Hideo Kojima Looks Back At Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

Hideo Kojima is hard at work right now at his studio trying to develop his next game in Death Stranding 2. The highly-anticipated title is a perfect reflection of Kojima and the way that he’s done games for decades. A deep story mixed with unique characters and enough twists that makes you both wonder what’ll happen next and make you know that you’ll never “get inside his head” to see what’s coming. But before Kojima made games with Norman Reedus, he made the story of Solid Snake and those connected to him. One of the crowning achievements of that story was Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.

What separated Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater from previous titles was many-fold. The first was the game’s story was a prequel to the events that came before and would directly affect the games that followed. There we met Naked Snake before he became the Big Boss. We learned about the numerous events and people that helped shape the story to come and got teases of many things. Fans loved the visual style that the game took on PS2, and multiple moments stand out to this day.

But one moment you might not think about too much is the start screen for the game. Hideo Kojima was on Twitter the other day and decided to reveal that there was more going on with the screen than we realized.

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Later, a similar expression was used in the opening of 007's "Casino Royale".
I remember when we were doing the mo-cap, we applied CQC for real, and the actor seemed to have physical pain for a few days.🙏

— HIDEO_KOJIMA (@HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN) March 4, 2023

Yep, that wasn’t just a “cool effect” for the silhouettes, they used real people to make those moves, and someone got hurt doing it. That should show you the “desire for realism” that Hideo Kojima is known for. You must admit, it is a cool start screen, and you can see why Kojima is so fond of it all these years later.

But wait! He wasn’t done there. Given the time the game was made and what it depicted, Kojima realized that some real-world changes could affect his perceived vision of the game. So he went to an expert to get advice:

After 911, it was foreseeable that close combat tactics on the battlefield would change, and since MGS3 would take place in confined spaces such as jungles and caves, would traditional CQB be ineffective, so we consulted our military advisors and came up with the idea of CQC.

— HIDEO_KOJIMA (@HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN) March 4, 2023

That’s right. CQC was developed in response to that real-life event, not what you were expecting, right? Hideo Kojima is nothing if not thorough, and that is why he’s considered one of the best video game developers out there.

One of the ironies of these “sudden statements” is that many feel the game will get a remake soon, but that hasn’t been confirmed.