Speaking to EGM, Hideo Kojima has revealed that he hopes to expand his body of work away from the Metal Gear brand, and is including some new “concepts” in the upcoming Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes that will be used in the future for a new intellectual property.
“I’m often misinterpreted. I’ve always said that I want to work on original properties, but Metal Gear offers plenty of benefits. The Fox Engine, for example, took a lot of time and money [to create]; we were only able to develop it because it was intended for the next Metal Gear. In the next game, I’m introducing concepts intended for entirely new intellectual properties using the Metal Gear brand.”
Kojima did not state what the exact new concepts are or what the new IP will be, however, he did reveal that Grand Theft Auto III was a big influence on the open world nature of Ground Zeroes. He described the open world aspects of GTA III as something that “opened” his eyes, as it provided the player with such a vast area to explore that “even the game designer could [not] predict all possible outcomes”.
Later in the interview Kojima described how he hopes to break away from the shadow of Metal Gear at some point to work on other projects, saying:
“I’ll admit that I hope my future endeavors are thought of as ‘works by Hideo Kojima’ rather than ‘from the creator of Metal Gear”. I haven’t really shown the world what else I might be capable of yet. This may sound pretentious, but I don’t like being thought of as ‘the Metal Gear guy.’ There’s a lot more I can do.”
Personally I’m very excited to see what projects Kojima would like to do outside the Metal Gear universe, however, I suspect that it will be a long time before we see anything on that front. Development is still underway on Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes, and at this point Konami has not even announced its release window. Judging from Kojima’s statement it sounds as if we will first have to wait for Zeroes, and then possible another “new IP using the Metal Gear brand” before he will be able to branch out to completely new projects.
Source: OXM
