Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain puts Snake in charge of a zoo

This weekend’s Taipei Game Show has resulted in one of two new bits of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain information sneaking out into the world. All of this stuff was mentioned in interviews by Hideo Kojima, collected (and presumably translated) by Metal Gear Solid site JunkerHQ.net, then summarised on twitter.

Picking out the ‘headline’ from these snippets wasn’t all that easy, but most will hopefully agree that Snake having his own personal zoo is quite exciting. Basically, although you won’t be able to actually eat the animals which populate the game, you will be able to Fulton them all back to your base.

You can't eat animals like in Snake Eater, but you can Fulton them back to a zoo at your base, from where they can be of use to you.

— Junker HQ (@JunkerHQnet) February 2, 2015

That last part about the animals being “of use to you” sounds a little ominous, but maybe that’s just because I’m coming off playing Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, where bad things happen to sentient beings held behind bars.

Moving on to a couple of interesting stealth mechanics, it seems as if guards will take much-needed naps at night and can often be found sheltering from rain storms. Both of which give Snake opportunities for infiltration.

Kojima said a lot of enemies will go to sleep at night, so there are less guards to deal with, but of course it's harder to see in the dark.

— Junker HQ (@JunkerHQnet) February 2, 2015

Another example of how weather affects the game – enemies will sometimes take shelter from the rain, so this will affect infiltration routes

— Junker HQ (@JunkerHQnet) February 2, 2015

In addition to all of that, Kojima is apparently going to try to make Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain at least somewhat approachable to newcomers in terms of how the story is presented. That means flashbacks galore.

Kojima also said they're making TPP so that it's user-friendly for first-time players of the series, including having flashback scenes.

— Junker HQ (@JunkerHQnet) February 2, 2015

And finally, another mention and confirmation that Snake’s Mother Base will have an (optional) online component to it where other players can invade you while you’re out gathering more animals for your world-renowned zoo.

Mother Base can be enjoyed online or offline. If you're online, players might attack your base while you're on a mission, so it adds tension

— Junker HQ (@JunkerHQnet) February 2, 2015

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is coming to the PC in 2015, although we don’t know precisely when yet.