Kojima On MGSV: TPP Story, Tech & Mother Base Online
Yesterday we’ve reported that Hideo Kojima‘s latest work in gaming, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, would get a final release date tomorrow. That turned out to be true when the story leaked today, confirming that players will be able to get the game on September 1st worldwide.
The date appeared at the very end of a video interview with Kojima-san, however the video has since been taken down everywhere until tomorrow’s official story. Still, we’ve been able to transcribe a few highlights with Kojima expanding on certain topics, starting with the story approach in his first open world game.
When I first came up with the idea for Metal Gear, people told me storytelling won’t work in action games. So, I set to prove to the world that action games could be a valid storytelling medium. This led me to craft Metal Gear Solid using storytelling tools like cinematic effects, cutscene, radio call and stage gimmicks. In today’s game industry, this type of linear story methods have now become commonplace.
However, that was never the ultimate goal. As an interactive medium, I believe that games have the potential to break away from movies and convey a story while also giving players freedom to play as they like. The advent of open world design allows for completely new forms of storytelling; in designing MGSV, I wanted to maximize the player’s sense of strategic freedom. As a result, the experience will vary depending on the taste of the individual players.
The impression will probably be quite different from previous MGS games. The biggest challenge was how to tell a story in a non-linear way, and our solution was to use a freely assembled episodic format.
Like a TV drama, the story gradually comes together as the player proceeds through missions and gathers episodic pieces of the story.
He then confessed to have already thought of doing an open world design with MGS IV, however this proved to be impossible and that’s what drove him to create Fox Engine, which also westernized the team.
While developing MGSIV, I considered an open world approach but we lacked the technology. I felt we were also lagging behind Western studios in other areas like physics simulation, lighting and rendering techniques as well.
That fueled my decision to seriously invest in creating an internal game engine we called the FOX ENGINE. The new engine was mandatory to realize my goals for MGSV: TPP; I needed a way to empower small teams of specialists to work individually on tasks they were best at, in order to boost efficiency. The engine also allowed us to adopt more of a western-style tool chain and team structure. Without these modern optimizations, we would never finish a game with TPP scope. This resulted in MGSV differing drastically from MGSIV not only with respect to content, but also with regard to development style and methods.
Finally, he gave away a few extremely enticing details on the way online will work between Mother Bases, which seems to fit a rumor we reported on potential co-op in thte game.
If you look back to ten years ago, online games focused mainly on competition. Players would assemble for matches, then disperse back to the real world once they were done. But today, hardware is constantly connected online so whenever you play, there will always be someone in the world doing the same thing. Therefore, I wanted to include elements to take advantage of that. This time it’s not just your Mother Base, but the Mother Bases of players all over the world.
This adds a new dimension to gameplay based on connections between players online. It’s a huge challenge for us and we’re putting a lot of effort in doing it. In the early stages of the game, players will complete missions and enjoy the story as a stand-alone experience and develop their Mother Base. However, at a certain point the game opens up and each player story becomes intertwined with the experience of others online as they compete with rival Mother Bases or invite others to their Bases as allies. It’s a different type of online experience, hopefully people will enjoy what we’ve done.
Of course, this is entirely separate from multiplayer mode Metal Gear Online, which will be included in MGSV: TPP as well. The whole package will release on PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One.