Hideo Kojima Reminisces Over Adding A Camera To Original Metal Gear Solid

Regardless of what you think of Hideo Kojima – and opinions certainly do seem very strong on him as of late – you can’t deny the man came up with some cool ideas. One of those was adding a camera to the original Metal Gear Solid, which became something of a staple for the series. It was a bit ahead of its time, as photo modes weren’t a common thing then (and they’re barely a thing now, frankly), and in a series of tweets he mulls over that neat little addition.

He mentions that the original idea was to show the world’s 3D nature with an ability to switch from the 3rd person pseudo-isometric view of the game to a first person one. The game then used it to experiment in various ways, including adding what he refers to as “psychic photos,” which were famous photos you could take in-game that would have “ghosts”, which were distorted pictures of various staff members.

Those are some… odd thoughts, but not totally random. The upcoming PC release of Death Stranding will have a photo mode, and Kojima and his production studio have seemingly been teasing photo-related items. Kojima loves that photography, it seems.

I came up the idea called “camera” in MGS1(1998). I thought it’d be effective having the items like “sniper rifle”, “remote control missile” and “camera” if we could switch the camera POV ⇄3rd person view if the game world can exists all in 3D.

— HIDEO_KOJIMA (@HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN) March 4, 2020

Photo can be taken by POV, color change is possible, save it after compressing into JPEG. I also added psychic photo. lol

— HIDEO_KOJIMA (@HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN) March 4, 2020

If you take photo with camera in MGS1(1998), depending on the area you take, non-existence thing comes up. In fact I t was the faces of my staff back then. This psychic photo will disappear from the file by exorcising. Some media took it seriously & became hot topic unexpectedly.

— HIDEO_KOJIMA (@HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN) March 4, 2020