You make the mistake of assuming that I want the game to force me what to do when thats not what I'm implying in the least. I wouldn't have held the previous Metal Gears in high regards if that were the case. Hell, considering I brought Just Cause 2 up in this thread twice as a positive example of freedom in creativity, that's a pretty big straw man on your part.
I don't understand what your complaint is then. (i also didn't use a straw man) The game's mechanics are great and switching between the different tactics is really fun. There's so many mechanics when you're using the support calls from mother base and the buddies that add tons of variety to the experience. There's more room for creativity in this game than there's ever been in the series. What is your complaint? I'm just replying to that post in particular, I didn't go through the whole thread, so if you said something earlier and I missed it...sorry if I clumsily jumped in on some moot point.
I just saw the stuff about tranquilizer+magazine and it's a conversation I've had with some friends already. It's such a boring way to play the game, and then they complained that the game didn't have enough to do. It blows my mind how people will just rely on the first thing that works and then complain when the game doesn't force them to use the other things.
It's a conversation I've had in so many games and I'm always just saying the same thing every time "Just use more stuff and don't worry about consequences, it'll be fine. You can play it again." Even in JRPGs, I'm someone who'll flagrantly use half of my expendable items, even the mega elixers, and people look at me like I'm crazy. The thing is that you'll never need more than a couple to get through even the hardest boss, and if you do, then you're probably playing poorly. Just use mega elixers, just use grenades in a shooter, just use air strikes in metal gear. Just use your spells in castlevania even though it "wastes whatever", it'll be fine. So many people are just way to conservative when they play games and that just seems like a way to not have fun playing videogames.
I do agree that the game has a problem with filler missions, and that's something that is a result of what happened with the game. You can spot when you get a filler mission, because it's usually just a group of missions that have to do with some whatever stuff, and then a story mission happens after you do them all or something. The 3 missions after you save Kaz are all filler missions, then you have the honey bee mission. then you have 4 filler missions and then the Huey mission.
The Kaz mission was set up where you had side missions that took you to several other bases if you wanted to, but the main bit of that mission was save Kaz. The 3 missions that follow could have just been side objectives to honey bee, and the missions between honey bee and saving Emmerich could have been side objectives to saving Huey. I kind of wish the game had been truncated and missions that didnt matter either lumped in like with the kaz mission, or thrown into a separate mission list, like Ground Zeroes's side ops.
Afghanistan is really just: Kaz, Honey Bee, Quiet + Huey. Then Africa is: Oil Field, Caravan, Children, Devil's House, Eli, Code Talker/Skullface. I would have really loved just having like....10 missions that were 2-4 hours long like the Kaz mission and endgame of chapter 1 were, and then you just have abunch of optional missions that are more involved than the random side ops in the world, but less expensive than the full on cinematic main missions. That would have made a good chapter 1. (wouldn't have minded if some of those filler missions had just been moved to chapter 2, since there's alot of cinematics in chapter 2 as is, but not alot of missions) It's where you realize the game hit a snag when Konami pulled the plug and Kojima had to spend like a year scrambling to tie up what's there and make a shippable product that manages to be amazing, but sadly wasn't what it could have been if Konami had put their trust in Kojima.
But then again this was done because they lost a substantial amount of time and budget on the game, and had to make due with what they could. It's kind of tragic that we're stuck with half a game, but I still like what's THERE. I just wish there was more (and that the filler had been structured differently, or at least we'd be able to replay all of the between mission cutscenes like the on base stuff with quiet or whatnot. Give us a new game plus option or something, konami.)
