At GDC this week, Kojima has finally stopped beating around the bush and revealed that Ground Zeros and The Phantom Pain coalesce to form Metal Gear Solid V. Rumors around the connection between The Phantom Pain and its connection with the Metal Gear Solid series have been swirling around ever since it debuted at the VGA’s, and now, the wraps are finally off. In an interview with Game Trailers, Hideo Kojima disclosed quite a lot of information regarding the newly announced title.
To start off, Kojima explained why all the ambiguity and the reason for using The Phantom Pain as a ruse.
“There are several reasons for this. One is that I think core fans, myself included in this, wanted to do something really interesting in the social space. You know I think it’s been kind-of dull lately and we wanted to do something to energize the community,” he explained. “The second reason for doing this is we wanted to evaluate the FOX Engine. So we wanted to put the game out without revealing that it was Metal Gear Solid and just see how well it would do just based on the visuals of the FOX Engine.”
Kojima admitted that they knew that fans would be quick on the heels of the mysterious link between Metal Gear Solid and The Phantom Pain right from day one, which they were. And that he was glad they did play along. As for the supposed CEO of Moby Dick Studios, the man interviewed by Geoff Keighley a few weeks back was in fact a real person. Kojima revealed that he himself wanted to be in the interview masqearading as like he did in the Game Trailers interview, but his busy preparations for GDC prevented him from doing so.
“We knew from the beginning that it wouldn’t be a secret – we wanted fans to realize it. It was kind-of service to the fans saying, ‘Hey, here’s the inside joke. We know that you know what it is, but just play along with it.’ We’re happy that fans did realize what it was and did play along with it.”
From what we can dissect from the gameplay reveal trailer, it’s evident that a new voice actor for Snake and Big Boss is at the helm. David Hayter, the man who voiced Snake so far announced on twitter that he wasn’t even contacted regarding the project. Kojima also explained why he took this decision.
“I can say, yes, it will be a new person. I can’t say who it is yet. What we’re trying to accomplish here is recreate the Metal Gear series. It’s a new type of Metal Gear game, and we want to have this reflected in the voice actor as well” said Kojima.
Metal Gear Solid V will be taking some bold new turns for the franchise, by embracing a open world structure in favor of the more linear narrative driven gameplay of past entries which Kojima himself describes as “on-rail”. The biggest question lingering on everybody’s minds is whether Ground Zeros and The Phantom Pain will be two separate games released individually, or if they’ll both be sold as a single package. We’ve got to wait for a little longer to get our answers as Kojima couldn’t comment on how they’re going to distribute them just yet.
What he did reveal is that Ground Zeros is actually a prologue to The Phantom Pain and is set immediately after the events of Peace Walker. The Phantom Pain on the other hand is a much bigger game in terms of scope and length to Ground Zeros. It takes place nine years after the events of Ground Zeros. In fact, Kojima says that the purpose of Ground Zeros is to make players come to grip with the open world structure and new mechanics, so that they feel right at home with The Phantom Pain. We’ll be seeing old faces return as well as plenty of new characters.
There are still plenty of questions surrounding Metal Gear Solid V, and judging by the series track record, we’ll have the answers only when the game hits shelves. The game is currently only announced for the PS3 and Xbox 360, with no mention of a release on next gen platforms. Which is odd, as we’re sure that current gen consoles are not capable of reproducing the visuals which we saw in the debut gameplay, which by the way, was running on a PC.
Be sure to check out Game Trailers for the full interview, and feel free to let us know your thoughts on the game below.