Metal Gear Solid Ground Zeroes Details from the PAX panel
At the PAX panel 2012, Hideo Kojima showed off the demo for Metal Gear Solid Ground Zeroes, and talked about the game in some more detail.
The demo was running on PC, with specs roughly the same as Xbox 360 and PS3. According to Kojima, the game will look like that on the consoles.
The demonstration started out with a cutscene. What is noticable about this is that it didn’t have any transitions. Kojima explained that the camera is moving seamlessly through the scene to convey the feeling of open world.
The scene starts out at a prison camp called Omega. A man with heavy burns on his head arrives, and walks to one of the cages, in which a child is imprisoned. According to the Kojima staff member who was giving the demo together with Kojima, this boy is Chico from Peace Walker.
We also get to hear a conversation between Miller and Big Boss, presumably the briefing for the current mission. What we can gather from this is that Paz is still alive, and she and Chico are being held prisoner on the south of Cuba. Miller mentions ‘our ‘friends’ at Cipher suspect she might be a double agent’. There’s talk of an imminent nuclear inspection at Mother Base, which would reveal the threat it poses. Big Boss realizes that ‘the whole world would shut us down’. His mission is to free Chico and Paz from the prison camp and try to get Paz to their side.
It is unclear who the burned man is, but it’s likely he is the main antagonist of this game. One thing to note is that he refers to MSF as ‘pirates’, the same word Coldman used in Peace Walker. But of course, this is a small link that could very well mean nothing.
After the intro a gameplay demo was shown, accompanied by Kojima’s commentary. The player takes control of Snake on top of a cliff overlooking the Cuban base. You can approach the base from any angle in any way you want. You can steal vehicles in the game (like helicopters and jeeps). You can also call in a helicopter from any point in the game, using a flare. The helicopter can provide cover fire, but you have to be careful that it won’t get spotted. You can let it play any song you want, but if you use a loud song you might get spotted because of that. You can use the helicopter to fly between missions and go to other countries.
Kojima Productions are not going to say it’s Metal Gear Solid 5 just yet, but it’s a prologue.
They want to recreate the Metal Gear Solid 1 feeling on the Fox Engine. A few examples of references to MGS1 are the fact that Snake is going through the mission alone. Another one is the quote by Miller: ‘Excellent Snake, age hasn’t slowed you down one bit.’ Thirdly, the shot of Snake removing his goggles was inspired by an artwork of Shinkawa for MGS1, the one that appears on the main menu of the game.
Ground Zeroes is something Kojima is developing personally himself, and putting all his effort into. Snake is back, but he is also back. Kojima also said that this isn’t the end, it’s just the beginning. They have big things planned at Kojima Productions.
Source: Hideo Kojima Introspective at GameSpot.
