Crawling is the safest way of doing it, but it’s so unbelievably slow that they might just walk away from you or turn around before you reach them. If you want to sneak up behind someone to grab them and interrogate them, you need to be pretty careful. The latter isn’t particularly likely if the base is on any sort of alert, though. If you see the little white indicator that means someone’s about to spot you and there’s no cover nearby, consider dropping to the ground and either crawling away, or hoping they decide it was nothing. In fact, unless they stand on you, I’m pretty sure they won’t see you. If you’re reasonably camouflaged or are lying in foliage then you’re practically invisible at this point flashlights and searchlights shouldn’t pick up on you unless enemies already know you’re there, and enemies can walk to within a couple of metres of you without spotting you. You’re most hidden in “stealth mode”, activated by going prone, staying still, and pressing the Use key (default: E), causing Snake to press himself down further into the ground. Which of these you need to bear in mind at any given time is pretty key to remaining undetected. Generally speaking, you’re going to be detected in one of two ways: enemies are going to see you, or enemies are going to hear you. Mark as many people as possible so that you know where everyone is at any given time. You might spot an enemy through a doorway, or maybe you’ll see someone wandering along. Use your binoculars to mark every enemy you can, and then circle around a little way and look again.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s either played a stealth game or has a functioning brain, but I figure the basic stealth mechanics are worth mentioning, especially if you skipped Ground Zeroes.įirst up, make sure you recon a base before you actually go in. Important note: cardboard boxes do not make you invisible. What weapons does he have? Does he have body armour, or a helmet? All of these are pretty important to decision-making in terms of whether you should approach him, how you should approach him, and what you should do to take him down.Īlso, disabling Depth of Field doesn’t appear to impact the cutscenes any, so you won’t miss out on any of the focus-shifting gubbins when it dramatically pans across from Snake to someone else. It’s not hugely important early on, where you can just mark him and then look around elsewhere, but as the game progresses you can get an awful lot of information just by seeing a guard. Turn off Depth of Field and you can see everything in wonderful Clear-o-Vision.
You might be trying to get a look a soldier in a guard tower, but he’s totally blurred out because your binoculars are focusing on the railing instead. The reason for this is that you’re going to be doing a lot of looking at things from a distance, and the game occasionally has problems discerning what, exactly, you want to focus on. In Metal Gear Solid V, though, I strongly suggest you switch it off as soon as possible. First: turn off Depth of Field.ĭepth of Field is normally what I’d call a quality of life option – something that you may or may not like, but it’s unlikely to impact your gameplay experience any. This screenshot brought to you by the power of everything not being ridiculously fucking blurry.īefore you even start playing properly, there are two things you should know.
Basically: if you want to play the game completely blind, don’t read this.
There are a few spoilers of game mechanics (and at the very end I’ll tell you how to access a rather important easter egg, although I won’t reveal what it actually is), but if you’ve ever watched a trailer or read a preview of the game, I daresay you know those mechanics exist anyway. Aren’t I lovely?īefore we get started, I just want to say now that there are no story or plot spoilers within. And now I’m imparting that knowledge onto you. And now that I’ve finished this guide – and, indeed, the game – the hour count is over 70.Īs you might expect I’ve also learned quite a lot about how the game works, as well as a few bits and bobs I wish I’d known a lot sooner. Some of that was doubtless inflated by me Alt-Tabbing to do other stuff while leaving it open so that I can go back for just one more mission, but I’ve played it a lot. Our review isn’t up yet, but when I started writing this, I’d played Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain for about 30 hours.