Metal Gear Solid V's Costume DLC Is Out, Bugged, Tacky
There's only room for one Snake and one Boss
Big Boss ordering a soldier into battle dressed as a sexy version of his ambiguous mentor/mother/lover figure who he himself killed is an unusual move even for a chap who abducts people with balloons, but this is Metal Gear. The curious MGS3-inspired DLC costumes for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain [official site] have arrived. They're outfits for male and female soldiers, Snake included, and showy getups for your horse, priced at £0.79 each or £3.99 for all seven. However, it seems some are bugged and don't work properly.
The seven outfits are Snake's combat fatigues, sneaking suit, and tuxedo from Snake Eater, Eva and The Boss's outfits, and 'parade' and 'western' tack for D-Horse. Here, look, they're all in this bundle on Steam. They cost 1,000-300,000 GMP in-game to develop, and most complete instantly. Except, at launch, some of them don't really work - the Boss and Snake's sneaking suits are meant to be, you know, sneaking suits, but they don't seem to muffle footsteps. No word from Konami about this yet.
Eva and The Boss's rags can be worn with their suits open or closed, with Konami noting that "The chest area can be unzipped for a tactical advantage". O-kay!
That's tacky garbage, but not a surprise. What's got my dander up is the weird tone-deafness of it. The Boss only unzips her sneaking suit at the climax of Snake Eater as she explains how she gave up her body and child for her country, revealing a snaking scar from a battlefield caesarean, and how she'll now give all she has left - her life. It's a powerful moment, and Snake wrestling with his guilt and frustration over then killing her sparks... everything else that happens in the Metal Gear games. But yeah, sure, you can now deploy to the battlefield as any female soldier with her suit unzipped to show off a fake scar.
Perhaps it's meant to be in tribute to a beloved character, but it comes off grody. Yeah, the "tactical advantage" is gross, but this is already a game where you can wear a cardboard box pasted with pictures of pin-up models and male soldiers will crowd around cooing so it's hardly without icky precedent.
In other Phantom Pain news, an update scheduled for November will add a Grade 8 tranquiliser pistol as an underbarrel attachment for other guns, a "Stealth Mode" for FOB invasions, and new security devices for FOBs.
