Kojima’s Next Project Is Wide Open

Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima hopes to create an expansive, open world with his next game.

Remember Metal Gear Solid 4? Remember how little of that game featured actual gameplay? The whole thing was essentially a CGI film starring a gray moustache voiced by David Hayter. Critics and fans alike slammed the game for this lack of interactivity and wondered aloud if series mastermind Hideo Kojima had, and I quote, “gone completely nutbar.”

Perhaps sensing this mild outrage, Kojima has revealed that his next project is far less linear.

“The kind of game I’m making is some game that has a very wide entrance, a very open entrance,” Kojima said in a recent CNN interview. “Rather than making something very cinematic, [I plan to] make something very free.”

This mysterious game, known only as “Project Ogre,” is in the very, very early stages, so any actual solid information on the title is scarce at best. Kojima did recently drop the above image from the in-development title via his Twitter account, but aside from providing hints that the title features more or less modern battlefields, it does little to shed light on the mysterious game.

Even more interesting though is the other claim Kojima made to CNN. Via translator, the developer said that players will still be finding new things to do in the title after 100 hours of play.

Whether that means actual gameplay elements or Kojima’s trademark scenery quirks — melting ice in the Big Shell lounge, anyone? — is up for debate, but it does seem as if the man is determined to branch out to a more open, sandbox-esque style of game development.

What exactly this means for the future of Solid Snake remains to be seen, though it seems fitting that the unending passage of time and growth of technology should eventually leave the character behind. Kojima loves that kind of bleak inevitability, and realistically where do you go with a character after you saddle him with a totally sweet ‘stache and force players to watch him engage in melodramatic geriatric fisticuffs with a metaphor for the ruination of Soviet-era communist decadence?

Source: CNN