Though Metal Gear Solid 5 director Hideo Kojima said he’d never work on another MGS title after Guns of the Patriots, he’s back again for Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain. Eventually the man would like to step away as a producer for the series and try something else. He also believes that there should be a more Grand Theft Auto-like MGS game one day.
Speaking to Game Informer, Kojima stated that, “At Kojima Productions, if our studio were a kitchen and the head chef changes, then it changes the flavor and it changes. The world franchise usually becomes more open, as in Alien.
“To be honest, I’ve actually wanted to do something similar just to change it. I don’t know if the Metal Gear brand sometimes is a bit heavy to carry. The franchise is difficult to handle. But so far I’ve had no success [passing the torch]. Metal Gear Rising [Revengeance], fortunately that was a spin-off so that went well.
“Ideally I would like to step out from the Metal Gear franchise as a producer and dedicate myself to other games. So far that has proven to be a bit difficult. Alien is a very successful example [of a new director coming in]. Unfortunately in our case it’s more like Terminator, that once Cameron steps out of it there was kind of a mess.”
Kojima is interested in making either games that are more indie-esque in nature or a completely different kind of AAA titles. “If I wasn’t doing games, well of course I’d like to get involved in movies or write novels. I’m almost 50-years-old so I don’t have that much time left. If I were to write a list of things that I want to do before I die, it would be a very stuffed list. Because of my age I’m starting to think of the other things I have to do before I die.
“I’ve been working in the Metal Gear franchise for over 25 years. This world has allowed me to tell a lot of the things that I wanted to say. That said, it has a very specific worldview and a very specific set of game elements. I’ll probably be saying this until I die, but there are still more things I want to tell, more things I want to communicate, and more things I want to experiment with.”
Though Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain have taken more open world approaches compared to previous games, Kojima would like to see a game in the series more akin to Grand Theft Auto. “One thing is that within Kojima Productions I’d love to put all my efforts and time into creating a Metal Gear Solid that’s kind of what [Rockstar] does with GTA. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. It’s still a business. In parallel we have to work on other projects and make things balanced towards Konami as a whole. Finding that balance with how to work on all our projects proves to be a little difficult.”
Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes will be out on March 18th in North America and March 20th in Europe for Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS3 and PS4.
