![]() ![]() It was cumbersome, nerve-wracking and made people queasy. ![]() “When I was talking to the fans of Metal Gear Solid I found out that stealth was not a popular genre initially. He continued by saying that he feels the game’s focus on story and characters were vital to its popularity. I think the key was that it was sold worldwide instead of just locally in Japan, and that was big.” I was making a story and a world I liked with a tone that other games didn’t have. The game was a huge hit, but I didn’t intend to sell it at that level. Metal Gear Solid was made for the PlayStation and like this podcast, it was distributed worldwide. “Metal Gear was only sold in Japan, and was made for the MSX. Next, Kojima talked about the success of Metal Gear, which he partly contributes to the game’s worldwide appeal on PlayStation. When I experienced that contrast, I was certain that this could work, and I could sense that my team has shifted their minds too.” At that time, most of the games were either always still or always in motion, it didn’t really have any contrast. “When the player is found by the enemy and an exclamation mark appears on the screen, that is the moment when stillness turns into motion. It wasn’t until the staff saw Metal Gear in action for themselves that they got it. The same was true for games like Boktai and Death Stranding. “Plus, it was the time when games did not require any story at all.” Other staff members were initially reluctant to the idea, but they came around during development. ![]() Kojima had some difficulty convincing the others of the idea of a game where you hide from the enemies and don’t start out with any weapons. As a result, it was not intentional, but that’s how Metal Gear was born.” So one reason was my wish, and the other was the limit of the hardware at that time. We proposed a rule that the character hides from the enemies that attack the character. “Back then, the game machine we worked on was called MSX, and it could not portray battles, so we had to make something that could feel like a combat game without shooting so many bullets. For example, if the player and enemies would shoot too many bullets, due to the hardware limitations all the sprites would disappear from the screen. While today’s game machines are capable of creating images close to movies, this was of course not the case when Kojima started out in the game industry. So that’s where stealth came from, and how Metal Gear came to life.”Īnother reason for Metal Gear’s game design were the hardware limitations at the time. By changing the perspective a little bit, a heroic element is born. “If you’re just running away the players will have a hard time empathizing with the character, right? So when I was trying to figure out how to make that work, the player is in a sense running away, but you must first infiltrate in an enemy base without any weapons, collect any weaponry on the spot, and clear the mission before escaping. Kojima wanted to create a game where you run from the enemy instead of engaging in battle, but this concept is difficult to make heroic. That reason was not explained at all at that time, so I wanted to depict it.” When nation A and B are at war, there’s always a reason. You don’t know why you’re fighting, you just know that you’re strong. My parents experienced the war, and what I didn’t like in the shooters or battle games, was that there was no background why A and B were fighting. The enemy dies when you shoot, or when you are shot by the enemy, you die. “Shooting games, or shooters, is still popular today, but battle happens when you and the enemy appears. In this first episode, Kojima talked a bit about how the Metal Gear series came to be and evolved over time, as well as the inspiration behind the character Solid Snake. The podcast is available in both Japanese and English, to give fans worldwide a chance to listen to his thoughts. Hideo Kojima released the first episode of his new podcast Brain Structure for Spotify. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |