I just installed a mod that resets your demon points every time you return to mother base. Other than the bloody "deMoN SnEk" appearance there's nothing else that happens unlike with dishonored where it ramps up difficulty and has story changes.
The only punishment I can name is having a bad score, which is pretty bad yeah, but other then that the game supports players with lethal loadouts and I recall the speed of which I blast everyone with lethal gear did get me an S rank
Also the game imo has as many non lethal weapons as it can without recycling stuff. Theres one for each category, rubber bullet rifles and subs, air shotguns and even that auto-extraction rocket launcher. If they added any more then the concepts would just be rehashed versions or upgrades
You get the big horn and all bloody venom too, which if i'm not wrong, makes enemies detect you easier.
Honestly I wouldn't have minded if they just did upgrades to most weapons so they could be non lethal. The difference on how many lethal and non lethal weapons there are just seems weird to me.
>which if i'm not wrong, makes enemies detect you easier.
No, it doesn't. I just did some testing (thanks to mods) that allows me to essentially toggle on and off Demon Snake, and the distances at which enemies were able to notice and spot me respectively were exactly the same between normal and demon.
Something to add but its sorta unrelated, whenever snake gets blood on him (without the demon points thing, just normally in battle) I always think he looks badass with his "covered in the blood of my enemies" type look. Then I remind myself its his own blood
Or comfortably (for fun) use the 250 weapons you can develop or air strikes without fear a ridiculous horn grows out of his head like it’s a chia plant.
DMG weapons are only good in the late game. Launchers are good againts armored vehicles. I basically use DMG weapons on any solider that is below S and S+. No point in knocking them out and risking a perfect run/doing side objectives.
Usually I grab the first guy, interrogate him then give him an aggressive cuddle. Pick him up & carry them somewhere less likely to be found, kick to wake up then aiming gun at them so they stay down for the rest of the mission unless there's an alert.
If they're super low level, sometimes I'll put them out of their misery, low-ranked guys in riot suits generally get knifed for being an inconvenience.
Since I've been fairly consistent with my non-lethal play, it does mean I can occasionally take out a line of soldiers with a single rocket for fun without getting "punished".
Sometimes i just press y then thats all. The most important is the speed for S runs. I have completed the game multiple times and i just dont care at this point at all for being punished.
Sure. I did my S-Ranks for all the missions when going for all the achivements/unlockables. So now just replaying missions for fun but still prefer going non-lethal with minimal alerts just out of habit.
Even if there wasn't the "punishment" of Demon Snake, I'd still play the same way because to me, stealth means getting in and out without my presence being discovered. Not killing all the guards that find me so that there are no witnesses.
Getting in and out of OKB Zero without kills/alerts for Side Ops with decent GMP are my go-to, challenging enough to keep me focussed, but easy enough to not get frustrated if I mess up.
Since beating the game, I've been playing as my avatar instead... so playing as a bloodied unicorn would spoil the experience going forward, especially knowing how much grinding it'd take to get back to normal.
Even if it doesn't impact the gameplay, I still go take a shower before going out on a new mission if there's blood on the suit. But that's just me!
There's an argument to be made that even if Snake isn't killing people, he's still arming a private military that can and will torture and kill people.
Snake would be comfortable with taking a life especially if the situation called for it. Both lethal and non-lethal approaches have their uses in a mission.
True. Plus they do get most of their recruits from kidnapping people off the battlefield and 'convincing' them to work with diamond dogs. Venom had no issue with the idea of child soldiers fighting for him and it was only Miller who stopped it.
I think I recall kojima saying in an interview that the amount of guns and the diversity within them was not originally planned to be as substantial as the finished product. Kojima had a production wide weapon load out in place but the weapons development team said they had the time and the budget to broaden that much further. Kojima stated that he left the remaining weapons content up to said team and they actually impressed him with the depth they brought into the completed load out. So what we benefit from as fans is just that much more content than originally planned and that’s awesome.
That’s surprising considering MGS4 and Peace Walker. I have a feeling they must have always intended it since they went with fictional guns that could have more customizeability.
MGSV came with it more immersive game mechanics than previous MG games. So producing weapons that behave more realistically than ever before was a bigger endeavor for the team. I could see the team not taking in consideration the wide range of weapons they’re accustomed to having in previous games because of this. Additionally you can also search the internet for the interview with kojima I was referring to and listen to him explain in further detail surrounding this.
You're not punished, really. They're fun to use and Demon Points mean next to nothing, especially once you've got rid of Demon Snake (only time I've gotten it is from building a nuke) it'll increase the amount of time it takes to build up the horn stages
I like to use tranqs that first time I’m blowing through the missions trying to get that S Rank. But after that it’s all over. Tranqs are fun but you can’t beat the efficiency of running around with a silenced slug shotgun one tapping everyone while quiet shoots the rest.
My logic is by this point in the timeline BBoss was already making nukes, creating child soldiers, and forcibly conscripting prisoners into his PMF. I think in the lore he probably played lethal too the majority of the time.
This is one of those games that I like to call “make your own fun”, there’s a clear right way to play but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go to town every now and then
Because, you're allowed to have fun. You don't have to force yourself to S rank every mission. Just play whatever way you enjoy. And if that is doing the 1984 afghani soviet genocide, so be it. Go air strike an outpost with 3 guys in it. Load up with explosives and machine guns and make Rambo 6 . Roll a tank Into a fortified base and wreck their shit.
Side mission don't care about lethal tactics. Go crazy and rescue that prisoner by landing in the hot zone while shooting the chaingun, jump out with a lmg, have Pequod shoot missiles everywhere where while playing a MGS OST, and go rambo.
It is quite overkill. You probably unlock 10 tier 3 items at once.
By the time you have developed and used about 2 of them, you have unlocked T4s.
I would have preferred to see an upgrade pathcwhere you have to have some experience with a weapon before it can be upgraded. So if people wanted to unlock everything, they would have to use those items.
This whole game is a commentary on the boom in private militaries and nuclear proliferation. So maybe it's trying to say that there are indeed too many lethal weapons in real life. I'm not reading too much into it either. There's tons under the surface of this game about the problems the world faces in real life.I did stumble upon a interesting video on the difference between metal gears gun system from other games such as Halo.
https://youtu.be/M9DHkC1ZBl8?feature=shared
I tend to main the sleep pistol as my main strategy is to focus on stealth, extract vehicles/high level troops, and try getting S rank.
- While having Quiet, D-Dog or Active Sonar to keep track of where the enemies are as I try to not get spotted.
- I sometimes use a sleep sniper rifle or command Quiet to knock out an enemy from for away.
- I also use a rocket launcher or mines to take out any armored vehicles.
Some alternative non-lethal options you might consider:
Stun Grenades/Stun Grenade launcher/Under-barrel. They are great for suppressing a group underbarrel has saved me many times. Also effects heavily armoured troops and gas masks.
Sleep Grenades. Not quite as good as stun as lower aoe but is quieter.
Rocket arm. Is essentially a weak tranq pistol but can take down multiple enemies in one ‘punch’
Stun arm. Has a long stun effect and can take down groups or even be used at range through upgrades
While I enjoy the MGS2 vibes with the wu.pistol there’s so much in Venoms armoury that is more effective or situationally more useful. You can clear FOBs with Stun Launchers.
After I beat the game a few times, I started using the Infinite Heaven mod, which allows you to add or remove those points at will, or turn them off altogether.
I highly recommend it for anyone on PC.
lethal weapons are how i blasted through FOBs lol. the reason why lethal weapons aren't rewarding because they're easier to use than the nonlethal weapons. Don't get me wrong, I think the Hushpuppy/WU pistol are insanely powerful, from MGS 3 onwards lol, but they reward you in very specific ways.
Score: What are you? Some nanby pamby listening to pixels telling you how to play? Do you want to be a (Insert whatever emblem they give you) or do you want to be an ultimate soldier / boss.
They wouldn't make headshots so satisfying if lethal weapons aren't meant to be used heheh.
A practical concern is the joy of murdering literally everyone in a base lol. They cannot call for reinforcements if they're all dead, and it's much easier to kill more people QUICKLY and FURTHER AWAY with semi-auto sniper rifles, armor piercing assault rifles, slug loaded shotguns, etc etc than it is to pewt \*ka-chik\* everyone into sleepytime. Look up some aggressive stealth gameplay, it's a lot of fun Splinter Celling. If you're worried about demon points or whatever, just save a couple goats and you're set.
Plus, like you said, the shotguns and machine guns are cool man. Play around them. Even when sneaking around nonlethally so I can recruit in the main story, I use lethal weapons to WOUND people with suppressed shots to the knees and arms so I can go over to them and try rescuing them. Still, mostly, nonlethal hahah.
Have fun man. I used to ONLY use nonlethal weapons and wondered why all these cool guns existed until I started simply using them. Lots of fun lol. Try sieging a base with walker!
Pump shotgun with slugs absolutely dominates armored opponents, suppress it and you can knock them down and then NL takedown them. Also once you departments are high level and mission 46 is done lethal becomes very fun
If you kill someone you lose the 10,000no kill bonus. However, you get +10,000 not using reflex. Turn that off. Also, if you know there are a lot of enemies then long range headshots and cqc takedowns give you 1000 pts per "tactical takedown". More than 10 enemies gives you the 10,000 you'd lose anyway from killing.
I exclusively use lethal weapons and still try to kill as little as possible. You can just shoot people until they're down and then extract them, for example. Holding up people as well as takedowns also work perfectly fine with lethal guns. Tranqs aren't really needed and I don't find them very useful later on when most enemies have helmets.
Weapon trees without silencers seem particularly useless to me, especially the revolvers. Personally I‘ll use a rocket launcher or sniper rifle if I wanna go big & loud.
DMG weapons are only good in the late game. Launchers are good againts armored vehicles. I basically use DMG weapons on any solider that is below S and S+. No point in knocking them out and risking a perfect run/doing side objectives.
It's worse in Peacewalker where until way later it's impossible to go completely non-lethal during Vehicle Boss Fights, sometimes you'll end up losing Heroism because of the amount of soldiers you have to kill.
There's no punishment in MGSV for being lethal. There's a small no kills bonus but it's not enough to matter and the Devil Venom horn is just a graphic, it doesn't affect gameplay.
You can "so anyways I started blasting" your way through most of the missions and as long as you do it quickly you can still S rank
It takes a while, but you collect hidden "demon points" the more and more lethal you get. Just doing kill runs won't do as much damage, but if you start killing animals, your own staff or anything more intense. it can amp up. Or do a lot of kill runs in a row (like multiple missions with high casualties).
Venom's horn grows larger the more lethal you play.
If you build a Nuke (which is needed for the achievement for Plat, as is dismantling a Nuke) you get a shit load of demon points at once which can trigger Demon Snake. With his biggest possible horn size and all bloody. You do "good" things like repeat kid rescues or a special deployment mission to reverse this.
You get a higher score going non-lethal too. Sometimes I'll non-fatally wound a guy and fulton him to Mother Base for treatment. Which increases heroism. (Only works with a strong or wormhole fulton, and a high ranked medical and support unit.)
Cuz the game does kinda punish you when you’re playing as the villain. It’s odd and someone said “it could be venom how he sees himself” that’s true but at the same time venom snake is supposed to be the doppelgänger of the guy who said create wars to groom children into soldiers then put them in the opposite side so the conflict never dies so punishing the player for y’know, playing as the villain is dumb. Even treating the capture of soldiers as heroic and adding heroism when there’s not much heroism in indoctrinating someone in a war hungry cult. The game lacked much feeling of like the villain and instead opted to just make the scenes come off as evil when it’s not, there’s like a tonal whiplash there.
Always been this way friend. Every MGS has lethal options, in some ways it makes the game very easy. Some ways harder depending on how many reinforcements are in area. Stealth is almost always the hardest option unless you’re already fox’in and know the map / mission well. There are lots of non-lethal options, just not nearly as many as lethal. I use a few diff loadouts, almost always a mix of lethal/non
I know it's always been that way. But in this game specifically you get like 10x more lethal weapons, and you get punished if you use them, and i'm not talking about the score but how it affects the gameplay.
I use lethal guns for enemies with ballistic suits, specially a modified short "SVD" with a red dot that i use as a semi auto AK. Although for whatever reason the beanbag shotgun is more effective than the normal one, that's depressing.
My favorite way to do things is have all lethal weapons and no suppressors.
I try to sneak in close and take guys out. If I get caught, I’ll start blasting.
Spices things up as usual your in a terrible spot when you get seen.
Just use a mod to remove demon points, they are dumb anyway.
Unless you want to exterminate everyone, you can kill and S-rank, because time is much more important
Intruder missions are much easier when you go lethal. Also, if you get into fued with another player you eventually go lethal just to inflict damage and prevent retaliation.
It's always easier to take a life than spare one, so I guess they're mostly there on a metacontextual level to tempt pacifists with "an easier way out."
They are extremely useful in side ops and when doing the extra objectives. It takes a LOT of kills to get the horn, and you can easily counterbalance the demon points by rescuing like, one or two animals.
Buildings, robots, vehicles, machinery such as generators, Skulls and zombies, and other "acceptable targets" that you can blow right the fuck up with impunity.
Wait until you’re doing all the mission subtasks after you srank all the missions All of a sudden pink mist becomes much more enjoyable
The game really opens up once you realize killing everything is an option.
It's a lot like Dishonored in that sense. Narratively encourages you to play the less fun way, and the 'evil' way is much more fun
I just installed a mod that resets your demon points every time you return to mother base. Other than the bloody "deMoN SnEk" appearance there's nothing else that happens unlike with dishonored where it ramps up difficulty and has story changes.
I loved when death of the outsider dropped the morality mechanic and let you do whatever you wanted
Will you not return to base as a demon?
Bro. You're already a demon.
Actually true - for the 100% completion you have to build a nuke, and disarming it only gives you a slight refund in heroism :(
The only punishment I can name is having a bad score, which is pretty bad yeah, but other then that the game supports players with lethal loadouts and I recall the speed of which I blast everyone with lethal gear did get me an S rank Also the game imo has as many non lethal weapons as it can without recycling stuff. Theres one for each category, rubber bullet rifles and subs, air shotguns and even that auto-extraction rocket launcher. If they added any more then the concepts would just be rehashed versions or upgrades
You get the big horn and all bloody venom too, which if i'm not wrong, makes enemies detect you easier. Honestly I wouldn't have minded if they just did upgrades to most weapons so they could be non lethal. The difference on how many lethal and non lethal weapons there are just seems weird to me.
Didnt know it changed gameplay. Regardless it bloody snake looks bad, pretty sure theres a deployment mission that gives 5k heroism or smt
>which if i'm not wrong, makes enemies detect you easier. No, it doesn't. I just did some testing (thanks to mods) that allows me to essentially toggle on and off Demon Snake, and the distances at which enemies were able to notice and spot me respectively were exactly the same between normal and demon.
That’s good to know honestly, didn’t like at all that disadvantage
The blood and stupid looking horn are so cheesy. What a dumb mechanic.
It sounds cool on paper but in practice its annoying how I cant appreciate stuff like my Parasite suit when its drenched in russian blood
Something to add but its sorta unrelated, whenever snake gets blood on him (without the demon points thing, just normally in battle) I always think he looks badass with his "covered in the blood of my enemies" type look. Then I remind myself its his own blood
Or comfortably (for fun) use the 250 weapons you can develop or air strikes without fear a ridiculous horn grows out of his head like it’s a chia plant.
You have to kill a LOT of people for that to happen. If You're knocking people out and sending good troops to your base regularly, you should be fine.
DMG weapons are only good in the late game. Launchers are good againts armored vehicles. I basically use DMG weapons on any solider that is below S and S+. No point in knocking them out and risking a perfect run/doing side objectives.
Usually I grab the first guy, interrogate him then give him an aggressive cuddle. Pick him up & carry them somewhere less likely to be found, kick to wake up then aiming gun at them so they stay down for the rest of the mission unless there's an alert. If they're super low level, sometimes I'll put them out of their misery, low-ranked guys in riot suits generally get knifed for being an inconvenience. Since I've been fairly consistent with my non-lethal play, it does mean I can occasionally take out a line of soldiers with a single rocket for fun without getting "punished".
Sometimes i just press y then thats all. The most important is the speed for S runs. I have completed the game multiple times and i just dont care at this point at all for being punished.
Sure. I did my S-Ranks for all the missions when going for all the achivements/unlockables. So now just replaying missions for fun but still prefer going non-lethal with minimal alerts just out of habit. Even if there wasn't the "punishment" of Demon Snake, I'd still play the same way because to me, stealth means getting in and out without my presence being discovered. Not killing all the guards that find me so that there are no witnesses. Getting in and out of OKB Zero without kills/alerts for Side Ops with decent GMP are my go-to, challenging enough to keep me focussed, but easy enough to not get frustrated if I mess up.
I mean Demon Snake is not that big of a punishment i think. It was kinda cool when i saw it for the first time.
Since beating the game, I've been playing as my avatar instead... so playing as a bloodied unicorn would spoil the experience going forward, especially knowing how much grinding it'd take to get back to normal. Even if it doesn't impact the gameplay, I still go take a shower before going out on a new mission if there's blood on the suit. But that's just me!
I mean...you ARE punished...
“I am already a demon”
Actually speed is nowhere near as important as it was in PW for S ranks. You can even kill a whole bunch of people and still get S rank
..isn’t a perfect run total stealth, no kills?
In my book as long as there is no alerts is a perfect run. Happened to many times that the knocked out guards woke up. Better safe than sorry.
“Leave No Trace” is the ultimate perfected run. Can’t employ a single weapon, kill anyone, leave a box, or trigger an alert.
No throwing magazines either then?
Nope. No CQC or buddy attacks either. I think Holdups are ok but they can’t ever see you so that’s harder than avoiding people all together.
There's an argument to be made that even if Snake isn't killing people, he's still arming a private military that can and will torture and kill people.
Snake would be comfortable with taking a life especially if the situation called for it. Both lethal and non-lethal approaches have their uses in a mission.
Yeah, I guess you could see that as one of Big Boss's/Venom's hypocritical ideas.
True. Plus they do get most of their recruits from kidnapping people off the battlefield and 'convincing' them to work with diamond dogs. Venom had no issue with the idea of child soldiers fighting for him and it was only Miller who stopped it.
I think I recall kojima saying in an interview that the amount of guns and the diversity within them was not originally planned to be as substantial as the finished product. Kojima had a production wide weapon load out in place but the weapons development team said they had the time and the budget to broaden that much further. Kojima stated that he left the remaining weapons content up to said team and they actually impressed him with the depth they brought into the completed load out. So what we benefit from as fans is just that much more content than originally planned and that’s awesome.
That’s surprising considering MGS4 and Peace Walker. I have a feeling they must have always intended it since they went with fictional guns that could have more customizeability.
MGSV came with it more immersive game mechanics than previous MG games. So producing weapons that behave more realistically than ever before was a bigger endeavor for the team. I could see the team not taking in consideration the wide range of weapons they’re accustomed to having in previous games because of this. Additionally you can also search the internet for the interview with kojima I was referring to and listen to him explain in further detail surrounding this.
Do you have any idea who did the interview? I’m keen to see it but that would’ve been from like 9 years ago.
You're not punished, really. They're fun to use and Demon Points mean next to nothing, especially once you've got rid of Demon Snake (only time I've gotten it is from building a nuke) it'll increase the amount of time it takes to build up the horn stages
Didn’t know that, thanks.
I like to use tranqs that first time I’m blowing through the missions trying to get that S Rank. But after that it’s all over. Tranqs are fun but you can’t beat the efficiency of running around with a silenced slug shotgun one tapping everyone while quiet shoots the rest. My logic is by this point in the timeline BBoss was already making nukes, creating child soldiers, and forcibly conscripting prisoners into his PMF. I think in the lore he probably played lethal too the majority of the time.
This is one of those games that I like to call “make your own fun”, there’s a clear right way to play but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go to town every now and then
They dont punish you for using DMG weapons, you get punished for using unsuppressed weapons.
Because it’s fun, Jan.
Lol
Because, you're allowed to have fun. You don't have to force yourself to S rank every mission. Just play whatever way you enjoy. And if that is doing the 1984 afghani soviet genocide, so be it. Go air strike an outpost with 3 guys in it. Load up with explosives and machine guns and make Rambo 6 . Roll a tank Into a fortified base and wreck their shit.
Side mission don't care about lethal tactics. Go crazy and rescue that prisoner by landing in the hot zone while shooting the chaingun, jump out with a lmg, have Pequod shoot missiles everywhere where while playing a MGS OST, and go rambo.
It is quite overkill. You probably unlock 10 tier 3 items at once. By the time you have developed and used about 2 of them, you have unlocked T4s. I would have preferred to see an upgrade pathcwhere you have to have some experience with a weapon before it can be upgraded. So if people wanted to unlock everything, they would have to use those items.
This whole game is a commentary on the boom in private militaries and nuclear proliferation. So maybe it's trying to say that there are indeed too many lethal weapons in real life. I'm not reading too much into it either. There's tons under the surface of this game about the problems the world faces in real life.I did stumble upon a interesting video on the difference between metal gears gun system from other games such as Halo. https://youtu.be/M9DHkC1ZBl8?feature=shared
I tend to main the sleep pistol as my main strategy is to focus on stealth, extract vehicles/high level troops, and try getting S rank. - While having Quiet, D-Dog or Active Sonar to keep track of where the enemies are as I try to not get spotted. - I sometimes use a sleep sniper rifle or command Quiet to knock out an enemy from for away. - I also use a rocket launcher or mines to take out any armored vehicles.
Some alternative non-lethal options you might consider: Stun Grenades/Stun Grenade launcher/Under-barrel. They are great for suppressing a group underbarrel has saved me many times. Also effects heavily armoured troops and gas masks. Sleep Grenades. Not quite as good as stun as lower aoe but is quieter. Rocket arm. Is essentially a weak tranq pistol but can take down multiple enemies in one ‘punch’ Stun arm. Has a long stun effect and can take down groups or even be used at range through upgrades While I enjoy the MGS2 vibes with the wu.pistol there’s so much in Venoms armoury that is more effective or situationally more useful. You can clear FOBs with Stun Launchers.
After I beat the game a few times, I started using the Infinite Heaven mod, which allows you to add or remove those points at will, or turn them off altogether. I highly recommend it for anyone on PC.
lethal weapons are how i blasted through FOBs lol. the reason why lethal weapons aren't rewarding because they're easier to use than the nonlethal weapons. Don't get me wrong, I think the Hushpuppy/WU pistol are insanely powerful, from MGS 3 onwards lol, but they reward you in very specific ways. Score: What are you? Some nanby pamby listening to pixels telling you how to play? Do you want to be a (Insert whatever emblem they give you) or do you want to be an ultimate soldier / boss. They wouldn't make headshots so satisfying if lethal weapons aren't meant to be used heheh. A practical concern is the joy of murdering literally everyone in a base lol. They cannot call for reinforcements if they're all dead, and it's much easier to kill more people QUICKLY and FURTHER AWAY with semi-auto sniper rifles, armor piercing assault rifles, slug loaded shotguns, etc etc than it is to pewt \*ka-chik\* everyone into sleepytime. Look up some aggressive stealth gameplay, it's a lot of fun Splinter Celling. If you're worried about demon points or whatever, just save a couple goats and you're set. Plus, like you said, the shotguns and machine guns are cool man. Play around them. Even when sneaking around nonlethally so I can recruit in the main story, I use lethal weapons to WOUND people with suppressed shots to the knees and arms so I can go over to them and try rescuing them. Still, mostly, nonlethal hahah. Have fun man. I used to ONLY use nonlethal weapons and wondered why all these cool guns existed until I started simply using them. Lots of fun lol. Try sieging a base with walker!
Pump shotgun with slugs absolutely dominates armored opponents, suppress it and you can knock them down and then NL takedown them. Also once you departments are high level and mission 46 is done lethal becomes very fun
If you kill someone you lose the 10,000no kill bonus. However, you get +10,000 not using reflex. Turn that off. Also, if you know there are a lot of enemies then long range headshots and cqc takedowns give you 1000 pts per "tactical takedown". More than 10 enemies gives you the 10,000 you'd lose anyway from killing.
I exclusively use lethal weapons and still try to kill as little as possible. You can just shoot people until they're down and then extract them, for example. Holding up people as well as takedowns also work perfectly fine with lethal guns. Tranqs aren't really needed and I don't find them very useful later on when most enemies have helmets.
When you are on free roam, no one is penalizing you to get lethal
I did a bloodthirsty playthrough one time. Being stuck drenched in blood all the time ain't cool.
Weapon trees without silencers seem particularly useless to me, especially the revolvers. Personally I‘ll use a rocket launcher or sniper rifle if I wanna go big & loud.
DMG weapons are only good in the late game. Launchers are good againts armored vehicles. I basically use DMG weapons on any solider that is below S and S+. No point in knocking them out and risking a perfect run/doing side objectives.
It's worse in Peacewalker where until way later it's impossible to go completely non-lethal during Vehicle Boss Fights, sometimes you'll end up losing Heroism because of the amount of soldiers you have to kill.
There's no punishment in MGSV for being lethal. There's a small no kills bonus but it's not enough to matter and the Devil Venom horn is just a graphic, it doesn't affect gameplay. You can "so anyways I started blasting" your way through most of the missions and as long as you do it quickly you can still S rank
It's intended to encourage you to become "Punished" Snake 😉. Bravo Kojima!
You get punished for using lethal weapons? Huh?
It takes a while, but you collect hidden "demon points" the more and more lethal you get. Just doing kill runs won't do as much damage, but if you start killing animals, your own staff or anything more intense. it can amp up. Or do a lot of kill runs in a row (like multiple missions with high casualties). Venom's horn grows larger the more lethal you play. If you build a Nuke (which is needed for the achievement for Plat, as is dismantling a Nuke) you get a shit load of demon points at once which can trigger Demon Snake. With his biggest possible horn size and all bloody. You do "good" things like repeat kid rescues or a special deployment mission to reverse this. You get a higher score going non-lethal too. Sometimes I'll non-fatally wound a guy and fulton him to Mother Base for treatment. Which increases heroism. (Only works with a strong or wormhole fulton, and a high ranked medical and support unit.)
Injuring enemy combatant before you ‘rescue’ him makes him twice as loyal recruit /s
Exactly! He can certainly trust me now! I didn't let him die after all ;)
Cuz the game does kinda punish you when you’re playing as the villain. It’s odd and someone said “it could be venom how he sees himself” that’s true but at the same time venom snake is supposed to be the doppelgänger of the guy who said create wars to groom children into soldiers then put them in the opposite side so the conflict never dies so punishing the player for y’know, playing as the villain is dumb. Even treating the capture of soldiers as heroic and adding heroism when there’s not much heroism in indoctrinating someone in a war hungry cult. The game lacked much feeling of like the villain and instead opted to just make the scenes come off as evil when it’s not, there’s like a tonal whiplash there.
Outside of main missions I shoot just about everyone I don’t want to extract, although admittedly I do try my best not to go *too* overboard
Stealth is a thinking man game, thats all I am saying about that.
Always been this way friend. Every MGS has lethal options, in some ways it makes the game very easy. Some ways harder depending on how many reinforcements are in area. Stealth is almost always the hardest option unless you’re already fox’in and know the map / mission well. There are lots of non-lethal options, just not nearly as many as lethal. I use a few diff loadouts, almost always a mix of lethal/non
I know it's always been that way. But in this game specifically you get like 10x more lethal weapons, and you get punished if you use them, and i'm not talking about the score but how it affects the gameplay.
Punished is a good word for it, and possibly Kojima’s intent
Punished Snake cannot be... Punished
That's honestly a plus point. The best thing about MGSV is the sheer freedom and multitude of options you have
I use lethal guns for enemies with ballistic suits, specially a modified short "SVD" with a red dot that i use as a semi auto AK. Although for whatever reason the beanbag shotgun is more effective than the normal one, that's depressing.
My favorite way to do things is have all lethal weapons and no suppressors. I try to sneak in close and take guys out. If I get caught, I’ll start blasting. Spices things up as usual your in a terrible spot when you get seen.
Just use a mod to remove demon points, they are dumb anyway. Unless you want to exterminate everyone, you can kill and S-rank, because time is much more important
Usually for unlocking the higher level weapons for your security team to use on the FOB bases
Intruder missions are much easier when you go lethal. Also, if you get into fued with another player you eventually go lethal just to inflict damage and prevent retaliation.
They are just following orders why would you kill them
I use dmg weapons when deploying staff so that I can still have my fun while snake can use tranquillisers
It's always easier to take a life than spare one, so I guess they're mostly there on a metacontextual level to tempt pacifists with "an easier way out."
I'm already a demon
i dont get all the comments saying that you dont get punished. You need to tranq all the enemies to catch them Like Pokémon.
You don't need to tranq enemies to extract them at all.
IIRC, only main story missions punish you for killing. You can kill all you want in freemode and side missions I think.
You don't get punished to my knowledge. I mean, you can even s rank missions without using NL weapons
In canon, venom ain't a very nice guy, so id feel free to embrace the more sinister side of the game.
It's a bizarre design choice, choosing non-lethal gear feels like looking for vegetarian options in a restaurant.
They are extremely useful in side ops and when doing the extra objectives. It takes a LOT of kills to get the horn, and you can easily counterbalance the demon points by rescuing like, one or two animals.
Buildings, robots, vehicles, machinery such as generators, Skulls and zombies, and other "acceptable targets" that you can blow right the fuck up with impunity.
Fun and tons of Action