On the heels of Monday’s first E3 press conference, YouTube Live stole some thunder from Halo, Gears of War, and the rest of Microsoft’s lineup by premiering an operatic new trailer for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Nearly six minutes in length, the usual assemblage of cutscene footage and evocative intertitles has an added sense of melancholy to it this time: the trailer is the last to be personally edited by series mastermind Hideo Kojima, who reportedly parted ways with developer Konami back in March.
Kojima, never known for being a particularly concise storyteller, gives you as close to a full Metal Gear experience as one can get in just six minutes. Set to New Order’s appropriately sprawling and wistful “Elegia,” the trailer settles on language as the theme of the day and game, with narration providing insight into Big Boss’s campaign to unite the world through a shared vernacular.
[zerggaming]Along the way, we get further proof of what a looker The Phantom Pain is going to be, as well as more evidence suggesting it’s going to be completely insane. Are those zombie soldiers? Why does Boss have a rock sticking out of his head, and why does it look like one of the ones bursting out of the ground in Afghanistan? Is that an operational Metal Gear near the end? How is any of this possible given the 1984 setting? We’ll have to wait until September 1st to get answers to these questions, and the many more to expect out of Kojima’s swan song.
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain will be going eye for eye, skull for skull on PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and PC.
