Unless I understood Brad wrong in the quick look, he said that this..

..is the "coolest thing" about the game, and that it's crucial [for tactical gameplay] unless you just wanna "shoot stuff."

I don't care that Brad said it and I don't feel either way about the staff, this isn't about them, forget Brad :)

I totally respect people's preferences and opinions, but I'm curious as to in what world this kind of supernatural 3D mark on people around you is OK? Do you enjoy this and use it? This is magic, how can you use magic in pseudo-realistic missions where you're a badass on secret operations? You're neither Batman nor Dovahkiin, nothing is on your eyes and you're not magical, how is this acceptable for this game or Far Cry 3 among others? This is basically the Aura Whisper from Skyrim.

In advance, I respect what you're gonna say, to each their own and I'm certainly not too fussed by this, but before I finish, I want you to imagine that you were watching Rambo First Blood II and you saw this:

Preposterous, no? This was Far Cry 3. My personal 2012 GOTY, but when I saw people tag bandits in it I was speechless.

It fundamentally changes stealth games. You become the predator rather than the prey.

Instead of hiding like Rimikaru with an occasional stealth kill, your focus shifts to murdering everyone.

A sneaking mission? Hardly.

It's a video game conceit to remove some of the frustration found in older stealth games. I don't see why it needs to be an issue of realism. If you don't care for it or prefer to play in a different way, just don't use it.

I certainly prefer it to being able to see through walls, if I'm being honest. It's hard to remember until you boot the game back up (Arkham, Last of Us, so on) just how much time you spend looking at the game through a filtered lens if they give you the incentive. I was sort of relieved to learn that Lara Croft's Survival Sense or whatever was practically useless, causing me to basically only use it by accident.

hmmm, I think the whole Marking system more of a reward for people who put an effort in preparation.

Watching the QL I got a whole lotta Far Cry 3 from it. Apart from the obvious 'spotting' people with a camera mechanic, the awareness indicator and the way it grows looks like it was ripped straight from FC3 or the newer Splinter Cell's. I don't have a problem with this though, the best moments for me in FC3 were the securing the settlements side missions. Spotting guards, watching their routines and planning a strategy to take them out. It's just a different way of doing things, you can still be stealthy with it.

One of my gripes with older stealth games was that you'd get to situation where you'd taken everyone out only to get spotted by the last guy and an alert status to happen - 'where did he come from?! I'll remember that for next time' Then the game becomes an exercise in trial and error. 'This guy will be around the corner here, when I walk down this corridor they'll be two more guys.' This isn't any more realistic, its just gaming the system.

Also your Rambo analogy is a bit weird, there's a difference between playing as someone, assessing the situation and executed on a plan and passively watching what someone does, without seeing what's going through their mind. Maybe John Rambo is a cyborg and was marking people with his mind, you don't know man, you weren't there.

I think it makes games like this a lot more manageable. It's not a perfect system, but I appreciate it.

Though, I kinda wish they had left the threat ring from MGS4. In that, if you were moving slowly, or standing still, this ring would appear around Snake. It was meant to visualize his sense. IE, if he heard a loud truck nearby, the ring would bend up in the direction of the truck. But it also represented the other senses, like feeling vibrations in the ground.

But then again, it wasn't really super useful in MGS4. Actually, don't listen to me about MGS4, I played that game so many times that I have it basically memorized, so I just ignored that stuff after a while and instead remembered where all the enemies were. Or most of them, at least.

I also think it's good that it can be turned off. Eventually, once I'm better at this game, I'm going to try turning it off and see how I do.

I'm sorry I mean no real disrespect but man THIS is the thing that bothers you in metal gear relating to realism?

@demoskinos: To be fair, there isn't any sort of in game justification for this thing. It's not like he has a cyber-eyepatch or anything.

At some point one of these games should have a character with a regular eyepatch over one eye and a cyber-eyepatch over the other.

I'm fine with it. It can help me keep track of multiple enemies as I'm ghosting my way through something.

I personally think it's not only challenging and beautiful, but the essence of infiltration, to use my eyes to see where dudes are, and making my way through them (violently or non-violently). I simply disagree that it's frustrating to not know where everyone is continuously on your screen, I honestly think it's scandalous but that's just me. The first Deus Ex was the shit in this regard!

It's not so much about realism as much as it's about exaggerated non-realism. I don't care about realism, but I have a problem with logic-breaking player assistance that makes me wonder what the point is when people's job is almost completely done for them!

That's a fair argument, but that is not usually my experience when I decide to use my eyes and memory. I usually blame myself for letting the last guy sneak up on me, it makes the repeat much more thrilling. But I guess that happens to others, and it's a shame.

I've never played an MGS game and never will, duder, this is neither about MGS nor realism, it's about what I consider an unfortunate trend in new respectable games that should "know better" IMO.

The final shot of The Phantom Pain will be Big Boss slowly lowering a cyber eyepatch over his good eye. *Cut to Metal Gear Solid V title card*

Do they force you to use it in Ground Zeroes? Or is it only optional?

I look at it as them being so bad ass they remember and the onscreen indicator is just a visual representation of that. This isn't that far fetched if you believe in action heroes of days past who never ran out of bullets and always got the drop on the bad guys (until that inevitable part when they briefly get captured before escaping again).

I love it personally. First use of it was the original Far Cry.

There are bad ways to use it, in my opinion (like when they use it in bad Splinter Cell games to auto kill 3 dudes- so dumb) but using it just to mark positions so you know where they are is fun.

I don't know so much how it will play it out in MGS. That's kind of a weird one. I am totally cool with them trying to do new things though.

I don't see the problem.

1) It's optional.

2) Enemy tagging still makes it harder than using the radars from the older games. The radars made stealth quite trivial.

3) It'll probably be disabled entirely in high difficulty modes, it'd have been nice if they added such a mode to Ground Zeroes.

That gets disabled in the higher difficulties. Blacklist actually turned out to be a fantastic stealth game, easily the best since Chaos Theory. I think Kojima took a lot from Conviction and Blacklist, Ground Zeroes feels a lot closer to those games than any Metal Gear game of the past.

I'm a bit surprised the slow motion mode when you get spotted in GZ isn't disabled in hard mode, but I could see them disabling such a mechanic in difficulty levels within The Phantom Pain. If they add an extreme mode to TPP it'll probably have no tagging and instant enemy spotting.

You're saying all this, yet you've never played the games before?

Hmmm...

This is magic, how can you use magic in pseudo-realistic missions where you're a badass on secret operations?

Same way you can stop for a piss break to completely heal bullet wounds. Or, same way you can run over a health pack to heal bullet wounds. Or, same way you can pop pain pills to heal bullet wounds...

...see where I'm going with this? Playing any sort of video game requires suspension of disbelief, even the ones that try their hardest to be super realistic.

As far as tagging guys goes, I don't have an issue with it. In games where you're usually shooting at tiny humans from quite a distance, it's nice to be able to keep track of them. It's not a make-or-break aspect of any game, though - I'll use it if I have it and probably won't miss it if I don't. If I'm given the choice, I usually run in like a dumb action hero anyway. Being quiet is most definitely not my style.

If you don't want to use them, then don't. You usually have to press a button to use tags. You don't in Far Cry 3, but that game is far more about guerrilla get-in-and-get-out tactics than some kind of tactical infiltration into a big enemy base.

I would feel tagging made it too easy if you still had a radar but since that is gone I am fine with tagging. Yeah it shouldn't cover the entire map probably but I am cool with the concept.

I very much enjoy using it, it's a cool system, but I am looking forward to doing a playthough without them and relaying on the night vision goggles instead.

I think it makes a difference whether it is an open wold stealth game or a linear stealth game. In linear stealth games you come up to the next sneaking area from one designed direction. You can take note of the guards and their paths and stuff. In open world games the designers won't know how you are going to approach the scene so they can't make AI paths that work for you so the tagging mechanic is kind of required.

I like it. For the sake of Metal Gear being Metal Gear, I think it's a suitable replacement for the Soliton Radar. Forgetting about the franchise, I like that it encourages reconnaissance. I mean, of course one without this feature could perform their own reconnaissance, and get out a pad and pencil, and jot down enemy guard rotations, but that would take forever and wouldn't be especially fun. I like the way it's built into the game.

Also- I wouldn't really worry about realism in Metal Gear. Any aspect of it is about as realistic as Goku.

It's a replacement for the radar and necessary for the smarter AI than previous games. Try playing through the main mission on hard mode without tagging any enemies and see how long it takes you to do a no alert run, because even using tags that's still incredibly difficult.

I like tagging enemies quite a lot. I like it in Crysis, I like it in Far Cry, and I like it in Battlefield. I get a little ping of satisfaction when the game acknowledges that I spotted someone, a little reward for taking the time to scope out a situation. It doesn't bother me that it's totally unrealistic.

And really, realism and Metal Gear? There is some pretty goofy, magicky stuff in Metal Gear. This isn't ArmA.

It works really well in this game. I didn't find much use for it in Far Cry but it's necessary in Ground Zeroes, especially in the open world setting. There's no radar, so you don't magically know where people are. This game would be very difficult to get a perfect rating on without tagging, especially in the dark, in the rain.

I don't necessarily like the notion of "tag once, always visible" because it's a bit of a cheat and removes most tension found in a stealth game. Sure both Batman and Splinter Cell has the "I can see through walls" technology but they come with limitations. In Splinter Cell as an example you can only tag 3 enemies. Which means, you'll have to make a mental note of where the rest of the enemies might be. Can't speak for this game though.

@flacracker: They could still do predictable AI paths even if you could enter the area and exit it from a variety angles. The issue isn't so much AI not following patterns as much as things get exponentially more complex for the player to plan their route when they don't just have to remember what's in front of them, but on all sides as well. And keep all those lines of sight in memory at all time.

It's much more useful and interesting in GZ than in FC3 or Splinter Cell.

In FC enemies are cake. It's an action game. You not marking enemies than running into them later doesn't really change the game. The "cost of discovery" is nonexistant.

Splinter Cell Blacklist actually *gives you points* for killing, so, again, marking is convenient but running into an enemy is not the end of the world.

GZ is the first game where I feel it is imperative to mark enemies.

I've been trying to get the whole "Fastest Marking of all Enemies" record. And I got almost everyone except for the truck driver who actually leaves the map. It's an odd system in it's actual control, I have no idea how I mark on guy all the way across the heliport when I'm trying to mark 2 in front of him, but then I can't mark a guy with standing objects in front of him masking his legs but sometimes I can get them if they are holding the spotlight.... But it's rewarding, considering how the game plays. I still feel, getting spotted by that ONE GUY YOU MISSED is actually really clever way of changing the way you think. Or even just studying how they move, or seeing what direction they are facing just reminds me they have a vision cone without an actual visual representation.

We got that mechanic instead of a magic radar or enemies that can't see 10 feet in front of them. It's a great addition and, with the reflex mechanic, it turns the open world stealth into something highly enjoyable.