What Phantom Pain teaches us about player choice

Let's make one thing clear right off the bat- I'm not going to review the Phantom Pain.

By now, the internet is full of reviews that echo the same sentiments of which I completely agree with: PP is a masterpiece, its mother base system is incredibly addictive and it was directed and written by Hideo Kojima.

Instead, I want to put words to some thoughts I had recently in regards to PP.

Just last weekend, I finished "A quiet exit" (an infuriating exercise if you haven't reached it yet) and "The man who sold the world."

What this means is, I finished every mission sans the extreme, subsistence and total stealth variants.

In terms of side ops, I completed a little less than half of them. I built most of my mother base platforms up to the low 30s.

Just under 55 hours into PP, it finally dawned on me what makes the game such a special outing- player choice.

My good buddy and "podcast" colleague, Malik Rahili and I talk about it all the time, but player choice can mean a lot of things. It can mean static dialogue options, decisions on which outfit to have your character don or which car to drive through the streets of a fictitious city.

The player choice in PP, however, is what is in my opinion, the greatest version- choice in how to complete your objectives.

I bought the special edition PP strategy guide while I was at the midnight release nearly a month ago.
I referred to it a few times, obtaining advice on which drop point to use and which buddy might be the most logical choice.

What I quickly found out is that there are a myriad of ways to complete missions in PP- which we heard all about going in, but once you see it in action, it's something spectacular.

After my 54th hour with PP, I load up one of the game's early missions. My goal? Assassinate a high-value military target in a base and leave the hot zone.

That's it.

There's no stealth requirement. No weapon limitations. Assassinate the target and get the hell out of dodge.

Remembering back to my first hours with the game, I remember stumbling through this mission- sneaking in while prone, alerting some guards and after a few failed attempts, finally subduing my target and making my escape with him on my back while the entire base opened fire, narrowly missing us as we bolted for extraction.

I had no decent sniper rifle, no fultons and most importantly, no D-dog.

Going back to see what my new toys could do for this mission, I drop in, approach the base and immediately, D-dog excitedly barks,  marking 15 or so enemies within the outpost- a number I thought was heinous in the early game but soon learned was essentially training wheels level.

With D-dog's markers placed, I open my binoculars and quickly scan the center of the base. In a red beret is the target. As he surveys the front of the base, I see my chance.

I whip out my WWII sniper rifle with an 8X scope, lethal rounds and a suppressor and quickly take aim, popping the headshot and heading the other way before anyone realizes the commander is down.

It takes a minion 20 or so seconds to stumble upon the incapacitated corpse of his commander. I know this because his terrified radio call to the rest of the base rings over the sound of Pequod telling me he will soon be on station at the extraction LZ.

I climb aboard, obtain an S rank and realize that I did the mission in just under two minutes.

At this point, I realize that this was just one of countless ways to complete this mission. The great thing is every mission in PP is like this.

Did you blast the boss with a rocket launcher? Did you tranquilize and fulton the targets or kill them in cold blood?

PP is full of player choice. And not just the choice of whether to tell an NPC to piss off or accept a mission- player choice that actually paints a personal experience with the game.

At 55 hours of play time, I'm not sure how much more PP I have left in me. One thing I do know, though, is that the memories I have from it will stick with me for a lifetime because they are just that- my memories.