Metal Gear Solid: Rising is the next big title in the long running franchise. However, Metal Gear series creator Hideo Kojima indicates that he’s been very hands off with the game.
“I’m serving as executive producer and leaving the game to the younger staff — although they really aren’t that young,” said Kojima. “Do you remember the technical research outfit we used to have in Kobe Matsuyama, the producer on Rising, joined the company around the time I moved to that studio in 1991. He sat in the cube next to mine, though he wound up moving to the arcade division later. Mineshi [director Mineshi Kimura], meanwhile, joined on during the second half of the original Metal Gear Solid project and worked on that for me.”
“We developed technology for Rising that lets you slice through practically anything, so for the designers, it’s a question of how to serve up that technology to gamers,” he added. “It’s the sort of game that’s popular over in the West right now. I’m not preoccupied with it having the sort of messages I put into MGS games.”
When asked about the Metal Gear Solid 3 Naked Sample provided for the 3DS at E3, he said, “It was a top-secret project — I had a non-disclosure agreement signed with Nintendo, so I couldn’t even tell you [Hamamura] about it,” Kojima revealed. “The demo was produced by the Peace Walker team, but outside of the group that developed it, nobody at Kojima Productions even knew about it. I got that group together and said ‘Okay, we have to build this thing for E3’ — they work on a different floor from the rest of the studio, so most people thought they were on vacation after shipping off Peace Walker, I suppose.”
Despite the positive reception to the demo, Kojima said that the future of the title is undecided. “I did handle direction work on the E3 demo, but where I go from here hasn’t been decided yet,” said Kojima. “For now, what we wanted to do was advertise the fact that we are producing a 3DS game in the MGS franchise. Largely it was just a demonstration of what we’re capable of with the 3DS. For a full-size game, just having things pop out at the player all the time will get old fast, so I think the emphasis will be on visual depth instead. We haven’t settled on the details yet, but I’d like to get CO-OPS and some of the other things we did in Peace Walker into this game as well. We can’t change MGS3’s story, but we are thinking about CO-OPS and other things we can use the 3D technology for.”
Kojima spoke openly about what his next major project would have to be. “I only have two choices for what to make: MGS5, or an original game,” said Kojima. “As for ZOE and the rest, I’m sorry, but that kind of got pushed to the back burner. It’s not that I’m at a loss for what to do — it’ll definitely be a console game, and it’ll be the sort of big-budget project where I’m dead if we screw it up. No matter which way we go, we’ve got the engine all set for it; the technical side is going along smoothly.”
For whatever it is, Kojima doesn’t sound like he wants to spend too much time on it. “We’re going slowly and carefully with my console game, but at the same time, we don’t have three years to give to the project,” he said. “Japanese companies spend that sort of time on projects, but you don’t see that with overseas studios. They just put out an Assassin’s Creed game, but they already announced another one at E3, right I really don’t see any way we can spend more than two years or so on this.”
Source: 1UP
