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Chicken out, take the easy route in Metal Gear Solid 5
Being scared in a war zone? Totally understandable! We can think of plenty of things that are more relaxing than persevering through fields of soldiers, artillery and landmines. So should Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain's threats stress you out, know that a safe(r) state of being is just a chicken hat away. Phantom Pain director Hideo Kojima took to a holiday livestream to introduce the headgear seen above, which Kotaku explains will be offered to players that are repeatedly caught or killed. Once equipped, the chicken hat will make enemies notice Snake a bit more slowly (and make story moments more ridiculous, as it will be perched atop Snake's head during cutscenes). We don't have an idea of when exactly we'll be able to sneak through The Phantom Pain in style, but at least we have an idea of what to expect based on an extensive chunk of gameplay Kojima demonstrated last year. [Image: Konami]
Say cheese and die - Watch Metal Gear Online's premiere
Selfies, cardboard boxes, cuddly toys, balloons, robots, Kiefer Sutherland and tons of violence. No, it's not the 24 Christmas party but in fact the video premiere for the new Metal Gear Online, as showcased during last week's Game Awards. If you missed it over the weekend, you can check it out now below the break. And yes, that is who you think it is in the photo above. Konami also released a bundle of new screens this morning which you view in the gallery, along with some info about MGO. As per last generation's edition and Metal Gear Solid 4, MGO is Konami's name for the online multiplayer mode in Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain. While it gets its own fancy title like Grand Theft Auto Online, like Rockstar's offering it's included with The Phantom Pain at no additional cost. Konami also revealed players can expect a class system in the new multiplayer mode, along with appearances from familiar faces like, yup, Ocelot. Also, it's confirmed MGO is going live and online with the launch of The Phantom Pain, which remains due for sometime in 2015.
Watch 20 minutes of new gameplay from MGS5: The Phantom Pain
Hopefully witnessing 20 minutes of new gameplay footage direct from Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain can alleviate the sting of learning that Metal Gear maestro Hideo Kojima refuses to commit to a release date any more specific than a nebulous "2015." [Image: Konami]
Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, Ground Zeroes coming to Steam
Update: In a video featuring Snake sneaking around in a box stamped with the Steam logo, Hideo Kojima has officially announced Metal Gear Sold 5: The Phantom Pain and Ground Zeroes is coming to PC. The announcement was made during Konami's special Metal Gear Preview Party, broadcast on Twitch. No release date was revealed, only that Ground Zeroes would release first. Original Post: Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain and Ground Zeroes are coming to Steam. The news comes by way of Konami's official European site, which seems to have accidentally revealed the announcement prior to tonight's planned Metal Gear preview event. Though the press release Konami Europe's site is pointing to is no longer found online [link], we've discovered a text snippet of the announcement: Tonight's MGSV:TPP Preview Show revealed; with a twist of METAL GEAR SOLID humour, that MGSV: THE PHANTOM PAIN and GROUND ZEROES will be available on Steam, release date yet to be disclosed. The event featured a surprise message from Kiefer Sutherland; the voice of 'Snake', announcing an exclusive gamescom pre-order deal. Fans who attended received vouchers offering a 5 EURO discount on the PlayStation®4 and Xbox One versions of MGSV:TPP. This pre-order deal is also available at the KONAMI booth (Hall 7.1) – so if you're planning to visit gamescom, be sure to swing by! We'll be announcing more pre-order deals over the next few months, stay tuned. Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain had previously only been confirmed to arrive for Xbox One, PS4, PS3 and Xbox 360. Ground Zeroes, the prologue to The Phantom Pain's story, was released earlier this year.
Old box learns new tricks in Metal Gear Solid: Phantom Pain
The cardboard box has been a Metal Gear mainstay for decades, but in Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain the corrugated gadget has picked up a few new tricks. Metal Gear Solid director Hideo Kojima took the stage at Sony's Gamescom press conference to demonstrate a few of the new tactics Snake can employ with the help of his cardboard pal. Not only can Snake use the box to crawl around without attracting attention, he can also maneuver into position, pop out of the box, fire off a few shots, then duck back into cover. Instead of killing foes, pacifist soldiers can opt to use the Fulton device to kidnap them directly from the battlefield like so many hapless goats. If you'd rather avoid enemy soldiers, the box also offers a new suite of distraction tools. Snake can now attach photographs to the sides of the box, including a saluting soldier that will fool enemies into thinking you're one of them, and a picture of a bikini model that will draw lecherous troops in a hurry. Once they're within range, you can leave the box in place as a decoy or use CQC techniques to repay their devotion to a photograph with a series of rapid strikes. For a full demonstration, see the trailer below the break. [Image: Konami]
Catch the Metal Gear Solid 5 preview at the Gamescom gala
In a powerful demonstration of the mantra "go big or go home," Konami will be previewing Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain not on a show floor, but at a special gala event in Cologne, Germany, the company has announced. The celebration will take place at the Cologne Musical Dome at 8 p.m. CET on August 13, coinciding with Gamescom 2014. The event will also be streamed via Konami's Twitch page, meaning you won't have to be a globe-trotting super-spy in order to attend. Simply tune in at 11 a.m. Pacific / 2 p.m. Eastern to catch the preview as it happens. A related Konami press release promises a live Q&A session with Metal Gear Solid series creator Hideo Kojima, as well as "a few surprises." Considering the last "surprise" turned out to be a massive fake-out revolving around a fake company and a Swedish pseudonym, we can't even begin to imagine what Kojima has in mind. [Image: Konami]
Watch Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain's E3 demo
Snake? Yo, Snake? Snake! Oh, there you are. Hey Snake, check it: You've read our E3 preview of Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain and its animal-ballooning hijinks. Now watch all 30 minutes of the E3 demo for yourself in this recorded Konami stream. [Image: Konami]
Seen@E3: A visual history of Metal Gear
The walls outside the theater of Konami's E3 2014 detail a visual history of one of the company's most famous franchises. One poster showcases the evolution of Snake from his days as a bundle of pixels on the MSX to the gruff, high-res hero in Kojima's upcoming Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain. Another poster gives players a history of its various weaponized tanks, the titular Metal Gears. A third poster breaks down the environments Snake has infiltrated over the years. For fans, it's a wonderful display of the stealth-action franchise's history and something we had to try very hard not to steal to put on our walls at home. Thankfully, Konami released high-resolution images of each poster. Time to go to the printer!
Recruiting goats and researching cardboard in Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain
The in-game demo of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain features an impressive array of technology, from Fox Engine's fantastic character models and dynamic weather effects to its day and night cycle and open-world locales. Oh, and also, you have the ability to attach a surface-to-air recovery balloon to a goat and send it flying toward your home base. Clearly, the engine's most impressive feat.
Metal Gear Solid must reflect the era in which it's made, Kojima says
Following a demo of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, prominent game designer Hideo Kojima told Joystiq, through a translator, that it's important for media to reflect the era in which it is developed. Games with authorship tell a story beyond what appears within the product's narrative, he said; they give players a perspective on the state of the world at the time of a game's development. Some games lack that authorship, he said.
Sony 'in talks' with Metal Gear Solid movie director
Sony Pictures has finally infiltrated movie development hell on a sneaking mission to make its Metal Gear Solid movie. A Tuesday report in Deadline said the studio is in talks with director Jordan Vogt-Roberts to bring Hideo Kojima's tale of espionage and nuclear missile firing bipedal tanks to the big screen. Vogt-Roberts last movie was The Kings of Summer, a coming of age movie about teenagers building a house in the woods. The teenagers were not part of an elite soldier squad with crazy animal names. Sony Pictures has been trying to get its Metal Gear Solid movie in production since 2007. Last word about the project came in 2012, during the series' 25th anniversary celebration. Kojima and Konami announced that it was partnering with producer Avi Arad on the adaptation. Arad is largely responsible for the current boom of superhero movies, having produced early hits like Blade, X-Men, and Sony Pictures' own hugely successful Spider-Man series. While he's long held ambitions to bring the same success to video game to film adaptations, having been attached to properties like Mass Effect and Uncharted, he's yet to bring those plans to fruition. The one and only completed video game movie Arad produced was 1993's Double Dragon. [Images: Konami]
Metal Gear creator Kojima talks Snatcher, potential mobile adventures
Though it's not likely that we'll see a Hideo Kojima game on mobile devices in the near future, it is a possibility that the Metal Gear Solid creator has put some thought into. In a interview broadcast via Twitch, Kojima sat down with Geoff Keighley to field questions from the public. When asked if he'd ever develop a game for the mobile platform, Kojima stated that he has no desire to create the short, replayable diversions that constitute most mobile games. Instead, he cites indie hit Papers, Please as a personal favorite and claims that he would eventually like to develop "a practical, easy to play adventure game that is quite deep." "[I have] no idea when I'll be able to do this, but I'll ask," Kojima added via translator. "[H]opefully someday in the future I will be able to develop one of those, but unfortunately, right now, my full time is devoted to The Phantom Pain." A later question centered on the future of Snatcher, Kojima's cult classic adventure game that, while highly regarded, has been overshadowed by Metal Gear Solid. While Kojima would like to see Snatcher return, he has no time to develop a sequel himself, but wouldn't be opposed to someone else reviving the sci fi epic. "If someone wants to adapt those games ... I would definitely support that person, I would help out that person, but I don't think there are too many people like that."
Report: MGS5: The Phantom Pain could launch as late as 2015
Translating a conference call from Japan this week, analyst David Gibson reports that Konami's Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain could launch as late as December 2015 or as early as October 2014, depending on how development progresses over the coming months. Konami is currently focused on launching The Phantom Pain's prologue episode, Ground Zeroes, in March. Konami released its consolidated financial results for the first nine months of its 2013 fiscal year, revealing a 2.6 percent drop in net revenue compared with its earnings during the same period in 2012. Year-on-year losses in Konami's Digital Entertainment and Health and Fitness divisions are buoyed by gains in its casino and pachinko businesses. The company additionally notes a shift in consumer preference, resulting in lowered social game earnings and an increase in demand for native game apps, which take comparatively longer to develop. The majority of Konami's remaining console software lineup this quarter is slated to debut exclusively in Japan, with only Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 and Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes scheduled for worldwide releases. [Image: Konami]
PSA: Metal Gear Solid 5 still on for Xbox 360, PS3
Put your exclamation marks down! Despite previous-gen platform listings being absent from a recent Game Informer cover story, Konami has confirmed that Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain is still coming to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Hideo Kojima's next big title is also slated to hit Xbox One and PS4. "MGSV TPP [The Phantom Pain] will be available on both current and next gen!" a Konami representative told Joystiq. We hope that clears it up for the many readers that sent us questions and tips in the wake of Game Informer's story. The next installment of the Metal Gear story will ship in two pieces: a teaser adventure dubbed Ground Zeroes, due this March, followed by a complete sequel titled The Phantom Pain at an undetermined date. [Image: Kojima Productions]
Metal Gear Solid 5 map 'hundreds of times larger' than Ground Zeroes'
According to a Siliconera translation of a tweet by Hideo Kojima, the map for Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain is "hundreds of times larger" than the map being used for its prologue, Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes. The Ground Zeroes map also lacks real-time changes to the day and night cycle, though Kojima reportedly stated that each mission will offer different experiences. The Siliconera translation also reads that "GZ is both a prologue to the MGS5 story and, at the same time, a tutorial for a new MGS, which transitions to sneaking simulator." Are these statements hyperbole? Flat-out falsitudes? Or are they honest truth? With Kojima, you can never be sure.
Report: Kojima subtly reveals PlayStation-exclusive MGS5 content
It looks like exclusive Metal Gear Solid 5 content will be coming to Sony's platforms, assuming a side-long glance at a promotional poster tweeted by series creator Hideo Kojima is anything to go on. The image in question focuses on a new Metal Gear Solid 5 promotional poster. Next to the poster stands a cardboard plaque which contains words that are barely legible due to the size of the image in Kojima's original tweet. However, if you zoom in on the text, you're able to barely make out what the thing says: Metal Gear Solid V Ground Zeroes Prologue to Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Pain Takes place in 1975 after Peacewalker and nine years before the phantom pain Multiple missions and central story and side-ops missions Exclusive content for PlayStation platform Spring 2014 Videogamer came up with roughly the same interpretation of the blurry text as we just did, though we invite you all to take a crack at it for yourselves, either by visiting Kojima's tweet, or going directly to a much larger version of the image. It is currently unknown what this PlayStation-exclusive content might be. We contacted Metal Gear publisher Konami for more information, but were met with a boilerplate "no comment."
Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes ends wait in spring 2014 [update]
Konami will release Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes as a standalone prologue to MGS5: Phantom Pain next spring, and both games are confirmed to be coming to Xbox One, PS4, PS3, and Xbox 360. Konami UK tells us the packaged current-gen versions will be sold at £30, while downloadable versions are priced £20 on current-gen systems, and £30 on Xbox One and PS4; it's unclear if there'll packaged next-gen versions as well. While it's yet to be confirmed, we'd say that would translate into prices below $60 in North America. It's also unknown when Phantom Pain itself will be released. The relationship between Ground Zeroes and Phantom Pain has been as complicated as a Metal Gear Solid plot, but today's news brings some definite clarity to proceedings. Ground Zeroes was revealed first, then Phantom Pain cropped up after being teased as a game by fake outfit Moby Dick Studio. Once Phantom Pain was revealed to be a Metal Gear entry, it was then thought it and Ground Zeroes were part of the same game. Konami then stepped in to clarify they were two different games, and that brings us to today's resolution. In the words of series creator Hideo Kojima, then: "The advanced capabilities of the FOX Engine have allowed me to tell the new story in a new way. There will be a significant difference in what Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain brings to the series, so we want to ease players into the new open world environment and its potential. As such, Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes has been designed to introduce key elements, allowing them to fully benefit from all that the new game will offer." Update: Konami revealed the US prices for Ground Zeroes: $20 downloadable and $30 packaged on current-gen, and $30 downloadable on next-gen. Again, going by Konami's wording it seems the game will be downloadable-only on PS4 and Xbox One.
Julien Merceron joins Konami to oversee Fox Engine
Konami is betting big on Fox Engine, Kojima Productions' development suite powering the upcoming Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain. Julien Merceron has just been brought on to oversee Fox Engine as Konami's new worldwide technology director. "He will be a key member of our talented development community and be integral to ensuring that future titles will push the limits of what can be technically achieved, while ensuring they retain Konami's famed gameplay," Konami's European president, Shinji Hirano, told GamesIndustry International in a statement. "We welcome him and his talents to the team." Merceron spent the last seven years under the Square Enix umbrella, where he served as CTO at IO Interactive, Eidos and Crystal Dynamics before ascending to the position of global technology director for Square Enix proper. Prior to joining Square Enix, Merceron also served a stint at Ubisoft as worldwide technical director throughout the late '90s.
14 minutes of MGS: Ground Zeroes gameplay, opening in English
Konami released a 14 minute gameplay video of the Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes opening, as shown by Hideo Kojima at the Tokyo Game Show - look to the 2:00 mark for a wonderful note of that. The gameplay vid follows on from the very first footage we saw back of Ground Zeroes, which is now understood to be a distinct prologue part of Metal Gear Solid 5, although details are unclear. We first saw that opening sequence in Japanese back in September 2012. One year on, we've now got it in English, complete with added full-on Sutherland. Check it out below the break.
Metal Gear Solid 5 almost ditched iconic punctuation(!)
The iconic "!" of the Metal Gear Solid series was almost dropped from the upcoming Metal Gear Solid 5, series creator Hideo Kojima revealed in an interview with Weekly Famitsu. Kojima considered dropping the trope to help make the game more realistic, figuring that it could be replaced thanks to modern graphics capabilities. "Considering the console specs, it would have been possible to substitute with facial expressions and gestures," Kojima said. Staff working on the game warned Kojima that removing the "!" would cause an "uproar," and Kojima opted to keep it in. In the same interview, Kojima also expressed a desire to embrace another series staple: "I want to include the cardboard box." The more things change, the more they stay the same. Unless you're Snake's voice.
