Hideo Kojima has shared some intriguing insight on the development of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Thankfully, this one has nothing to do with horse biology.
We joke of course. Actually, with the following tweets, Kojima takes us deep into the heart of developing the Metal Gear Solid games.
Kojima namedrops an inspiration, one who doesn’t really come up often when talking about Metal Gear: Alfred Hitchcock. He points out that Hitchcock faced a dilemma of how to get audiences involved in the drama of his work, particularly with his thrillers and horror films. His solution was to eschew use of detectives and spies, for ordinary people as the main characters. In this way, audiences related to Hitchcock’s characters.
Just to provide further context, Kojima refers not only to Hitchcock’s work with suspense films in the US, but also his later work in the UK. So, think The Man Who Knew Too Much and The 39 Steps, as well as more famous films like The Birds, Lifeboat, and North by Northwest. IMO, whether this is true of all his films is open to debate, but Hitchcock certainly did this in a lot of them.
Getting back intoMetal Gear, Kojima explains that he faces a similar dilemma every time he makes a new MGS. In fact, it’s a little harder given that he uses characters from a certain lore, with a set history that core fans may know by heart, but new gamers will not be familiar with. There’s also the added factor of the player being able to ‘maneuver’ themselves in games versus movies. I feel this is a rough translation of the concept of control, or agency, the game player has.
Spoilers follow here! You have been warned.
Kojima points out what decisions he made trying to solve this question. InMetal Gear Solid 2, Raiden appears as an ordinary person, unlike Snake, for the player to relate to. Similarly, in Ground Zeroes, Snake vows revenge as the base he built in MGS Peace Walker. Kojima deliberately designed the game around this narrative and its connection to the lore.
The premise of The Phantom Pain itself has you waking up after a nine year coma. Because of this, you will be able to play the game without prior knowledge of the other games (Since Snake will be recreating his memories in the course of the game). Kojima’s pre-MGS masterpieces, Snatcher and Policenauts, used the same narrative trick.
Kojima goes on to say MGS fans are special, because their experiences of the games go back as much as 27 years ago. Those fans have shared and formed their own memories of the game, and this is a sign that the game has long lived.
And so now, Kojima faces a new challenge. The Snake in The Phantom Pain is not the heroic Snake of previous games. He is a demon. Not a villain, per se, but a hero fallen into a demon.
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is coming to Xbox 360, PS3, Xbox One, and PS4.
