Streamers and reviewers have revealed that Hideo Kojima’s name does not appear in the new credits for Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Volume 1.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, none of the other former or current staff who worked on those games were given credit by name. Instead, the credits simply thank “all original Metal Gear series staff and fans.”
To be clear, since this is essentially a rerelease of the same games as they originally appeared on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, the original credits on each individual title is actually intact. None of the games were altered in that regard, so if players wanted to see who worked on the games, down to the finest detail, they can still do so.
This appears to mostly be a cost saving measure on Konami’s part. Given that this is an anthology of several games, there would be a cost to having to not only create such full credits, but going back to certify each name for each staffer who worked on the title.
Still, it cannot be ignored that this is happening in light of how Kojima was forcibly removed from Konami. It has been eight years since his exit from the company has been formalized. This did lead to Kojima forming his own production company, and releasing their only game to date, Death Stranding.
Kojima himself still has fond memories of working with the company, but this seems to indicate that this is not reciprocated by the company itself. The finer details of Kojima’s exit may be a matter of conjecture, but in general, it seemed that Konami at that time were looking to shift strategies towards heavy monetization in mobile games, thanks to the success they found in Dragon Connection.
While there are many such companies today that specialize in mobile, Konami was not able to successfully transition to that business model. At the same time, their own continued efforts in new games on console had not panned out well, in particular, Metal Gear Survive.
This partly explains their slow return to their classic franchises. This meant not only making anthologies of their classics, but greenlighting the Netflix Castlevania animated series.
Konami and Kojiima were once inseparable, but this is a hint that the two have moved on. In fact, when Konami gets around to making new Metal Gear games, we will have to get used to them doing so outside of Kojima’s vision.
Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Volume 1 will be released on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows via Steam, and Xbox Series X|S on October 24, 2023.
