, that slippery bastard. Such an expert in covering his ass. Even we only ever got orders by proxy. But you met him, didn't you? You had to. In order to contact Big Boss. You know where he is. So tell me. Where is Cipher? Where is Zero? Where is the founder of the Patrio-
PAZ: Please! No! You'll ruin the sequel!
HARVEY DENT LOOKALIKE: That game already came out years ago! THIS is the sequel!
PAZ: Oh....
HARVEY DENT LOOKALIKE: Yeah....
PAZ: So anyway...this...this will save Big Boss?
HARVEY DENT LOOKALIKE: It may.
PAZ: And you'll save him? For me?
HARVEY DENT LOOKALIKE: Not for you. In fact, I'm going force a child soldier to rape you. And then I'm going to stitch one bomb in your intestine, and one in you uterus.
PAZ: Okay then. Zero is-
[Shot of a hospital ward in Big Boss's First Person View mode. We see a doctor there.]
DOCTOR: Er...Snake? Big Boss? Jack? Kiefer?
SNAKE/BIG BOSS/JACK/KIEFER SUTHERLAND: Doctor...how...how long has it been?
DOCTOR: Nine years. And er...you were pretty critical in the aftermath of the crash. We did everything we could, but...we had to amputate your arm.
[Big Boss raises his hands. One of them looks nice and fleshy, like it always has. The other is a metallic hook.]
BIG BOSS (VO): Am I to lose everything? My arm? My mentor? My eye? My original voice actor? Is that the destiny of me and my comrades? Were we brought into this world...just to suffer?
TO BE CONTINUED IN METAL GEAR SOLID V: THE PHANTOM PAIN. SUCKERS!
