So I was one of the people who thought Metal Gear Scanlon V should not happen, and Drew should have just played the game by himself. Out of the 22 episodes, I only watched the first episode and random highlights I was interested in: Drew encountering Quiet, Drew finding Paz, The Jeep Ride, and some of the ending bits in Part 22. I know MGSV made his Top 10 list for 2015, yet I heard him say that the game made him angry (Something like "Super Mario Maker doesn't make me angry" during the GOTY Deliberations.)

So for the people who have seen Metal Gear Scanlon V, what does Drew think? Does he actually like this game? Why was he so turned off when he saw the Chapter Two teaser? Why does it sound like he's overall frustrated with MGSV? (This aspect I'm particularly puzzled by, since the game controls so well. It's no MGS1.)

Of course, Drew can like and dislike a game for whatever reason. It always seemed like his biggest gripe with the previous games was controlling them, but they all got better over time and MGSV has the most streamlined and straightforward mechanics of the series. I guess I automatically assumed his frustration would be lower, not higher, with MGSV.

Also, it sounds like Drew isn't listening to any of the cassette tapes? Why? That's the game's equivalent of the Codec, so why are they skipping them?

He said he doesn't listen to the tapes because that's how he would play at home...sigh...

He didn't really listen to the codecs except when he had to. Dan was visibly disappointed in previous games that Drew wasn't calling random people all the time to get every bit of info/story. Just seems like how he plays. I totally understand that "Make a game that shows me everything, I'll play through it and enjoy it, we're done", as opposed to Dan's apparent "I want to spend time hunting around, uncovering side-quests and talking to people". It occurred to me yesterday that Drew didn't visit Paz a single time after Dan made him, which makes it clear how invested in the story he is.

Drew seems to have enjoyed the previous gameplay of the series, which can be summed up by "Little bit of sneaking, little bit of action, campy/funny boss fight that takes specific/interesting tactics, interesting/esoteric story video, repeat until you get a story dump at the end explaining things". MGSV is very different, you don't have to do anything specific for many bosses, and as an outsider it looks like a really boring generic open-world adventure game that is super different from MGS1-4.

I think it's obvious he's getting no enjoyment from the game, the end of Chapter 1 is nothing, doesn't add to the world at all, doesn't explain anything, and he was fine just assuming the game/story was meaningless and being done. Hopefully Chapter 2 has more interesting stuff, builds up the kids/Paz, and Drew gets into the story parts. I doubt it though. Just seems like they spent all their money/time making a good-playing game, and very little putting actual MGS into it.

Drew seems to get annoyed with the FOB stuff because it's a chore, and doesn't seem to care about the story because it's ridiculous (and buried in tapes that aren't exactly conducive to a video playthrough). I can't say I'd be playing much differently than he is. It's a poorly-structured game that becomes a bit of a slog, and the fact that it controls well doesn't really make up for that. Even MGS superfan Dan has clearly soured on the game over time. As an aside, it's interesting to take issue with them skipping the tapes in a thread where you're asking what annoyed Drew because you skipped most of the Metal Gear Scanlon V video series.

Drew doesn't like the game (and probably the series in general) as much as he thinks he does.

Drew has gone on the record numerous times that he is the kind of game that goes from Point A to Point B without getting sidetracked. He also said that he is not a huge fan of open world games.

He probably loved how it played and hated everything else about it.

No one does.

@waltercrunkfite: Speak for yourself.

@drdarkstryfe said:

Seeing as Drew said he finished Fallout 3 in like 10 hours or something because he just did the main plotline, yeah, I feel like the open worldiness of MGSV just felt like a chore to him (and frankly, it is).

It did seem like he enjoyed the gameplay, but yeah, I get the sense he didn't care for A) the characters, B) the story, C) the weird way the story is delivered because he didn't want to sit around listening to like an hour of cassettes, and D) all of the Mother Base management stuff.

Also, Drew has never mentioned it, but in his position, I'd personally be annoyed by how much Dan tried to micromanage everything he did.

It's not his kind of game.

Dan emphasizing that they're "technically done with MGScanlon" really doesn't help either. Chapter 1 was not the end in any way shape or form. They'll be condensing the remainder of the game to "bonus episodes" and that's terrible. Chapter 2 is a big part of the game and has the most heavy hitting story moments.

@kasaioni: My defence is inbuilt into my statement!

@frostyryan said:

I think they're relegating it to "bonus episodes" because they're not interested in showing Drew just randomly grinding out side ops until new missions appear. Evidently, they're just going to edit it all together at the end into videos where Drew (with Dan) actually gets to experience story stuff. Or something? Fuck, I dunno, it was always going to be a bad game for the Metal Gear Scanlon feature because so much of it is just grinding out boilerplate missions.

On the record Drew says he enjoyed it, and I think it made it into his top 10 GOTY list, so there is that. What he really thinks about it, who knows. The way he sounded exasperated upon finding out there is a chapter 2 didn't sound like he wanted to play more of it, or that the act of playing the game is something he enjoys all that much.

But hey Drew says he enjoys at least parts of it, so I guess he enjoyed it for the most part.

I think this explains it very well.

I didn't think about how Drew doesn't like open world games. Although, it feels more like a sandbox than anything else. Like compare MGSV to Skyrim or something. They are both "open world" games, but the list of possibilities in terms of direction is more narrow than a lot of those types of games.

@notnert427:Well, I did play MGSV for 110 hours and wasn't too interested in seeing anybody play through the entirety of that game. I think the Mission 30 game clock was around 33 hours, which is roughly Metal Gear Scanlon 1 and 2 combined. And that 30+ hours feels like its on the short side, from what I've heard other people play through that game, so it could have been a lot longer. Regardless, I'm still interested in what he thought of the game.

If they were going to do it like that, I would bring in Dan's or Jason's console and have Drew play those last couple core missions and show him a YouTube video or something with an important cut scene. (At least I think you can replay all of those Chapter Two missions) Or hell, just google "MGSV: The Phantom Pain Movie" and just have him watch whatever comes up.

But see, that only comes up later on. For now, all Drew has to do is play yellow missions. The missions are still there just as they've been before. There's I think only one instance where you have to play a couple random side ops for new stuff to appear, and they're not even at that point yet.

Dan just made this sound so much more confusing than it actually is. He also made it seem like chapter 2 was a special bonus part of the game. I hate how they went about this.

So, have they said when they will be finishing the game?

He seemed to enjoy the gameplay, but he's never seemed keen on the game that play is surrounded by. He's played most of the game standing upright with fully automatic weapons and fulton'd enemies mostly as an afterthought.

My experience with the game was spending dozens of hours just picking apart small outposts or running across the map to OKB Zero during a Side Ops phase for no other reason than I noticed most of the soldiers on the map had started spawning with Elite skills and so I went where the most soldiers hang out just to recruit dozens of them at a time. Drew's experience has involved a lot of bloodshed and hamfisting his way through scenarios. Most of the time he seems uninterested in even attempting to approach a given situation stealthily and yet remains exasperated that he's caught so easily.

Honestly it's been a bit of an eye-opener in terms of stubbornness. I am not anything like a good or great gamer but among my peers I've always felt like the one most open to understanding how a game works, and I'm always pointing things out to people that they'd never realized even if they'd played something just as much as I had. I suppose I knew going into MGSV that Drew wasn't going to find time for the tapes considering he never indulged in all the amazing weirdness of the codec in previous games, but I've remained a little surprised at how absolutely uninterested he is in playing MGSV on the game's own terms. The moment he realized the game could be played as close to an FPS as possible he's seemed hell bent on making that work even when it results in several scenarios where if he'd just been patient, or clever, things would have gone much smoother for him.

It's been good entertainment, still, but in more of a background noise way than the must-see nature of the previous four installments. Much of that is the fault of the game's structure, but Drew hasn't done himself any favors.

I think someone above put it best - I'm not sure Drew enjoys this series as much as he thinks, or perhaps wants the audience to believe, he does. But it's still been a joy to watch, and in many ways the ramshackle feel of Scanlon V mirrors the way this incredible game that I'm actually still playing regularly felt so...off as part of a series known for being quite a different thing.

Quick question, since to unlock the final missions it is required to listen to all yellow tapes, does that mean they are gunna have to go through every single tape Drew skipped or just the new yellow ones that unlock in Chapter 2?

Either way, super glad I tapped out after about 10 episodes and just checked out episode 22. Shame Dan made Chapter 2 sound so intimidating when (while yes, there is a lot of grinding side ops which wound me up a lot) there is a known critical path you can just follow.

@nodima said:

I think part of the issue is that unlike MGS3 or MGS4, there is no UI indicator of your camo level/visibility distance, so Drew kinda ignores those systems. I know they wanted a cleaner UI or something so there's like no minimap or health or visibility meter or anything, but I think the game suffers for it, especially if you're the type of player that would like to see that information directly. I feel like Drew tried to care about camo in MGS3, and tried for about half of MGS4, but at a certain point he just went guns blazing through the entire like final third of MGS4, and continued his guns blazing strategy into MGS5. I feel like he just wants to get it over with, and it's actually work for Drew to keep doing this feature.

He also mentions feeling pressure to not make it boring for viewers. Most of you would likely be into it, but I imagine lots of casual viewers would completely tune out to a 2 hour video of Drew slowly sneaking around and stealth darting and fultoning enemies to complete one mission.

However, they ended up with the opposite of the spectrum, where he blazes in and dies for 45 minutes straight, then gets lucky once and beats the mission.

@finnianwhitefir said:

Yeah, I found it too frustrating and unenjoyable to watch. I had to check out around episode 10 or 11 of Metal Gear Scanlon 5, and I don't think I'll ever watch the rest of it.

@waltercrunkfite: Speak for yourself.

I'm sure Dan doesn't know about it. Despite how much he talked it up during GOTY, he doesn't seem to have much familiarity with the game.

MGSV is probably not the right type of game for Drew. He's not a fan of open world and attempts to focus on the critical path for every game he plays. He has so far attempted to ignore secondary game systems, specifically R&D. While he can pretty muddle through chapter 1 ok without weapon upgrades, there's at least one chapter 2 mission that will ruin him. Since a lot of the lore has been moved to tapes, he's not forced to consume the lore and is not interested in doing so voluntarily, so he's not going to get much out of the story.

I think the biggest problem has been Dan though. I think, left to his own devices, Drew would probably have figured out a lot of the systems that have been frustrating him. However, since he's being given bad information, he's ended up misunderstanding how a lot of systems work. For example, Drew probably would have figured out the camouflage system if Dan hadn't told him there wasn't one. He probably also would have much more success sneaking if Dan hadn't made him switch to the riot smg.

As far as chapter 2 goes, it'd probably be a good idea to skip to critical story missions, but it's not that necessary. This isn't the first MGSV playthrough I've watched. The Super Best Friends played the game, including chapter 2. They spent a couple episodes basically doing nothing but listening to tapes and discussing them, but that worked about as well for the video as the gameplay does. The most interesting part of the playthrough is seeing the reaction to the story, even if there isn't really anything happening on screen. That said, Drew's patience for exposition may be significantly lower than the average viewer's.

No interest in side objectives, weapon research, and exploring mechanics in general. Which is fine, but undermines a lot of what makes MGS5 in particular great.

The format of 5 was basically the worst match imaginable with their recording schedule. Whereas the previous games could at least be carried by goofy codecs/cutscenes and of course nostalgia paired with Dan's raving fanaticism (which was also swiftly curbed in 5). I think even a little bit of off-camera work or a few key tapes could have improved the playthrough greatly, but hey, I guess that's how Drew would've played the game even on his own.

What perplexes me is Drew claims he's invested in the story, yet didn't feel any impetus to listen to the tapes. I'd figure the lack of cutscenes would've been enough to overcome his preference to mainline. What was he there for then? Certainly not the stealth gameplay. Chalk it up to the pressure of recording? The playthrough felt like a joyless obligation at times, and it disheartens me that this may be the last impression of MGS Drew is left with.

Edit: To be fair, they covered the story beats of Peace Walker and Ground Zeroes in broad strokes so I suppose it makes sense Drew isn't really interested in Big Boss's arc and manages to refer to him as Solid Snake several times. Personally, I was never convinced he was in it for the story, it's just good video.

My defence is inbuilt into my argument!

It made his top 10.

I watched a couple of bits and pieces of this (a few minutes here and there cause I found this series to be really dull) but he doesn't seem to be a big fan of this game. He seems to have preferred the earlier ones cause while they controlled terribly they were fucking metal gear-ass metal gear games. This one, while the controls sound amazing, doesn't really seem to have the feel of older games? I've played metal gear solid, 2 and 3 and while in lots of ways there were serious problems, they did some crazy shit that I had never experienced in another game. I'm not sure if the most recent one had the same feel.

I'm not so sure it would have if he re-did his list today.

@waltercrunkfite: I like MGS as much as I think I do.

Wooooooooooooooooooooow. Amazing.

itt people put words into other people's mouths

I barely watched any MGScanlon V because, while I enjoyed the game, watching someone play it didn't sound appealing.

There were some cool moments in what I watched but overall it just didn't have the makings of a great Metal Gear Scanlon simply because of how the game is designed. Certainly nothing like: oh shit, I can't wait to watch Drew get to the bit where Liquid/Ocelot and Solid Snake fight on top of a Battle Ship and jam syringes in to each others necks!