I got the game early. Ask me questions (No Spoilers)

I've got the official guide. It covers just about everything.

I guess this is more of a question to everybody, rather than just you.

I've never played a Metal Gear game before (apart from Ground Zeros), but I really want to try out The Phantom Pain, and might buy it for PC next weekend. So, over the course of this week, what should I do?

I've seen online people recommending to just watch MGS3: The Movie and Peace Walker: The Movie. I'd sit through all of Metal Gear Scanlon but I don't have the time and would like to be playing the game while it's still being talked about on the Bombcast.

Can you twirl single action army revolvers? That's all that matters. Metal Gear Ocelot.

That should do. Although i think there is a rather large collection of audio "tapes" included with Ground Zeroes that covers important stuff from Peace Walker

@lucien_lachance: thanks a lot for the tip about pressing the button, I never would have found it otherwise. Holy shit, I can't believe they don't direct you towards that. It's a pretty big thing.

Did the game just break for anyone else all of a sudden? I can't call the helicopter to Mother Base which means I can't do missions, and all my guys disappeared from the base. This have something do with the 421MB patch that just hit?

I imagine the perceived difference between GZ and TPP is that the main mission was both at night and in a storm which reduced vision and hearing for enemy soldiers by a lot in comparison to the daytime side ops. Don't know if it's this way in TPP, but in GZ, the enemies were less aware to sound and had their vision cones reduced some if they were investigating something specific like a guard's body (dead or alive) or a thrown magazine (these investigations are generally represented by a flashing triangle over their head if you've marked them).

To add to this, you can also dive into a guy's back to knock him onto the ground and then proceed to immediately hold him up. Only problem being that if he turns around and sees you before you get the dive off, and he gets knocked onto his backside instead, there may be problems for you if he gets up.

@sunbrozak: Having the guide, do you happen to know of any more stuff like I posted where side stuff that they don't tell you to do leads to major story stuff?

It's pretty inexcusable how they handled the stuff I posted about considering there are times where Miller's like "Yo Boss, get your ass over to Mother Base right meow."

@lucien_lachance: Kojima was pretty adamant about there being things in the game that people will just straight up miss (recruiting Quiet being one of those things, but it seems like everyone's been able to find her easily).

There is a surprising amount of stuff that you can miss. My recommendation is that you visit Mother Base after every few main missions, and during mission 03 (the guide says 03, but I could swear it was 04, so be wary about both), look around the starting area before heading after the objective. That latter point is pretty damn crucial to obtaining something.

Spoiler regarding that something: You'll find the D-Dog puppy in that area. Fulton him.

@sunbrozak: Yep, got that. They pretty much lead you to him, unlike the Paz stuff. Are there any more side ops that aren't labeled as "important" that I should look out for?

Not really. The rest are quite clearly tagged as being significant. Most of the missable stuff comes in the form of throwaway (but enjoyable) cutscenes, and obscured mechanics. The majority of the cutscenes take place on Mother Base. So just ensure you visit there on occasion. The hidden/obscured mechanics are just your standard Metal Gear silliness for the most part. Not much in the way of story spoilers. For instance, if you use the water pistol on electrical equipment, it deactivates it without raising suspicion. And Mother Base soldiers in the same unit will slowly learn the languages from soldiers in that unit.

I got the game early as well. I find it a little weird that every chapter is formatted like an anime. Like it literally has opening and ending credits. But aside from that it's all been pretty damn awesome.

So about this.... do you? Cause I finished the prologue and still have no idea who that guy is. I was thinking it was Ocelotbut dude clearly was shot at the end there and died.

@demoskinos: Not a story spoiler what so ever, but tagged in case anyone wants to find out how to find out who Ishmael is on their own: You find out when you beat mission 46, which gives you the second ending.