In Ground Zeroes, we see what MGSV could have been at it's best. Big Boss (or Naked Snake (or John)) infiltrates the Guantanamo Bay inspired 'Camp Omega', a black site for unlawful CIA operations. His objective is to extract Chico and Paz, two of his child-soldier that now pose a liability to his operations. Camp Omega has brilliant, rich level design, making it a truly rewarding experience to master it's ways. It's a far, far cry from anything but three or four places in The Phantom Pain. And that's something I'll never understand why. Why do we spend so much time riding around in the deserts of Afghanistan or in the african savanna between tiny, uninspired enemy outposts!? WHY?!?!?!!?
I don't think it's unfair to say that big open world level design, as those featured in MGSV, was never one of Kojima's strenghts. The evolution of MGS's level design from the first to the third installment shows that, while Kojima was excellent at making very tight and dense spaces, he also had an interest for the idea of making spaces that could be bigger and still dense with possibilites of player expression. It is in my opinion that one of the biggest strenghts of MGS3 is the open nature of it's level design: it hits the spot just right between linear and the non-linear. From eating snakes to feeding poisonous anfibians to enemies, the absurd amount of player expression contained in MGS3 is a great deal more effective than TPP's shallow grandiosity. Ground Zeroes gave us a next-gen taste of that, it's just plain fun to mess with all the hidden secrets Camp Omega has in storage. Also, great story. This game saw some controversy for it's allusion to rape, but I personally think it was very well-handled. At least compared to fucking Quiet.
I don't think it's unfair to say that big open world level design, as those featured in MGSV, was never one of Kojima's strenghts. The evolution of MGS's level design from the first to the third installment shows that, while Kojima was excellent at making very tight and dense spaces, he also had an interest for the idea of making spaces that could be bigger and still dense with possibilites of player expression. It is in my opinion that one of the biggest strenghts of MGS3 is the open nature of it's level design: it hits the spot just right between linear and the non-linear. From eating snakes to feeding poisonous anfibians to enemies, the absurd amount of player expression contained in MGS3 is a great deal more effective than TPP's shallow grandiosity. Ground Zeroes gave us a next-gen taste of that, it's just plain fun to mess with all the hidden secrets Camp Omega has in storage. Also, great story. This game saw some controversy for it's allusion to rape, but I personally think it was very well-handled. At least compared to fucking Quiet.