It’s no secret to anyone that Metal Gear Solid 5 turned out to be a very different game from what Hideo Kojima had envisioned it to be, with its complicated and tumultuous development cycle resulting in a bevy of shelved ideas on both story and gameplay fronts. Of course, some ideas were removed not because of constraints, but due to creative decisions, and Kojima recently shed more light on one of those.
Chico was a character that was featured prominently in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, before also appearing in Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes. And though it was revealed in The Phantom Pain that he died when Mother Base went down, an early script for the game would have seen him returning- and in a very different role.
On a recent episode of his Brain Structure podcast (via Reddit), Kojima spoke about the same, revealing that in The Phantom Pain, Chico would have been “obsessed with killing”, and that his character would have been similar to that of Nikita Chevotarevich in The Deer Hunter, played by Christopher Walken- which is to say he would have gone down a very dark path, to say the least.
This has, of course, been previously revealed in Metal Gear Solid 5’s official art book as well, which showed concept art of these early ideas for Chico, who would have a heavily scarred face and a much more grizzles look, wearing a crimson cloak and being equipped with a variety of weapons.
Kojima went on to reveal that the idea ultimately ended up being shelved because of “not fitting well with the overall structure” of the game.
There’s plenty about Metal Gear Solid 5’s vision that didn’t make it into the game that fans would have absolutely loved to see, and I’m sure this has joined that ever-growing list.
