Is Metal Gear Solid V an Immersive Sim? A Deep Dive
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ก.ค. 2024
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Happy April Fools, now join me in the eternal suffering that is figuring out what is and isn't an Immersive Sim. Today we take a good at Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, which for some reason a lot of people like to call an Immersive Sim.
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Chapters
00:00 intro
00:24 April Fools!
01:50 my thoughts on MGSV
11:39 superficial elements of an ImSim
14:22 Gameplay features of an ImSim
20:30 is MGSV's Design Philosophy like an immersive sim's?
24:25 stuff in metal gear solid V this is very UN-Immersive Sim
28:49 final judgement
31:28 Frisk is now Solid Chonk - เกม
3:30 they were supposed to be a nuclear inspection team sent to determine wether or not MSF had a stolen nuclear weapon that they *were not* supposed to have, which is why they hid it and the experimental launch platform underwater beneath the base
4:00 Ocelot has a shotgun as well, he gives it to you to use in the first mission
4:05 diamonds are just supplemental income, and the mujahideen *did* often trade in diamonds during that period. Most of your money comes from contracts, merc deployments, selling captured equipment, etc.
4:21 that loyalty comes from hypnosis, torture, and brainwashing performed by ocelot (which is why they have to spend a period in the brig before they start working for you), and to some degree from the legitimately legendary status the big boss holds as a soldier. Basic English is taught because the soldiers of different nationalities all need a common language to communicate in
Sorry to be so “akshually”, don’t take it as a serious gripe
Great comment. I guess Charlatan is a ....
True, I don't think mgsv is an imsim, but like 25% of this vid was wrong
This video deserves a lot of acksuallys, like 60% of everything here was either wrong or brain dead to the point I’m sure it’s just a shitpost
@@Jayozranger yeah, but I didn’t want to be that inflammatory and get the comment downvoted
Also I dont think they speak english after you capture them, you have to kidnap a specific translator for you to be able to understand what the russians are saying.
A couple other things I noticed: You can sneak past Quiet in the initial encounter, or you can just run up and punch her without being seen. You can destroy or at least permanently stun Sahelanthropus on the first meeting, and you can defeat and extract the Skulls. Not arguing MGSV is an im sim but there were several things the game does allow that you didn’t seem to think it did.
You can also beat Quiet by calling a supply drop on her head, or just roll up in a tank lol.
@@GangsterFrankensteinComputer You can't do that anymore, Konami hates emergent gameplay
@@quintusretardicus9428 no that still works, you just need to tag her first so she's on your minimap.
@@GangsterFrankensteinComputer It’s the classic move. I also really like throwing flash bangs at her because she shoots them and blinds herself
@@quintusretardicus9428 On Extreme, Quiet jumps away if you try to do the box trick as a part of the design of that fight. But it's still possible to hit her with it on Extreme, you just have to bait her to fire at you when the box is 10m or less from the ground--by that point when she fires she won't have enough time to cycle her weapon and jump away before the box falls and hits her.
The idea that "Konami patched it" is unfortunately a fake news narrative driven by the rumor mill. The box method works 100% of the time on the mission 12 version of Cloaked in Silence, and it works as I described above on Extreme.
10:06
In mgsV you are slowly working to rebuild your base, early on you have to rely on small items you find and scavenge but as you get further in the game you either send your crew on missions or go raid other people's bases for massive payouts
There is an early mission you can instantly clear/ghost if you destroyed their radar equipment on a previous mission
Best part are the reactions that Kaz/ocelot give
@@patrykpatty5835 Boss, you killed a child... AMAZING, MISSION COMPLETE. THAT RIGHT THERE IS WHY YOU'RE THE BEST, BOSS. THE ONE AND ONLY.
Mid to late game stealth feels harder compared to the early game. Guards also adapt to your tactics, which is something take into consideration. Also, you can fight Sahelanthropus in your first encounter and beat it with enough ammo. Just shoot it until baby Mantis shows up and then shoot him too, which will render it offline for a time. The game overall gives you a lot more options than you think, and there's even ways to bypass entire boss fights, like with Eli and how you can shoot him with a tranq rifle from afar or just wait for him to fall asleep and knock him out, thus not even triggering the cutscene that's suppose to play. It may not have the level of freedom as Dishonored and Prey, but it's not completely railroaded.
didn't every other mgs game feature things similar to this though? You dont see people talking about earlier mgs games as though they were an immersive sim which is funny to me because colonel refers to the game series as "a type of role playing game" in mgs 2 (not really him but that doesnt matter)
@@TheKiddingStar I'm not saying that MGSV is an immersive sim. What I'm saying is that It's not as railroaded as he says it is.
@@TheKiddingStar TBF I've never heard of anyone claim MGSV was an imsim before this very video.
@@vlad4o813 true true
@@TheKiddingStar I mean, imsims are generally a subset of ARPG, so the fact it’s an RPG isn’t immediately disqualifying
Damn, I'm glad this is an April Fools video with how often you were totally wrong
Not sure if this is meant to be a troll or not, if it is then it is a good one. A lot of what's in this video is wrong which a lot of other commenters have pointed out in detail. If you want to see a good example of the game being played to the absolute imsim extreme, ChipCheezum has done immense amounts of research into the different imsim-esque aspects of the game. Most missions have lots of different alternate routes and there's lots of instances where different mechanics can be used in novel, interesting, and sometimes unintended ways to imsim-esque results.
I don't know that I would consider it a true imsim, but it is certainly solidly adjacent to the genre, and is more interactive in the vein of imsims than a lot of games designed with an imsim philosophy.
Ill check it out
im sim is not a genre, it's not well defined enough...
It's like saying soulslike or roguelike is a genre while it's really a subgenre that can be applied to multiple genre...
@@domagojgalekovic8507 That is a genre. A string of characteristics is a genre. That is why when you lay out: Stamina based combat, moveset learning, slow and deliberate combat, a bonfire, etc, people would say Soulslike. And with Perma death, procedural generation, upgrades, people would say roguelike, which is a genre. Just because one or multiple things are not exclusive to something and can be applied to everything does not mean it's not a genre. That's like saying Jazz isn't a genre because anything can have extended chords, improvising and non diatonic progressions/notes.
Just because you have a path B, C, D and E that have slightly different things doesn't change the FACT that your still going to point F. Its still taking you to the same point that was designed to be the exact same thing once you get to it.
@@lutherheggs451 I don't think that having a linear path disqualifies it from being an imsim tbh. There's plenty of games categoriaed as imsims which have set single objectives and linear stories
Ok a few things you got wrong on the stealth mechanics. 1. Enemies being legally blind is almost required for a stealth game to be enjoyable. If they had realistic eyesight it would get very frustrating very fast. 2. Enemy detection is based off your armor. If you're wearing appropriate camo enemies become much more nearsighted. 3. The slow-mo when detected ability can be turned off in the settings and using it once will lock you out of getting the fox hound rank for that mission.
Edit: I believe one of the audio logs mentions that the soldiers were brainwashed after being captured to make them completely loyal to D-Dogs. Yes that should have been brought up in the main plot but it's still worth mentioning.
His point about the stealth wasn't that vision needs to be realistic. It's more that the stealth detection of enemies is laughable in his opinion.
While I cannot speak on the phantom pain you can have stealth games were enemies spot you incredibly quickly and from a good distance (iirc Dishonored 2 on high difficulty has enemies spot you quite quickly).
@@michimatsch5862 enemy alertness and eyesight is based on their individual statistics and equipment, alert level, environmental conditions, etc. Charl probably did not play long enough to start facing S rank soldiers with nods and/or sniper rifles.
I feel realistic stealth would work best in a smaller scale, more grounded stealth game like the occupation or even a smaller scale hitman game. Like imagine a game where your goal is corporate espionage in an office building. During your workday you need to complete a number of objectives, like for example locating an important project file then getting out either a USB or printed version without getting caught, because its grounded you cant just bash guards heads in or threaten witnesses, you actually have to be stealthy. Of course the average employee will not question why you're on the wrong floor but as you get into more and more specialized and secure rooms people get more and more suspicious of outsiders, this means you can actually give realistic perception to people without it being insane, plus small rooms mean you never have situations that feel unfair like if an enemy spots you from 100m away which IRL is totally reasonable but nearly unheard of in a game. Few people will bother you in a hallway, maybe a manager may question you if they run into you in an office room full of cubicles, you get caught in someones private office and almost anyone would confront you.
The key thing here is the fact its a non-hostile environment, if someone catches a glimpse of you from across the hallway they probably wont chase you, even if they would be suspicious because they arent on guard and chances are they arent paying much attention, plus it would break social norms for them to sprint at you so if you walk the other way and lose someone whos even noticed you, you might just get away with it. The social aspects of all this would mean you can have realistic eyesight and hearing and the such while it still makes sense.
@@christophernoneya4635 that sounds like a super interesting idea for an imsim. There could also be alternative ways of getting in. Like maybe a colleague on your floor has a job to do on the other floor so you need to find out the details of that job to bullshit yourself past people.
Yeah, if you want an example of a stealth game where enemies have realistic acuity of eyesight and hearing, as well as realistically unpredictable patrols, I’d point to payday 2. The stealth in that game is *miserable* though, and shows exactly why enemies should be, relative to our world, half blind and deaf in stealth games
I'm a die hard metal gear fan and never once has the idea of phantom pain being an immersive SIM crossed my mind.
Because it's not.
It's a stealth game. "Immersive sim" is a terrible name for a genre that doesn't exist.
The thing about immersive sims is that whether the game falls into the category or not, effectively it doesn't do anything for it.
while i agree with some of the points u made like the tools being time gated and it not being an immersive sim, i feel like u just came with the wrong mindset. the game doesn't obligate you to get every collectable or do every side quest, theyre more of a thing u can mostly skip, also the enemies having tighter view cones is just a necessity considering how open the environments are unlike the previews games. also the sandbox of this game truly shines when you try to go for S ranks where you must always think outside of the box and utilize all of your tools in a creative manner to get the best time. first example that comes to mind about this was when i was told to wait for a target to arrive in a village to assassinate him, but after replaying it i realized that u could just blow his truck up with C4 before he even come and save 6 minutes as a result.
Especially if your going for specific titles or doing the extreme end game missions like no gear starts.
8:39 i'm pretty sure MGSV had that feature where the difficulty was based around how smart the AI was instead of other games where they become bullet sponges
Yeah if you run a train on the enemy they start to armour up and tank more rounds. I personally found it harder and harder to do complete knock out strats later into the game because a lot of the guys started getting nearly full helmet. This was in the design documentation that was shown around as how cool the AI changing is. Its very subtle and very easy to notice which in my opinion is amazing way of implementation.
The story is really good until it isn't and you end up asking when the game will just end
Yep, the Revenge system, which has the enemy adapting to your tactics about halfway through, but Charl didnt make it that far.
@@Crunchymunchys You can always send merc to Destroy equipment convoys in The expedition missions.
I never heard of anyone call it an imsim but i have been educated and now know it's more of an ImSim than bioshock even if that's not the focus.
Also you can park vehicles in weird places to bypass obstacles instead of boxes so i'd put that under "maybe".
In a vacuum it's totally fair to say that the feature length intro is way too much, but you also have to consider that this is an ambitious entry no. 5 (that came out on a new generation) for the series that literally started the whole "games immitating movies" thing, and Kojima's entire shtick is his obsession with shlock cinema, so what may seem like a flaw to the outsider (even though there's no good reason for it to actually be the pace and structure of a film given that it is the start of a 60-100 hour video game) is literally EXACTLY what everybody that this game was for wanted going in. I am not even arguing that you're wrong or that video bad or that MGSV actually even is an Imm Sim, but at the same time the fact that other Imm Sims don't start cinematically doesn't mean that another Imm Sim couldn't? I just feel like that isn't the strongest argument but at the same time it isn't the most important thing and is followed by many very good arguments as to why it isn't an Imm Sim and I just do agree with your other points on that subject. Also I know the game-y weirdnesses like the kidnapping recruitment and whatnot are very weird but also that's just how it goes round here, I think Kojima and team were really concerned with keeping things fun despite the sincere and gravitas of the tone. Idk we love it!
That said, I'm sorry that this game didn't seem to resonate with you the way it does with long-time fans, and the fact that this game is 100% catering to an in-group does make your job a lot harder as the guy answering the question everybody is asking you directly. Good video as always and not at all bothered by the criticisms, they are totally fair. If anything I'm just saying this because I love to read my own thoughts and also that if you ever did make it into the MGS fanclub it might grow on you! :)
MGSV is not an immsim, but Kojima seems to have outsmarted you in many places - he thinks much more highly of players than you think.
You are right it is not immsim design philosophy, but I do think you missed the design philosophy. Kojima rewards players for being clever not free.
Also, Reflex Mode off is the only way to play.
is this a joke? Kojima thinks the players are so fucking stupid that he thinks he needs 90 minutes of exposition and constant repetition of information to convey literally anything. im a fan of MGSV but Kojima definitely doesn't think his audience is intelligent enough for his "genius" ideas.
He thinks so highly that he wanted to replace Hayter the "fan favorite" voice going all the way back to MGS 3. Because he wants to suck off Hollywood so bad. He thinks so highly of the players he wasted 80 million dollars to make this aggressively meh game. He wasted millions developing half a game, stopping, deciding he wanted to make an engine instead and then, only once he made an engine restarted making MGS V.
Well when he wasn't stealing time and resources from his employer for his own personal use.
Mother base *does* have an acquisitions department, you can send your staff to collect resources for you.
Mgs v is definitely more of an immersive sim than whatever the bioshock is
This.
Haha this true and I say that as mgsv hater
True
metal gear is shitty, but bioshock is more so...
Bioshock is shitty? How so
Don’t worry, you weren’t missing much because you couldn’t read Metal Gear NES. It’s a totally different version from the actual original and is notoriously bad.
I had the NES game when I was a kid... Fortunately my copy never worked, it would freeze when you would start the game, so I never had to play the game. I was spared.
And yeah, the MSX versions of MG1 and MG2 are quite good for their time. Definitely Kojimijack trying something new in the gaming space at the time.
Yeah as a mgs stan, you can skip it and just play the "solids"
@@pr3historic647 I think Metal Gear 2 on the MSX can still be a somewhat enjoyable time. It really is just an older top down MGS1.
But yeah, for the most part they can be skipped. Even MGS1 is a bit hard to go back to (I haven't played Twin Snakes).
3:42 Well, I guess the joke is on you since inspections *were* done ever since the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (possibly before in a limited capacity with the Limited Test Ban Treaty), and have only increased in scope since. Originally they were done by an international oversight agency, but with START and START II (aka New START which you may have heard of recently since Russia suspended it) each party to the treaty got a certain number of on-site inspections per year.
I think the game even explains this to you at the beginning.
@@GangsterFrankensteinComputer It does
Honestly, this video seems really low effort and misinformed. Charl doesn’t even seem particularly familiar with the game. Also, the inspection team was supposed to be coming to make sure that MSF (a non-state actor) didn’t have a stolen nuke that they were absolutely *not* supposed to have
@@daltongarrett3393 I think it's meant to be an April Fool's episode but it's just the same joke over and over.
@@GangsterFrankensteinComputer A lot of dedication (and big props to him) if so
I'd say it's not an immersive sim in general, but there are SOME missions (like fight with burning man) where you have a pretty wide variety of options, which makes people think that MGS 5 is an immersive sim.
Using that fight with burning man as an example:
- you can run around for a while, until rain starts, and fight ends by itself
- you can also just call support "power" of changing weather and make it rain
- you can destroy one of two watertowers to knock him out for a while, then knock out floating boy (either by shooting him a lot or dropping a resupply box on him) and then fulton burning man's body. If you have vortex thing for fulton, you don't even have to knock out the boy, since there is no balloon to pop.
- you can use car/explosives/powerful weapon to knock burning man into a pool of water or off the cliff
- you can use water pistol (which you can't on you first run here, but then again - this game really doesn't like to allow you to clear any mission 100% on your first run, so repeats are inevitable). It hits like a wet noodle, but it still does damage to the guy
- shocking hand also works
In most other missions your options of dealing with a target is either kill or tranq and fulton out.
I remember when MGSV was just coming out, I praised all MGS games for being very cool with tutorials, especially the first game comes to my mind.
I think MGS3 just made the whole series kinda forget that its a game first and story telling device second.
I agree but i also hate when games like elden ring hide all the lore in item descriptions for weapons that suck and you would never seriously use or you have to exhaust 20 lines of dialogue to get a vague answer about something and half the time it's a lie anyway lol
Wtf mgsv doesnt have that many cutscenes, and mgs3 rocks.
There’s certain things you didn’t talk or maybe didn’t know you could do in the game that probably is the reason people think it’s an imsim. You can Fulton a car into a helicopter to take it down, make an exploding car that has a bunch of decoys to lead the enemy to the car, make an anime girl box that lures enemies in so you can beat the shit out of them, and some other stuff. Definitely not imsim worthy but you are given tools to be creative.
"Does the access code "0451" or some variant show up in the game?"
I don't think this is a very fair point with which to tell if a game is an immersive sim or not. All the lack of this code shows is that Kojima may not have developed the game with the immersive sim genre and games in mind, but rather the dynamic gameplay of past Metal Gear games (especially Snake Eater).
"Can you stack boxes or other things to reach new areas or unintended places?"
Again, not entirely fair. Railroading every game to have this one mechanic (if it wants to call itself an imsim) would encourage devs to add mechanics that the player has no way to use because of how their game is structured. MGS V is an open-world stealth/combat game with not a lot of verticality, any kind of box stacking system would likely require the player to clear out an entire outpost before they can keep stacking boxes and exploring without having enemies see them or shoot at them. Maybe being able to stack boxes and reach hidden item stashes in the middle of the (admittedly empty) open world would've been cool, but i actually think this would be a better critique of the past MGS games since they were a lot more "linear" in ways similar to most ImSims that allow you to stack boxes.
"Are there hacking or lockpicking minigames or skills?"
At this point in the video I started thinking that i was actually still being April Fool'd because of how oddly specific and circlejerky the criteria has been so far, but nope, much better and more prevalent critiques arrive later on.
I don't know about you, but i don't love and play imsims because they have the funny secret number, or because you can stack boxes, or because they have the shallow, always annoying lockpicking/hacking minigames that only exist because the devs played other imsims that had them.
"Can you build your character using unlockable skills that shape how you play?"
You technically can't "lock" Big Boss into a specific build or skill route, but as you yourself said, getting enough GMP to get everything is a long, boring and grindy process. You can spend that GMP on getting new, Tier 1 weapons, or you can unlock better tiers of what you already have (which sometimes include new add-ons or mechanics to spice up the gun play), There are so many weapons that aren't just "shoot bad guy but stronger" and allow you to approach encounters in so many unique ways.
The different types of assault rifles, shotguns and sniper rifles might function pretty similarly in most gameplay situations, but i don't see an issue in giving the player options.
You still have the various types of throwables that all function differently (and the ZORN-KP which lets you fire them from range)
The different kinds of bionic arms (not just the rocket arm) which allow you to approach stealth situations in more creative and "fantastical" ways
The Raiden suit which while admittedly an absolute pain in the ass to get, does give you the fantastical abilities that come up in the next criteria.
The placeable mines and traps which all have specialized uses in stealth and combat
I've seen multiple different people make the critique that the game doesn't let you get creative with gameplay, which makes me think that its not good at introducing the player to these different gameplay styles and most players end up sneaking around and shooting at anyone that sees them for 45 hours of mind-numbing gameplay and then post about how the game is just like Assassins Creed because you can pick items up from outposts.
My main issue with these criteria is that we've looked at games that we can confidently say are imsims, cherry picked mechanics or aspects that devs have consistently referenced or copied from each other, we then let that define the WHOLE GENRE and now we're trying to fit them into a game that is trying to give the player as much freedom as possible (outside of the story) but isn't necessarily as aware of the culture surrounding player-freedom based games.
EDIT: Oh and by the way if MGS V isn't an imsim you know what sure as FUCK isn't an imsim? Bioshock.
While you can't stack boxes, you can have vehicles delivered, and steal vehicles, and place them to reach areas and do the equivalent too.
Wait wasn't it actuslly possible to lesve a box and walk on it or am i thinking about oeace walker?
@@andreadangelo2299 I think the boxes broke when you went to climb or run on them
It started getting downright absurd once he said you needed MAGIC ABILITIES to have an IMMERSIVE SIM
bro got mad
you can kill the ghost dudes instead of running, you can kill the metal gear, you can plant explosives to approach missions in different ways, you can skip cutscenes or get alternate cutscenes by doing certain things
i don’t think MGSV is an immersive sim but cmon feels like you played a different game to me
luckily i can write this off as a april fools joke because there’s no way someone who makes videos i enjoy so much could be so wrong on so many points
i mean ffs one of the first things you learn is about how and why people you lift join you…
Considering the date this video was released on, I'm genuinely not sure if this is a satirical parody of rambling, nonsensical video essays or it just is a rambling, nonsensical video essay itself. Everything from the gross inaccuracies to the disrespect to the historical elements MGS V pulls from to the conceit itself making absolutely zero sense and not being something anyone has ever argued, everything about the video just feels very off.
That's... excessively profound, detrimentally so.
stealth games like MGS and splinter cell are a much better game to ghost levels in than just kill everyone. Makes you utilize most if not all of the features of the game.
3:58 I'm guessing they just wanted more red in his design, but he does give you a shotgun in the prologue when running away from the burning man
There was one moment in MGSV that reminded me strongly of problem solving in imsims. In one of the African missions, there was a side-objective to extract the squad of child soldiers; however, I didn't have the fulton upgrade to let me "safely" fulton them. I didn't have the patience to call in a chopper for each one, so instead I called in a couple of jeeps, loaded them up with the children, and extracted said jeeps. Side objective completed
edit: By and large, I agree. The majority of the game's systems/progression overtake any chance for player expression/problem solving. All that however, changes with Subsistence missions. They take away all of your toys to disable challenge, and force you to engage with the sandbox and find solutions
I did that too lol. There's a few places in the game where it's a really good tactic to sneak up on a car full of men and Fulton the vehicle.
I started binging your videos a little while ago and it got me obsessed with immersive sims and fps games in general. I started playing Dishonored a ton, trying to figure out which immersive sim I'm gonna get into next (likely Deus Ex and Prey), so I just wanted to say I love your channel and your content and I can't wait to go deeper into this rabbit hole.
Also, I have a quote
"I never asked for this."
I'm on my second run of Prey, and I can't recommend it enough. It's a criminally underrated game.
They said the thing! *crowd cheers*
Honestly just a few things worth pointing out;
1. Grinding is uh... Wholly unnecessary? It's only really relevant if you want to get into FOBs. You unlock basic gear quickly enough and most upgrades revolve around adding things like sniper scopes, silencers and flashlights. There's also a short side op sequence midway through the game that basically unlocks complete weapon customization. This includes utterly silly shit like slapping sniper bullets into a pistol if memory serves me right.
2. On that note - side ops. They're completely optional and frankly, unless you go for 100%, don't bother. They don't add anything and are on eternal rotation with some priority given for required and important ones. You only need the translators (which are technically optional), the gunsmith and the yellow ones.
3. Platforming is more open minded, the game is just kinda cagey about showing it. Many things like ledge grabs and jumps work even when there's no prompt for it; the game only shows it on the required input. The sole exception is shimmying up walls, but I can count on one hand the amount of times that type of verticality was ever relevant. On that note, you can actually stand on top of anything being extracted (chiefly containers) to quickly exit the play area.
4. Missions do have more open-ended design. In particular, C2W (the mission where you destroy radar dishes) can be ended before it starts using literally the method you described. Missions are the individual playgrounds - they're more often than not jam-packed with secrets and other tricks. Guard conversations do actually foreshadow much of the entire plot and rescuing certain people triggers post-mission dialogue. Quiet gets hinted at pretty much ages before you meet her in guard chatter. When it's a murder mission, kidnapping or killing the target can result in significantly different ways of approaching the same thing. There are a *few* filler missions but most do have foreshadowing into the main plot.
5. Morale is... useless. It's there because it's fluff, kitchen sink design ironically. Soldier is happy the boss interacts with him. The buff it provides is useless. Your soldiers generally outscale morale anyway and it only is an issue if you run out of GMP (which you need to try to do in the first place).
6. So for that matter is resource gathering. Active gathering is only really given to you to keep you busy while the heli arrives or as a bonus objective you can go for. Passive gathering outscales you from pretty much the getgo.
7. Fucking with guards is *far* more in-depth than you give it credit for. They're nearsighted as shit but you can really abuse the fuck out of their AI. Throwing decoys around, hitting them with empty mags to stun them (since any non-lethal projectile against the head is a stun) or if you're feeling like breaking Geneva, shooting one to be near death so he calls for his buddies who then watch as he bleeds out. The options are endless if you feel like it.
8. So is player freedom; you can sneak past Quiet once the mission starts. You can't skip starting the mission, but you can skip completing it. That's just one example of it but this stuff is all over the game once you try to push it a bit. Generally speaking anything that's not a cutscene setpiece can be approached differently. After you've rescued Miller for the first time, replays let you skip the Skulls. If you're in a mission to take out an inspector, firing a missile at his heli is a valid way to do so. As long as the target is met, the game is happy and you'll see that mostly on replays once you have more gear to approach that mission in a more open-ended way.
Ultimately I think the cause for a lot of your issues is mostly just that MGSV is a mission-based game with imsim elements in those missions whose open world elements was tacked on as a way to give the player the opportunity to explore the world beyond that. The open world and the missions are mostly in separate realms (outside of required side ops).
Now answer if Death Stranding is an immersive sim. Or just MGSV: Ground Zeroes and compare it to Deathloop. Hahaha.
But for real, MGSV changed the way I look at video games and art in general. It might even be my single most favorite piece of media out there. It continues to blow my mind to this day with its layers, like an ogre or an onion. For example, unrelated side missions aren't as unrelated as they appear at first glance. So of course it was painful to see you hate something I adore, but I sat through it and liked and commented, because by God I am a loyal viewer, but it seemed like you went in with a negative mindset, so I'm sad about that. But captured soldiers immediately pledging their undying loyalty to the legendary Big Boss is totally believable, though. Especially with a little help from Ocelot the hypnotist and Kaz's burger propaganda.
I disagree with some of your judging criteria, but I still agree it's not an immsim. I'd still at best only call MGSV immsim-adjacent adjacent, because it scratches that itch for me but it's much further out than The Elder Scrolls or Hitman. And I agree that the Metal Gear games are not primarily about "having faith in the players", but I don't think every video game needs to be that way, or are worse for not being that way. Art is very diverse. But I do agree that that is a sign of an immsim.
Man, now I wanna go play Ground Zeroes again.
My favorite piece of media. Ever. Hands down.
Are you sure your opinions on the gameplay isn't the April fool's joke
??laughably bad stealth?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
I love s.t.a.l.k.e.r but theres no bloody way its an immersive sim.
We need to determine if modern Hitman games are an immersive sims. You know, blood money and onwards.
@@quint3ssent1a definitely not absolution though
Seeing the footage of this game has reignited my will to get back into it and actually finish it lol. Its not my favorite of the series, but it is definitely fun. I always find myself getting lost in the side content, upgrading guns and gadgets, spotting a marking everything, researching, upgrading the base, finding the best soldiers...etc. so it's taking me ages to progress in the story. But I always find myself coming back every year or so lol
They played us like a God man fiddle
Thank goodness this is an actual video and not those april fool joke video,thank you Charl love you.
I'm already waiting for next year's April fools video titled "Is Hitman: World of Assassination Trilogy an Immersive sim?"
what i tought was really stupid in the game with the soldier recruitment wad the fact that you get a very low number of non lethal weapons and a lot of lethal ones but you cant try them cause you need more soldiers to level up your research department to get MORE LETHAL weapons, it doesnt make any sense and 2/3 s of the game i ended up ignoring the weapons in favor of the pistol, so with such a huge arsenal of weaponry i was still using the tranq gun until near the end
The lethal weapons are good for FOBs, where non-lethal stealth can get impractically hard, you’ll end up going loud most of the time, and you’ll usually be targeting places with mediocre soldiers you have no need for anyway
The response to this is reminding me a lot of the initial Bioshock Infinite videos.
I mean I don't think it's an immersive Sim but I do feel you missed a lot and some of your critiques are a bit disingenuous. MGSV is a hard game to get into and learn the ins and outs of.
I also feel with the guide you are using to judge it would also prove that Bioshock is not an immersive Sim too.
17:26 There are upgrades for your bionic arm that enhance your movement abilities like running (MOBILITY+), there's an upgrade for aiming precision and I think that also ties into your reflex ability as well (PRECISION+), and lastly there's an upgrade that allows you to heal faster after sustaining a lot of damage (MEDICAL+). These are mostly passive abilities but they do make a difference. You can only unlock the upgrade branch when you find a specialist and have the necessary staff level to be able to develop it.
By most of these measures breath of the wild is an immersive sim
Quiet can be taken out by air dropping supplies on her head. Point being, there's usually a lot of different ways to do the same goal. I never thought about that until I saw someone do it. It's actually a great strategy. To me it's more a sandbox action stealth game overall. Some stuff has to go a certain way because it's scripted, it's also a prequel so it has to go a certain way story wise. It is pretty grindy but I really only maxed certain weapons so it wasn't a huge deal.
I don't think anyone understands how awful stealth game AI truly is and by design. It doesn't matter what game you're playing. Truly play any modern stealth game or at least one with stealth. Dishonored, Prey, Deathloop, Hitman, stealth game guards are stupid. MGSV is par for the course. Near sighted guards, that are almost deaf is a staple of stealth games. Anyone can make fun of stealth games AI. But MGSV's guards go on alert phases, they radio for backup, they look for you, this is far more advanced than AC.
Btw maybe Hitman should be next? It's the most immersive sim like game that embodies the design philosophies and implements it better than a lot of certified immersive sims but is somehow not an immersive sim. If we're talking immersive sims where goal is to kill target or better yet make target dead via any means, Hitman takes everyone's cake.
The problem with MGSV is that many of its cool gameplay features are nothing more than a gimmick. Meanwhile tranq silenced pistol, tranq sniper rifle, rubber balls gun and Quiet equipped with tranq silenced sniper rifle is the most overpowered setup for almost every mission or side op. You can decimate an entire outposts within seconds. That problem is reinforced by fact, that there is little to no reason to kill guards, as they become members of your staff management minigame.
Game should provide an incentive to use all of its creative elements of its sandbox. I believe that MGS3 did far better job of that, and could lean closer to design of an immersive sim.
Turn off reflex mode and play in offline mode. The online challenge rewards added by Konami post-launch disturb the balance of the game. I first got supressed rifles towards the end of the Africa segment.
This is actually the first time I heard mgs v being called an immersive sim. Also it seems like you are skimming or straight up getting a lot of the plot wrong.
Agreed, I usually really enjoy Charls videos but damn the first like 10 minutes of the video were really hard to sit through
@@datguyuno98 dude I get you, like I was cringing the entire 10 mins. Don’t get me wrong I love his content but he has the occasional stinkers here and there
Frisk appears to have been paying attention when you were crawling around backwards inside the cardboard box on the not-an-oil-rig
I would love to see you do a video on hitman blood money
Immersive sim is more of a design philosophy than a genre. SS2, Bloodlines and Deus Ex aren't "immersive sims", they're RPGs. Postal 2 isn't an "immersive sim", its a sandbox shooter. Thief is a stealth game, etc.
Not a bad troll, could do with being a bit funnier though, some of the outright lies got a chuckle though.
Charlatan, the content spiel always always makes me feel better about my own art. Even if my level of skill hasnt reached the point where i'm comfortable making money off of it yet. Thank you
it took me ten years to get to my level of skill. Everything is a process.
For a Video game Essayist who supposed to be In-depth and Analytical, You really do See this game In The most Superficial way possible, Idk If it's supposed to be a joke or not, But as Numerous ppl has explained to you in the comments This game has A tons of Many Hidden Detail and Mechanics that made you appreciate the game more, Nevertheless im gonna add my own takes here.
MGSV Is not an ImSim, It has some elements of it Like how Sandbox-ish you could do a Mission, But If you have to know one thing about Kojima Is he like to experiment game mechanics and has a unique way of story telling, You could clearly see it in his previous game especially mgs4 with the overly long cutscenes, But because he's working under Konami who value Trends Over Innovations, Kojima and his team are force to follow trends of open world with hundreds of hour of repetitive content, And this Is the result,
But this "All-In or Not at all" Mentality to determined If a game is of a certain genre can make a review to become disingenuous because a game can still be called a certain genre even If they have some similarity to it, Like how GTAV Can still be called a racing game with all the Car chases in the Online Activity while also be called a shooter games, Almost every criticism you made here felt like a Nitpick that exist because you're trying to force yourself to see the game for what it's not, It's like saying Skyrim Is a bad Game Because It doesn't have Guns like their favorite game Call of Duty.
In total seriousness, I don't like the name 'immersive sim'. I don't care if Warren Spector said it once. They're just really good action RPGs with a lot of environmental interaction. I don't think it rises to the level of a genre. Just my opinion, this is not a joke day jokey-joke.
Fr i like immersive sims but the games and the people who play them are SOOOO PRETENTIOUS, its one step below the "realistic tactical warfare" larpers that play Arma. I swear these dudes could play the shitties 2000's game and play a modern AAA game made with love and dedication and still preffer the shitty game because its "indie, artistic and doesnt force you to do what the game wants". Its pathetic
Thief isn't an RPG though.
Just like good action games are called "Hack and Slash" just because they have good mechanics ahahahaha while the games with dog shit mechanics are called "Action" games as if they're a different genre, so as to excuse the fact they have dog shit mechanics lmao
@@kasra8255 At the time it was just called an FPS. Ultimately it's just a stealth-based FPS.
That's what you get when you formulate an arbitrary genre like imsim. Things as disparate as Thief and System Shock 2 get smooshed together.
I'm really happy that indy people are making lots of games like this, but I think creating this arbitrary genre with such vague semi-conventions is only subtracting from the cool things they can be doing. It starts to seem proscriptive. In that way it's even worse than something like Metroidvania, while also being possibly even more exclusionary to outsiders.
@@fmsyntheses I am glad I am not the only one that thinks this
i knew going into this what it was but i am ready
perhaps immersive sim should be more of a spectrum than a hard yes or no. because there are so many ways to fool, trick, ko, kill, abduct, avoid the opponents i would say mgsv is closer to immersive sim than stalker, whose only non fps elements are shops and a few other odds and ends like eating food occasionally.
stealth games are basically always full of incompetent braindead half-blind half-deaf guards. you cannot honestly do stealth realistically without getting players mad that they got sniped from 500 meters out or that hundreds of guards, cops and soldiers rush down on your location within minutes of someone hitting an alarm, an alarm that doesnt just end after a few minutes. mgs2 was better in the alarm followup
why knock this game for having ladders and climbable cliffs/walls at preplaced locations when nearly every imsim and stealth game relies on vents and windows and etc that are preplaced and youre obviously meant to use? even when it comes to "stacking boxes" who do you think put those boxes in the level for you?
Charl wants to complain about guard eyesight. Let’s show him a max rank sniper FOB
0:22 I have no idea why a Harry Potter... mod... ? ... has a Twin Peaks season 2 reference, but there we go. (For the curious it's from a much disliked period in the show where David Lynch left and everyone else ran out of ideas, leading to a subplot where shady hotel owner Ben Horne decides he really, really needs to win the civil war for the confederacy with his miniatures.)
"Sounds like something out of Looney Tunes" yes, to the best of my knowledge that's the point; Metal Gear Solid is an alternate history where all the wacky wunderwaffen Bugs Bunny schemes actually paid off and now there's cloned superspies fighting nuclear-armed mecha.
Kojima is a true postmodernist. Pynchon books can get pretty wacky too but he still won a Pulitzer.
I love you for this
Frisk is channeling his inner Stealth Box mechanic! Love this!
Wait. There's a sidemission for the nightmare in Prey?
I always just killed that thing first time I saw it.
This video is quite hard to figure out my opinion of due to how sincere your criticisms seem to be. It's hard to tell if you're shitposting by intentionally not engaging with the game's systems and ignoring later content (like the difficulty of stealth increasing as soldiers get higher quality), or you simply do not enjoy the game and simply pushed through to "do your job." The frustrated venting at the beginning about the intro (very justified btw) makes me think it's the latter though, which is unfortunate.
bro you can't do a cold open of silence when I'm switching out peripherals
just had me fiddling with my speakers
"that sounds like something in a looney tunes cartoon or something" this encompasses so much of the metal gear saga you have no idea it's like the main selling point
ok I'm supposed to be laughing but the AC comparison just hurts
wait I genuinely can't tell if this is serious critique anymore
for the record I don't think it's even near the realm of an imsim but I don't think it's as on-rails as presented
you grinded in this game?
I do agree on many points like having to wait on the mother base upgrades sucks
Lol 5 minutes into the review and I’m wondering how Charl would think of Death Stranding and it’s ridiculous cutscenes.
I'd just die.
You mentioning Mankind Divided makes me sad that the series will never be finished
> 90-minute intro sequence
Kojima clearly outdid himself. His previous longest cutscene ever was MGS4 finale, where the longest part was just nonstop 80 minutes of BS happening on screen.
For anyone wondering it’s 4 dollars on PS5 right now
As an MGS fan, I can't exactly disagree with a bunch of your points against it here, but I'll sum it up with: "you just don't get it, man..." 😏
(also never seen the game called an immersive sim and I don't think it is)
13:20 On more than one occasion I placed a truck near a wall so I could climb on top of it to vault the wall.
Would you guys say for the more casual person I can just do the main missions and only do side ops of I want a specific weapon built and need to grind some GM??
Charl. Charl? CHAAAAAAAARL!!!
I always think that immersive sims are more a concept that a definitive gameplay type...
When the devs give you a set of skills that make you use your brain in a sideways way, sometimes not even thought by the devs, that's a immersive sim in my opinion...
And i'm happy that Charlatan Wonder is on the same page with me...
Here's a strike against MGSV as an immersive sim: You can't kill the kids (unless you mod the game). An immersive sim should let me kill ANYONE and be as psychotic as I want!
The game wants you to not kill people at all. Killing people gives you a ghost ranking system called "Demon Points". Too many Demon Points will soak Venom Snake in blood indefinitely. You can still go kill soldiers but you can't get rid off the blood soaked on Snake unless you save animals, children, dispose of nukes several, SEVERAL times.
26:27 have you tried tho?
(First time i ordered from MotherBase stuff that landed her head,
Second time i fought her on my tank)
And even with all that mgs5 was still a lot of fun. I thought it had a lot of good ideas even if they were implemented kind of predatory and I think a lot of those ideas can be used in other games. Especially the weapon customization. Omg that was awesome.
You should cover The Occupation! It seems to be pretty divisive in the Imsim community
"Now im no stranger to long cutscenes, i play yakuza" oh dear, i cant wait till charlatan wonder hears about the feature length cutscene in MGS4
Music in the first part of the video source?
I think the stealth in msgv is very good, everything around you affects how visible you are including light, weather, what you are wearing, etc. Plus the mere ability to crawl on the ground is fantastic since it opens up so many other possibilities for stealth and movement. I wish there was crawling in other stealth games
I bet he thinks getting invisibility like deus ex or sticking out your neck from cover like a giraffe in dishonored is better stealth lol .
@@dimaz3 yeah if you consider just the stealth itself it's really barebones in deus ex and dishonored. The only reason it's alright is because the abilities you get are interesting and they make up for the basic stealth. Still a fan of those games of course.
It's funny, Thief, a game released in the 90s still has better stealth mechanics than most modern games because in thief it mattered whether you were walking on carpet or wood for sound, and light level mattered too.
The OG splinter cell from 2001 also has those features and i hope they keep them in the remake because I'm tired of really basic stealth in games
you mean crouching? letting snake crouch walk nearly killed the metal gear stealth gameplay. In earlier games it was a real decision: slow but low profile, or visible but you get out of the way easier. In peace walker and onward, you just crouch walk everywhere.
I can't think of any other game with better stealth mechanics.
@@Cyberian_Khatru isn't that, just like real life though? They also added the sprint and vehicles which let you travel even faster but with a higher profile.
hmm i never thought of MGSV as an Im Sim, interesting thought experiment tho :)
I never thought of MGSV as an Immersive Sim, BUT you are wrong about a lot of this. Especially the open ended gameplay, seems like you didn't get as creative with your playthrough.
The perfect delivery 11:30 🗿
0:45 i choked on my water from laughing at frisk's face
This is perfect timing I just got back into mgs 5
What's the game at 12:24?
This video has convinced me Deus Ex and Prey are not immersive sims.
I would say so.
Hell I hate that I have to play the intro every time, in Deus Ex HR and Dishonored
Considering Spector himself called Ultima 6 an imsim (a classic top-down RPG that simply simulated day-night NPC routine cycles, had a basic karma/reputation system and featured some rudimentary ways to interact with the world via point-and-click interface), I'd say your definition is pure trash based on games that often barely fit the description. Imsims aren't 'anything made by Looking Glass/Spector', you know.
Imsim is a design philosophy of an open-ended game that values player agenda and simulates a world that reacts to player's actions, which makes, say, recent Hitman games a lot more im-simy than anything Looking Glass has ever produced. Basically, every good RPG that lets you accomplish goals through different means and via different builds is an imsim, and so is every sandbox that doesn't have overly linear dungeons/missions as a mainframe for its design.
So, yeah: MGS 5, Stalker, nu-BethSoft games - all of these are imsims.
Well of course its not, mgs has always been Tactical espionage action its right on the box. Idk why people say is im-sim. Also frisk found his metal bawx.
What’s that infamous train from again
Oh I feel I should note your base does automatically acquire various materials on their own. In fact past the very early game the resources you steal are basically worth next to nothing compared to the cost of developing new gear or expanding platforms.
30:22 Word man.
Finally someone said it.
Idea for next year:
“Is Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Or Tear of the Kingdom) an Immersive Sim?”
Metal Gear Solid V was a lot more engaging when I consciously decided to turn off Reflex Mode, refused to use tranquilizer guns, and chose to be non-lethal.
Honestly, good points, well put together and overall a great video. I personally like MGSV:TPP over AC because its goofy as hell.
Don't worry, when I call Sonic Adventure an immersive sim, it's mostly for the joke.
Also, from what I saw and heard from MGSV:
-You can use the decoy normaly or throw it to the the gards
-You can bassicly do slide with the box as a shield as you shoot
-You can depart a mission with a box with balloons instead of the helicopter
-The end could've been better done, ditto for Quiet's condition (that one is more Kojima beeing bored, according to Thorhighheels)... I like the way you prononced the "scantaly clad woman" phrase about Quiet.
-If you come back in an aera for other missions, the enemies gets equiped depending of your most used method (adaptive difficulty), here's some exemples I can think of:
-Night goggles when do you a lot of night infiltration, so you've to infiltrate in daylight or blind them with a flash light.
-Wearing helmets if you do a lot of headshots.
-Them using decoys to bamboozle you too.
P.S(s). I don't like that you dislike the term "content", even if I still like you talking about Immersive sims (sorry to not wanting you to be the change you want to see in the world). Also, the bit where you're throwing a box to kill the enemies in Human Revolution was really funny.
I have now been staring at my screen for 30 minutes just thinking how to best describe what I am feeling.
Thank you ,I suppose for showing me that even artists I love can be blind to how uninformed they even are.
This is the first of your videos that I will be disliking.
You have in the past mostly covered games I have never played or have a rudimentary knowledge of.
However this time I happen to know quite a bit about mgsv and I have to say that your takes are so bad it makes me question the validity of your claims about other games.
You got so many things wrong that I am literally gonna rewatch the video and go point for point.
Are you intentionally misrepresenting the story or do you simply not understand? How do I put this. You took the 5th named entry in a series, that is also the ending of the Big Boss part of it. At this point Big Boss saved the world from ww3 three times.
Nuclear inspections were a thing but the whole plot point behind that is that it is a sham. Your scientist buddy betrayed you and went behind your back to call them. Then told you about it so there was nothing you could do but prepare for it by hiding your nuclear equipped robot and locking your weapons away to put out a friendly face for the inspection team. Only you know, they were the bad guys and blew mother base up.
For the Ocelot shotgun shell bandolier. Do officers in the army walk around with they're primary weapon in hand at all times in they're base? In every instance you get to play as Ocelot in an actual combat scenario, he has a shotgun.
The diamonds you find are mostly stuff the enemy soldiers found and are hiding (terribly I agree)
The Soviet soldiers you get are presumably mostly from Soviet satellite states as you can hear them talk about how Moscow is taking about sending more ethnic Russians. So they're likely poor starving farm boys that that would very much enjoy the benefits you give them
The African PMC members are well other Mercs that in this world literally only exist because big boss inspired them.
The XOF troopers probably just wanna get away from SkullFace
Yes the intro is incredibly long-winded but it does in fact save a purpose within the story.
As per game mechanics.
You somehow missed that you can spam the button to lockpick faster.
You do get not magic but definitely magic abilities later.
You can defeat Sahalantropus
You can defeat the Skullz in the first encounter.
Honestly I could go on but I'll probably find the word limit.
In truth. None of this points would've mattered. It's not what you said even when it's wrong. it's that you said it with such conviction as if the mere ideea some people may think ofgsv as as an imsim is beneath you.
Even if you tought it wasn't. You were an ashole about it.
what did you think of the stealth criticisms?
@@TheAlison1456 He just didn't play enough. Also at least from the gameplay he's showing, he's actually killed people. Yeah jeez a game where you can only get it's best rank by being mostly a ghost and not killing a single person may get easy when you don't do that.
‘Paper thin stealth’
Вандер ты настолько соскучился по иммерсив симу, что видишь иммерсив сим там где его нет. .держись бро.
3:40 I hope the fact that it's literally in Team America: World Police isn't lost on too many