September 2015, three years ago, the latest entry in the incredibly long and storied series of Metal Gear Solid, MGSV, was released to an eager public. A universally praised (albeit unfinished) game, it fills in another blank into the sometimes extremely convoluted Metal Gear mythos. Games like these usually fade away after a year at most, and are fondly remembered from time to time.
Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain is breaking that mold, and is still getting updates three years after release.
Now everyone who follows video games is clued into the controversy revolving around Konami, and Kojima, and the Metal Gear series. I won’t get into it here if you aren’t (but YOU can get into it here) but suffice it to say, Konami is having trouble with the Metal Gear franchise at the moment.
Kojima left, and Konami immediately went to work on milking the series with the iron was still hot. Not long after MGSV released and the dust settled, Konami announced Metal Gear Survive- a game that would go on to be possibly the worst game of 2018. Konami was aware that game would be trash, and they were aware the community was 100% aware that Kojima was gone and the next entry would most likely suck. So Konami had to do something to keep people invested in MGSV long enough to hopefully stumble into Metal Gear Survive so they could get a good fleecing. That’s where I think the updates come into play.
A year ago, a decently sized update(as surprise updates go) was released for MGSV. It added Ocelot to the playable character list for FOB missions, and some funny cosmetics. Nothing crazy, but enough to keep people interested.
This week, another similar update was released. This one adds Quiet to the playable character list for FOB missions, and a few guns and more cosmetics.
Both updates are to one of the most fun positions of the game, the sudo versus mode of FOB missions. It keeps people playing the game, enjoying action in the world and thinking about wanting more.
I have recently started playing MGSV, it was free on Games with Gold. The game is amazing there’s no doubt, but I have been having so much fun with the story and the extra content like the FOB missions, that I entertained the thought for a second that I should give Metal Gear Survive a chance. I even looked at the big Xbox sale to see if it was cheap enough on there.
No Konami, not this time…I just hope everyone else is smart enough to see through this, enjoy MGSV and ignore the terrible alternative.