Metal Gear/ Metal Gear Solid

Konami statement◊.

1. Kojima is going to finish V since it's his last game.
2. Konami are already starting to work on the next Metal Gear project.
3. Seeking new main staff to actually make the next game(since Kojima and all the veterans of Kojipro are going to not be part of it).

Jeez, screw Konami.

I can't wait until this is all over so I can read the full write-up. This is an intense situation.

well, I guess at least MGS 5 wasn't the last MG after all.

Shame its probably gonna end up going Assassins Creed on us. Especially if it goes the Unity route.

Hopefully by "starting to work" they mean "funding Platinum for Rising 2."

Surely this can't turn into that big of a fuckup.

edited 20th Mar '15 12:37:16 PM by TheAirman

Hopefully not, I don't wanna see Otacon without a face.

Honestly I'd be amazed if Konami survives the decade without Koji Pro. Feels like Metal Gear has been keeping Konami in the black for a while and without Kojima I seriously doubt it'll maintain the level of quality it's had until now.

even though kojima has his own issues it can't be denied that he's a unique talent in the industry with a distinct artistic vision. in order to maintain a comparable level of quality they'd have to bring someone equally unique on-board.

Maybe Nomura will leave SE after KHIII, and then he teams up with Kojima and they make their own game company, with buttshots and zippers.

or he teams up with suda51 and they make the trolliest game ever.

Or, whatever deity you worship (or don't) forbid it, he ends up going the same route as his pal Masahiro Sakurai and forms his own production company... Only to mostly do contracted work for his old bosses anyway.

Maybe he and his team just form a new studio and finish Silent Hills under a different name.

Or Kojima, Nomura, and Sakurai team up with suda51, they apprentice themselves to Hideaki Anno, and proceed to troll reality itself.

edited 20th Mar '15 9:20:21 PM by TheAirman

Okay, so it's official now?

Can I just say... Good.

I love Kojima. I love Metal Gear. They where a match made in heaven and an enormous boon to the world of gaming. But the series has been so intrinsically linked with the man that it's basically teetered completely on his shoulders. Both sides of that have suffered. MGS 4 was a very obvious Torch the Franchise and Run moment and it didn't stop anything. And from what I suspect, 5 will be an even more extreme attempt.

You know what we got when a fresh set of hands got their hands on the franchise and tried something new? We got Metal Gear Rising and it FREAKING ROCKED IN EVERY WAY. It held onto what made Metal Gear great while taking it in a whole new direction and forming an identity for itself. It was the best of both worlds.

Someone who actually WANTS to tackle this series is what it needs.

Konami though... Konami needs to wake up. Castlevania. Suikoden. Silent Hill. It's obvious that they mishandle... Uh... Everything they touch recently. Either some mistakes need to be learned from or some heads need to roll. Hopefully they realize that.

You do know Kojima and Kojipro still did a lot in Revengeance, right? It wasn't just P+ taking the game creating a new story and making it on their own without Kojipro in any way.

The rest of Kojipro seemed excited to work on a game without Kojima as the main boss(the implication was that Kojima had already told someone on the team that "After I'm gone you're the boss and you can make a new game with the rest of the team")in the last developer video so it's a shame they will all be fired or leave after V.

Right now everyone that were at Kojipro has really bad job security since Konami can fire them without any reason given due to them not being considered members of the company but rather contracted help.

The new Metal Gear project will be staffed by all new people who have never before worked on a Metal Gear game(or even at Konami going by the ad) rather than the original plan which was that the only position that would be changed was Kojima's since the rest of the team still wanted to make Metal Gear games and had experience.

Edit: Konami doesn't need to care. They're earning 2/3 of their income from things other than games. These are the only games they have in 2015:

• PSP: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V Tag Force Special(Japan)
• Turbo Grafx-16: Double Dungeons (Japan)
• Turbo Grafx-16: Devil Crash(Japan)
• Play Station Vita: Pro Yakyuu Spirits 2015(Japan)
• Play Station 3: Pro Yakyuu Spirits 2015(Japan)
• PC: Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain(North America)
• Play Station 3: Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain(North America)
• Xbox 360: Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain(North America)
• Play Station 4: Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain(North America)
• Xbox One: Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain(North America)

edited 21st Mar '15 1:46:23 AM by LordofLore

Let me just say that it's amazing how Konami released a PSP game in 2015.

Just to put it in perspective, the PSP's launch is closer to the launch of the PS One than to today.

Despite the release of the PS Vita, the PSP is still a super-popular piece of hardware in Japan. Visual Novels are still released on the system, if nothing else - the Grisaia games were ported to both PSP and Vita between 2013 and 2014. Plus, looking at the PSP releases page on Metacritic, there have been a steady trickle of PSP releases in the west for ages - 3 games in 2014, 12 games in 2013, a metric butt-ton in 2012, and that's not counting the new releases in Japan.

I'm pretty sure the PSP is still an active and popular piece of hardware in Japan. Not as active as its heyday, sure, but it's still getting some consistent new releases when the PS 2 more or less began to bomb in its twilight years.

That said, are the TurboGrafx-16 games ports to newer systems, or are they actually new?

Wii U ports as far as I can find.

So spite.

I guess he got his Revenge(ance).

Oh God its 2015. And there's no place for Hideo.

edited 21st Mar '15 8:51:41 AM by TheAirman

I bought the Legacy collection Today. I figured I should purchase it now before Konami releases the version where they remove "a Hideo Kojima game" and the Kojima Productions logo from the boxes like they did on their website.

Let me buffer my incoming negativity with something I always found funny. In the trailer, Miller seems to be the one crossing the Moral Event Horizon. "Cypher took us to Hell, but we're going deeper! We'll take back everything that we've lost!" Miller's the one who (apparently) lost two limbs (arm and a leg, was it?), and is being tortured in some foreign country. He was the one, IIRC, we saw standing directly next to Skull Face in one of the trailers.

But it's Big Boss who turns out to be the Complete Monster, and Miller ends up turning away from it all and mentoring Solid Snake.

I just... no.

I disagree with this in every possible way except one - it's a decent game by itself, I can't fault it for being a poorly-made game, but I can't stand it when it's praised this much. "I liked Metal Gear before it was about ninjas and Rule of Cool blah blah," grade-A It's Popular, Now It Sucks!. I really, really, don't support remaking the series into Metal Gear Rising, or any equivalent.

I will not endorse Rising as the "best of both worlds". I barely acknowledge it as part of Metal Gear, just this bizarro universe that shares names and faces with another bizarre universe. There are 11 different things about Rising I could bitch about, but the short of it is that it did not "rock in every way" for me and I think it's awfully overrated.

If the future of Metal Gear is Rising, I am quite frankly done with the franchise. Rising's fun as an experiment. I see no reason to reinvent a series from the ground up as Ninja Gaiden with a cyborg twist. I'd much rather Platinum just go back to Vanquish (which could've used a sequel), or make it's own Cyborg Ninja action franchise, then continue to use "Metal Gear".

I don't believe that it's "it's own thing" that deserves ultimate affection and growth. I would be quite content to see nothing come of it, just as I was content with 4 being the conclusion, and am now (hopefully) content with V being the end of the franchise. Metal Gear has always been the Snake's story. That's the way I want it. Not a few respectable games overshadowed by a vastly more recognized action game spin-off, or some other contemporary reboot/equivalent.

Rising is effectively Halo 4 for me, it shouldn't be continued, or take over the series' plot, but it's probably going to.

I guess I'm utterly against handing over the keys of a series to another person just to "put a fresh perspective on things". Give me two examples' where that ended well' and for sake of argument', don't say Rising.

edited 21st Mar '15 6:42:06 PM by Soble

So ultimately, I'm sensing a lot of this amounts to Konami deciding to operate like Nintendo, failing to realize Nintendo is basically the one company that can operate like themselves because of their fairly unique foothold in pop culture compared to, say... Konami.

And of course, as top-down and controlling as the Big N is, they still have some degree of respect for their designers, even if seniority is perhaps emphasized a little too much. Konami just pissed off the one guy they still had doing meaningful work- This is reminding me way too much of the whole Index Co-Atlus relationship now, even if said relationship severed for entirely different reasons.

I'd not be against Rising as an ongoing subseries, with the important factor being that Tactical Espionage Action/Operations games were still kept the face of the series. But see above.

edited 21st Mar '15 6:01:46 PM by Pulse

I know you listed Devil May Cry because of Dm C, but DMC 1 was directed by Hideki Kamiya and DMC 3 by Hideaki Itsuno, I think that counts.

Ain't it weird how there was never a DMC 2?

I think that Metal Gear Solid as a whole just isn't able to keep going after 5 anyway. If Metal Gear is going to survive - and let's face it, Konami are keeping this franchise alive one way or another - Rising is the one sub-series which has the most potential, whether it's canonical or not, as it's the one currently established video game set in the future after Solid 4.

I wouldn't object to Rising becoming the main series after Solid wraps up, because it keeps the setting alive in a unique and generally well-received way while not trying to imitate the same approach Kojima's been so good at. I think that without Kojima at the head of the operation, the series isn't quite able to capture the same ridiculous, cinematic spark of the series so far, and a game that tries to chase that rabbit is going to seem a bit trite and lacking that spark. I haven't played Portable Ops, which is apparently okay considering Kojima had nothing to do with it, but from what I've seen myself I don't know if a full on "Solid" style game could be adequately handled without a Kojima-like figurehead handling the series.

Like I'm down with someone trying another "Portable Ops" experiment to see if they can nail that cinematic approach, but otherwise I'm okay with Rising and Ac!d-like spinoffs and universe explorations.