Having Sutherland replace Hayter was just plain stupid. Straight up stupid. Hayter was already established as the voice of Solid Snake as well as of Big Boss via Snake Eater and Peace Walker, and the amount of dialog from Big Boss/Venom Snake was realistically so low and low value that hiring Sutherland to voice, which I'd guess cost a bit more, was just a complete waste of money and Sutherland.
Personally, I hope Konami doesn't completely abandon MGS in favor of slot machines and continues to produce a few more MG games, and if they do, I'd prefer to have Hayter doing the voice over anyone else. After all this time... that's just the voice that fits.
I've played and supposedly 'mastered' the Paris area of the game already, and while the gameplay change is nice and the gameplay is fun and varied... Well the game just isn't finished yet. There are scores of things about the game that make it feel like the game has been released a few months too early. A couple of good examples would be... hmm... oh fiber wire. A Hitman staple weapon, used and loved by many. Well it's still here in this game and when you equip it, you can see it appear tucked neatly into 47's hand. But then when you use it... it vanishes. The animation plays out normally, the target dies and everything is as it would be, except that you see no fiberwire at all in the animation or as you continue to drag the body by the fiber wire, so instead it almost looks like he's just pulling the body around by it's ears. Funny, sure, but seriously? How the hell did you release a Hitman game and forget to add the actual fiber wire in the garrote animation? Seems like a very amateurish thing to leave out. The audio is another good example of flaws. There's one point where you're in a room with everyone speaking amongst themselves in normal tones around you, and one person speaking directly to you. But when 47 replies, he's about 4 times louder than everyone else and his voice is the only one that echoes as if he were shouting in a grand opera hall.
The game is laden with issues and oversights like those, as well as control issues. I recall once trying to hide a body in a crate on a rooftop. You can dump them over the ledge, too, but hiding in a crate is always better than splattered on the ground, no? Well so the onscreen prompt shows over up above the ledge, and then again over the crate once I'm in front of it. I carefully make sure the prompt is over the crate before I hit the button, and then watch in dismay as he lifts an unconscious waiter into the air and drops him onto a crowd of party-goers and guards. The walking up stair animation doesn't even attempt to sync up with the terrain of the stairs. Each step he goes up about 3.3 stairs, while all other characters in the game go one step at a time. The AI of npcs flips out sometimes, with them randomly pacing back and forth, freezing in place, warping to a different location entirely(sometimes right as you were about to garrote them), or appearing to have wider cone of vision when it comes to seeing dead bodies than seeing walking ones. You can literally be undetected and kill someone where you stand, and the instant they die people that couldn't see all react to the body and see it fine.
Granted, they're all little things, and 15 years ago I wouldn't have even have thought to gripe about them. But these days with this generation of gaming, these little simple issues really make it feel more like a pretty unprofessional launching of an unfinished/unpolished game. And I can only assume that was one of the key factors in their episodic releasing strategy - to release some of the game while they keep working on finishing it.
tl;dr? No prob: The game is fun, but has quite a few gameplay and technical issues. 5/10. I'd say 6/10, but they literally released a patch today that solved no bugs and made new ones. If you're on the fence about this game, stay safely there until the game is fully released, has been patched a few times, and is on sale. By then the game will probably be at least a 7.5, and if they realize the full potential it has, easily a 9/10. But judging by the start they're off to, I wouldn't bank on that.
@phoenix1289: People said the same things about Konami and Kojima when those rumors first started. And in the end, people got an unfinished game as a result. Don't get me wrong, MGSV is a good game. But when you see all the open space with literally nothing going on and the way the story and plot just all falls apart at the end with no wrap up or resolution at all... the game could have been a lot better if it had been allowed to be finished.
And furthermore, this is NOT completely normal in the gaming industry. Lead writers and editors are leaving while the project is still being worked on. While the writing and editing are hopefully already done, it's still pretty unusual to have some of your key talent leaving while you're still working on one of your important flagship series.
@phoenix1289: People don't come and go from developers all the time when they are lead members of the development, and you are still in development of the latest title of what's probably your biggest series. That's unusual, and generally doesn't bode well. These days, typically, that means higher-ups are getting involved and telling the developers how to make the game. Developers, the good ones anyway, generally don't take kindly to that and leave. Also, when higher-ups start demanding the game be made this way or that, the games generally suffer if not outright suck as a result. Suits only know money, not how to make a good video game, and when they start thinking they know both, you end up with truly terrible games.
@mrfriki: Well those were some skilled writers, if the previous MEs are any indication. Losing them doesn't bode well for future ME titles or future Bioware titles. Stories and characters have always been Bioware's strong point.
I have high hopes for more Mass Effect, but I can't deny that all the talent jumping ship from Bioware has me a little concerned about it. I don't want another MGS5 where some kind of internal conflict results in an unpolished or unfinished game.
I like the idea, but when they say 'over $60 worth' of DLC, I can't help but wonder $60 worth relative to who, exactly? $60 worth, by Bethesda's reckoning? The same people that thought horse armor DLC was worth more than ten cents? Or $60 worth, by player's reckoning? Wherein we place much more realistic value on DLC than the companies producing them do.
I miss the good old days when people crammed everything they could into their games before they sold them to you, instead of today's business model where they make half the game they have planned and sell it to you and then make the other half over the next 1-2 years and sell that to you episodically.
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