"I would like to step out from the Metal Gear franchise," says Kojima
Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes director Hideo Kojima has revealed that he'd like to take a step back from his series as producer, so that he can concentrate on new games and ideas. So far however, any attempts at passing the torch have failed to bear fruit.
First; why not check out my feed of every Metal Gear Solid 5 fact and rumour since the games were announced. No really, all of them. I must be insane...
Speaking with Game Informer, Kojima cited the example of Ridley Scott handing the keys to the Alien franchise over to James Cameron and added, "At Kojima Productions, if our studio were a kitchen and the head chef changes, then it changes the flavor and it changes. The world franchise usually becomes more open, as in Alien.
"To be honest, I've actually wanted to do something similar just to change it. I don't know if the Metal Gear brand sometimes is a bit heavy to carry. The franchise is difficult to handle. But so far I've had no success [passing the torch]. Metal Gear Rising [Revengeance], fortunately that was a spin-off so that went well.
"Ideally I would like to step out from the Metal Gear franchise as a producer and dedicate myself to other games. So far that has proven to be a bit difficult. Alien is a very successful example [of a new director coming in]. Unfortunately in our case it's more like Terminator, that once Cameron steps out of it there was kind of a mess."
What does he want to work on? Kojima said he, "would like to make more games that have that indie game taste or some completely different type of game with a big budget," and stressed, "If I wasn't doing games, well of course I'd like to get involved in movies or write novels. I'm almost 50-years-old so I don't have that much time left. If I were to write a list of things that I want to do before I die, it would be a very stuffed list. Because of my age I'm starting to think of the other things I have to do before I die.
"I've been working in the Metal Gear franchise for over 25 years. This world has allowed me to tell a lot of the things that I wanted to say. That said, it has a very specific worldview and a very specific set of game elements. I'll probably be saying this until I die, but there are still more things I want to tell, more things I want to communicate, and more things I want to experiment with."
Interestingly, he'd like to see Metal Gear Solid given the GTA approach, which is curious seeing as The Phantom Pain is open world to a point.
On that point Kojima concluded, "One thing is that within Kojima Productions I'd love to put all my efforts and time into creating a Metal Gear Solid that's kind of what [Rockstar] does with GTA. Unfortunately, that's not the case. It's still a business. In parallel we have to work on other projects and make things balanced towards Konami as a whole. Finding that balance with how to work on all our projects proves to be a little difficult."
Would you like to see Kojima move on to something else? How about Zone of the Enders 3? You guys still want that right?
Via OXM.