Not one to settle for vertical slices, Konami shared a 40-minute gameplay video of this fall's Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, shared via IGN.

Before kitting out Snake and sending him out into The Phantom Pain's massive open world, the video's "Let's Play" host, a Konami representative, seized the moment to assuage fears over the game's microtransactions and the possibility of pay hurdles popping up in it.

"While it is true that a few microtransaction options do exist, the entire game has been carefully balanced to be fair and enjoyable with or without using these options—there's no pay-to-win option," said the Konami rep.

Nothing will be locked behind a pay wall. That includes missions, weapons and other items, the rep said.

"Due to the sheer scale of the game and the time required to explore it all, microtransactions were added as a completely optional feature for players who might not be able to spend as much time with the game: nothing more, nothing less," the rep explained.

Things could change before and after the game's release, but at least Konami has given its word that microtransactions won't bring a pay-to-win component to The Phantom Pain.

During another gameplay demo of The Phantom Pain, held in private, Robert Peeler, Konami's community manager, shared with SiliconEra details about Snake's ball of fur.

When a wolf pup appeared in the demo, Peeler explained that the animal can be trained back at Mother Base. The pup can create distractions for enemies or track down decoy, he stated.

"Now, you can do whatever you want here," said Peeler. "You can pick it up, ignore it, shoot it if you're heartless ... but really, the best thing to do is send it to Mother Base using the Fulton Recovery System."

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain releases on Sept 1 for the Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and PC.

With the video below, you can jump to about 1:00 for some of the basic or skip ahead to about 6:50 to drop right into the action: