Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is an open world action-adventure stealth video game developed by Kojima Productions, directed, designed, co-produced and co-written by Hideo Kojima, and published by Konami for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One. It was released worldwide on September 1, 2015. The game is the eleventh canonical and final installment in the Metal Gear series and the fifth within the series' chronology. It serves as a sequel to Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, and a continuation of the narrative established there, and a prequel to the original Metal Gear game. It carries over the tagline of Tactical Espionage Operations first used in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. Set in 1984, the game follows the mercenary leader Punished "Venom" Snake as he ventures into Afghanistan and the Angola–Zaire border region to exact revenge on the people who destroyed his forces and came close to killing him during the climax of Ground Zeroes.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is a separated composite of two previously announced Kojima Productions projects. These two, separately released games combined are Metal Gear Solid V, with The Phantom Pain constituting the bulk of the title.

The Phantom Pain was critically acclaimed upon release, with its gameplay drawing praise for featuring a variety of mechanics and interconnected systems which allow a high degree of player freedom in approaching objectives. While the story drew criticism from a few reviewers for its lack of focus, others acknowledged its emotional power and exploration of mature themes.


 * A Commander Is You: One of the mechanics is an expanded version of the base commander aspects of Peace Walker, and a decent chunk of the gameplay is devoted to micromanaging your army.
 * Chicken Walker: Walker Gears have a bird like strut to them
 * Call Forward:
 * Although seen only in photographs, a young boy named Huey Emmerich, aka Otacon plays a rather significant if tragic role in the plot.
 * Metal Gear Sahelanthropus bears more than a passing resemblance to the chronologically later Metal Gear REX in its bipedal form.
 * Eli, the hardened child soldier Venom encounters in Africa.
 * Fish Out of Temporal Water: Downplayed, but Venom is a relative newcomer to The Eighties. Given how he tries to keep up to date with contemporary developments upon coming to and how Diamond Dogs tends to operate in countries and combat theatres away from pop-cultural centers, it's not much of a concern.
 * Magical Native American: Subverted with Code Talker, who only seems to be this because of his manner of speaking as well as the self-experimentation.
 * Mundane Utility: The player can eventually get their hands on what amounts to a teleportation device, but it's use is limited to simply being used as a better version of the Fulton Device.
 * Misplaced Vegetation: Averted. The few plants you can pick up would plausibly be found in the regions you can acquire theme.
 * Private Army: You run one. In fact, so do a lot of people, many of which will be your enemies.
 * Red Herring Twist: Zero is propped as being the ultimate antagonist.
 * Russians With Rifles: The Soviet 40th Red Army motorized rifle division is the primary enemy force in Afghanistan.
 * Roaring Rampage of Revenge: A running theme throughout the plot. Everyone involved in the story is after some form of vengeance.
 * Schizo-Tech: While the Metal Gear universe tends to play fast and loose with what tech actually existed yet usually bases it on tech that did exist in some form (if only as a concept) during the time period of the game in question, this game even gives the player the chance to get their own wormhole device.
 * Shout Out: The Afghanistan sections bear more than a few homages to Rambo III and The Living Daylights, which also involved the Soviet occupation.
 * Start of Darkness: The game really marks this for Big Boss. Diamond Dogs in particular is much murkier than MSF and sets the foundations for Outer Heaven later on.
 * Time Skip: Compared to Ground Zeroes, the game is set in 1984.
 * Wide Open Sandbox: Quite wide, with two very large world areas. They do have eventual borders, but the area one can cover is quite vast in both. Some parts of the area of each world are blocked off in some minor ways due to certain missions, but otherwise the world spaces of Afghanistan and the Angola-Zaire border are quite huge.
 * Zoo Tycoon: It's possible to send back various animals, including bears, with the Fulton Device.