Xbox Addict

Kojima clarifies MGS V confusion...somewhat

The campaign for Metal Gear Solid 5 kicked off during last year, when a trailer debuted for "The Phantom Pain." [XBA EDIT: MGS 5: "Ground Zeroes" was actually revealed complete with a gameplay demo at PAX 2012 long before the 2012 Spike VGAs, which only revealed The Phatom Pain with no direct reference to Ground Zeroes.)  It was an elaborate riddle that the Internet solved in roughly an hour, but creator Hideo Kojima says that was part of the point. He wanted fans engaged in this announcement.

Kojima told GameTrailers that he "wanted to do something in the social space" with the Metal Gear Solid 5 announcement. "It’s been sort of dull lately, and we really wanted to energize the community," he said through a translator. His other reason was to gauge an honest reaction to the new FOX Engine, so he could hear what people think of the visuals without the MGS name attached.

However, he wasn’t entirely surprised when fans figured it out quickly. He called it an "inside joke" that both the fans and studio understood. "Honestly we knew people would know what it was, more or less, but we were surprised that they were actually able to guess the exact title," he said.

Kojima confirmed that Snake will be voiced by someone new, rather than the David Hayter as usual. "It will be a new person, I can’t say who yet," he said. "What we’re trying to accomplish is to 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." He also said this is the explanation for the game’s title to use a Roman numeral "V" instead of the Arabic numeral "5," and said that "V represents our will for victory."

To clear up some confusion regarding the this game and Ground Zeroes, Kojima explained that they are parts of the same whole. Ground Zeroes is a prologue that will introduce the concepts and open world, and then Phantom Pain takes place nine years later and features a much larger open world. Together, the two parts comprise Metal Gear Solid 5. He declined to comment on how the two games will be distributed.

Finally, Kojima once again commented that this is his Metal Gear swan song, with a touch of self-awareness that we’ve heard that before. "I want this to be my last one. Of course I always say that, but this time I really want it to be true," he said. "After this I really want the Tokyo team and the LA team to take over Metal Gear and create their own video games while I’m freed up to work on my own projects. I have all these ideas in my head that I want to create so hopefully I’ll be able to work on those."