Metal Gear Solid 5 gameplay up to the user, says Kojima

Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain will allow players to play it however they wish: stealthy or guns blazing, according to Hideo Kojima.

Speaking with CVG at E3, Kojima said he wanted to create a big game in which the player gets to decide how things play out.

"Whether you want to go in gun-ho or go in stealthily that's really up to the user," he said. "That's something that the player gets to decide. There's a goal, and you have to go in and out, but whether the player uses stealth or goes straight into it - that's up to the player. So it depends on the player's play style.

"We have a big surprise for the players in this game. We have challenged and pushed ourselves with something that movies can't do but only games can do. It hasn't been done before."

Part of this has to do with the open-world nature of the game, something which is a first for the series. Kojima said another reason the team went with an open-world was so multiple devices con the market could be used for the game.

"Using tablets and smart phones you can also enjoy MGS5 and create user-generated missions within the world," he said. "That's another reason we had to go open-world - if it was linear we wouldn't be able to do that."

Linear is something MGS fans are used to, which is why Kojima and his team created Ground Zeros, a prologue, which is basically a way for veteran players of the series to be eased into Phantom Pain's open-world.

"You can think of it that Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain as the big game and within that the first prologue to it is Ground Zeroes," Kojima explained. "The Phantom Pain provides a vast world where the player can really go anywhere and get lost. But for past Metal Gear fans used to a linear experience it would probably be hard for them to get used to that without having a prologue and a way to get used to it.

"So Metal Gear Solid Ground Zeroes is an interpretation to really give them a very short, smaller version of that scale. In The Phantom Pain there are real-life day and night cycles but in Ground Zeroes the weather doesn't change and it's at night time. This is to help the past Metal Gear fans to get used to the fact that it's now open-world."

Kojima said the team has decided how it will will release Ground Zeroes just yet, but he did touch upon the multiplayer element.

"We plan on creating Metal Gear Online," he said. "Multiplayer right now is being created at our LA studio as well as us," he said. "We're working closely to create a vast multiplayer for all the fans."

And as far as the Moby Dick references in the game trailers to Phantom Pain are concerned, Kojima said the team is not ready to reveal who or what the White Whale is at this point.

"We can't say at this time! We're still putting out the first couple of trailers and that will be a great surprise," he said. "It would ruin a lot of people's excitement to the game if we revealed that. When we're a bit closer to release we can talk more about it but right now we are not at the stage to discuss the villains.

"We've actually been getting a lot of questions like this and as much as we'd like to say who the villain is, we need to make sure that information comes out at the right time. Stay tuned."

MGS5 will be released on PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One, and is still without a release date.