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PS3 | Action | Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

Boxart for Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots 186 screen shots
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Preview: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

Preview by Vicious Sid & Mr. Marbles | 01/26/2007 | 15:28:26 PM PST

Weapon mods! Online plans! PSP-to-PS3! With Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Kojima's cooking up a whole new batch of stealth genius.

Click HERE to go directly to GamePro's complete, exclusive Q&A with Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima.

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"You're very sharp with your questions," Hideo Kojima says with a twinkle in his eye, "but I want you to refrain from sharp questions." Ho, ho, ho. We're sitting in a small meeting room tucked inside Konami's offices in Roppongi Hills. Though we're in Tokyo's party district, we're not here to party. We're here for answers about Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, the PlayStation 3 game everybody wants but nobody knows much about. Except Hideo Kojima, that is, the long-time director for the series.

In an interview setting, Kojima is a notoriously tough nut to crack. He's known for spinning a delicate spider web of information, sticking to minutia and broad, expansive generalities. In our talk, he sprinkles our back-and-forth with phrases like "I cannot reveal everything" and "I can't say so much about that." Even our very first question sets the tone. We want to talk a bit about the storyline, we begin. Kojima chuckles knowingly.

Uh-oh.

Thankfully, Kojima quickly warmed up to our questions. Metal Gear Solid 4 is, after all, one of the most-desired games on the planet, and it's hard to keep a secret these days.

War Has Changed

It seems that Kojima's mind is on war. Given the current state of world politics, that's not surprising. "When I was young and I thought about war, it was always about the 1970s and Vietnam. Jungle warfare," Kojima says. "Now it's different for everybody." Hence Metal Gear Solid 4's Middle Eastern setting, one of many Snake will visit over the course of the game. (Kojima Productions has researched South America and Eastern Europe as well). Kojima has released only footage from the Middle Eastern segment, but that's because he's deliberately evoking common themes found in countless other first-person shooters. "At first, you may feel [MGS4] is based on the same old FPS scenarios," he says, "but it is not and that is deliberately so."

In fact, Kojima nearly set Metal Gear Solid 4 against the backdrop of a full-blown World War III, which he thought could serve as a suitably big "finale" for the series. But then Kojima wrote off the idea of World War III entirely, switching gears to a new, darker premise that would set Snake amidst a non-stop cycle of war-for-profit fought by private military companies (PMCs).

Looking back, Snake's old adventures seem almost laughably cartoonish compared to this game's grim, unrelenting vision of never-ending war. War planes darken the skies, while monstrous bio-engineered bipeds prowl from building to building, looking to crush enemy combatants with their powerful legs. It's into this blighted world that series protagonist Solid Snake returns...but he's seen better days.

The new and improved Snake

The new and improved Snake


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