Fieldnotes is a weekly column where I drop into a new (or old) game and report back with raw notes, sharp takes, unfiltered, and sometimes unhinged thoughts. This week, I continue my journey Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.
A lot has happened in the past week. DD’s all grown up. Ocelot, too, is all grown up as we see him coaching the Diamond Dogs back at Mother Base and telling the recruits that engravings provide no tactical advantage whatsoever. And I finally recruited Quiet, one of the most popular characters in Metal Gear canon, and also one of the most controversial.
Big picture: I’m still very much enjoying my time in MGS V. I’m constantly reminded of how impressive this entire game is. For a 10 year old game, The Phantom Pain is remarkably well-optimized even if you have a lower specs PC. My build is still somewhat respectable, though the 1080Ti is certainly starting to show its age. But when I looked up the specs before downloading the game, I was blown away by how low the requirements were. This is black magic. Anyway, on with the show.
Peak Ocelot
Snake isn’t the only character who’s less cartoonish this time around. Ocelot also feels more like an actual human being. Whereas he was often reduced to a silly old man who does gun twirls in previous games, including in Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, here he’s much more grounded.
Voiced by Troy Baker, Ocelot is way more mature and you can see why Snake trusts him so much. He’s in charge of training all the recruits and he’s even seen imparting lessons that he’s learned from Snake in the past. In a cutscene that plays when you go back to Mother Base, he’s seen training the recruits and giving notes on their shooting. One guy in particular is doing that same clip jam thing Ocelot did with his automatic back in Snake Eater, and the gun jams.
Ocelot takes the gun, tells him this is more of a revolver tactic, then notices the fancy engravings on the barrel of the gun. “Engravings… give you no tactical advantage whatsoever,” Ocelot says before returning the gun to the recruit. “But that was some fancy shooting. You’re pretty good.” That’s word for word what Snake said to Ocelot the first time they meet in the Soviet Union. Call it cheesy, but I loved the callback. MGS V already feels foreign enough as it is with the big tonal shift and voice actor changes, so I appreciated the game acknowledging its roots a little bit.
DD Becomes a Buddy
I went ahead and rushed through the next few main missions so I could finally get DD as a buddy and it was so worth it. DD has an eyepatch now, he’s huge, and I wasted no time in developing a new sneaking suit for him. Just look at him. He has a knife and a little cap and everything.
DD is one of the best buddies in MGS V because the guards don’t pay him any mind, he marks enemies for you, and he can stealth kill them on command. Quiet will likely dethrone him later on, but for now DD is king.
I’m also a big fan of DD in the chopper. Here’s DD getting in some naptime after a mission.
Here’s DD riding shotgun on the chopper on our way back from the Quiet recruitment mission.
DD is the absolute best. I also love that there are photographs plastered in the chopper that are basically cutscene stills from the game. So there’s the scene of Snake carrying Kaz back to Mother Base as they get off the chopper, and also that cool slo-mo shot of Snake and DD getting on the chopper together for the first time.
And I’m like, who the hell is taking these pictures? That’s so inappropriate!
What Is the Point of Killing Quiet in MGS V?
After I exhausted all the main missions I could do for the time being, it was time to take on a Side Op that required me to rescue Huey Emmerich, who’s currently working for XOF. On my way to the mission, though, I had to pass by some ruins that were being guarded by the mysterious sniper Quiet. This kicks off a surprise main mission titled Cloaked in Silence, where you have to fight Quiet in an epic sniper battle.
I really liked how MGS V would constantly surprise you this way. Here you are, just minding your own damn business, driving to your next mission, and boom, random main mission that catches you by surprise.
My first time fighting Quiet, I shot her with the tranquilizer gun, which took an obscene amount of time. My strategy was crude but effective. I’d expose myself, forcing Quiet to take a shot so I could locate her. Then I’d mark her, and attempt to crawl over and take some shots at her with the tranq gun. It took forever.
This time, however, I decided to go with the infamous supply drop method. You see, MGS V allows you to call for supply drops from Mother Base when you’re on a mission. If you’re out of ammo or you need to switch out your weapons in a hurry, you could call for a Fulton balloon to deliver supplies to any location you mark on the map, Hunger Games style.
If you want to speed up the Quiet battle, you can mark her with the binoculars, then call a supply drop on her location. If done right, the supplies will fall on her, dealing a massive amount of stamina damage. It takes three supply drops to defeat her this way, which is a hell of a lot faster than the honorable way, so I did that. I love that this is still in the game.
After defeating her, Snake points a gun at her and you have the choice to either kill her or bring her back to Mother Base. This, in my view, is a silly choice because there’s absolutely no point in killing her. By killing Quiet, you’d be robbing yourself of a fantastic buddy, not to mention the fact that the story is severely weakened without her in it. She plays a very crucial role in one of the later missions and if she’s dead, you just straight up miss out on all that extra content.
It’s interesting that MGS V decided to give players this choice because there’s literally no upside to killing her. I guess the game just assumed everyone would keep her alive?
And yet, if you think about it for just a minute, why wouldn’t Snake kill her? After all, she was the XOF soldier sent to assassinate him in the hospital at the start of the game. If I were Snake and I encountered her again, I’d kill her immediately, no questions asked. Kaz and Ocelot fight over the radio too, with Kaz insisting that you can’t trust her. And you know what? He’s right.
Quiet is an unknown entity. She has cool phasing abilities that allow her to slip out of her handcuffs, and she’s just too much of a threat. She could destroy Mother Base on her own if she wanted to. Why would Snake ever take that risk, especially after how we lost our first Mother Base?
Reasons to kill Quiet? She can’t be trusted. She’s too dangerous. It would make Kaz happy.
Reasons to spare Quiet? She’s a hottie.
So naturally, I spared her. And I also didn’t want to miss out on story content as I continued the game. Still, weird design decision here that I’m not entirely a fan of. For now, Quiet’s in the brig and I’m continuing my mission to save Huey. I’ll likely continue to rush through the next few main missions to unlock Quiet as a buddy and we’ll revisit that topic.
