Oct 30th 1-2-3: The Man Who Sold The World’s Biggest Secret-Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain
Greetings and welcome back to the compendium!
In continuation of this little series I’ve been doing, covering all of Hideo Kojima’s works, lets move on to the next title in his titles.
So without further ado, what’s the story behind Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain?
1: The Story Behind The Story ( 6 minute read )
Leading up to the development of MGSV Hideo Kojima had been working with Konami for about 30 years.
He began all the way back in 1986, went on to working his way up to directing his own title, and then created Metal Gear.
From then on he had been, brick by brick, building the Metal Gear franchise’s characters, world, and philosophies.
He had also created one of the most recognizable characters of all gaming, Solid Snake, and had told one of the most interesting and philosophically rich stories in gaming; a story made even more poignant in the days of today considering how history, the usage of social media, and the ‘advancements’ of war have turned out in the real world.
Leading up to the reveal of ‘Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes’, the ‘ruse’ announcement of ‘Project Phantom Pain’, through to the release of ‘MGS:GZ’ as well as (Silent Hills interactive teaser) ‘P.T.’ Konami had seemingly understood that Kojima needed his space to ‘do his thing’ and they were seemingly willing to let him.
And with Phantom Pain, Kojima planned to ‘close the loop’ on what he had called his ‘Metal Gear Saga.’
With MGSV the complete story of Big Boss was going to be revealed; we would finally know what the man who sold the world’s biggest secret was.
It would fully ‘close the loop’ on that tiny bit of story ‘we the players’ still did not know about what had transpired from Operation Snake Eater, to the Guns of the Patriots incident.
It would complete, and lineup, the story of Peace Walker right into Metal Gear(1987), finally giving us the only little patch of Metal Gear history that still hadn’t been told.
It was going to be The Phantom Pain.
From Peace, to Ground Zeroes; from Ground Zeroes to Phantom Pain.
As Kojima had said many times before this, he never planned to work on Ground Zeroes or Phantom Pain.
It was something he had said so consistently along with his typical statements of “this is the last Metal Gear game” that, as a fan of the series, was slowly becoming almost a comedically misunderstood reflection of what he actually meant.
However he gave more insight to what he actually meant during interviews regarding the development of MGSV in particular.
There were two main reasons why he always said these things, one reason I’ll give you right now, the other a bit later.
The first reason was that he had always planned to ‘hand off’ the Metal Gear franchise to a younger developer, and he even did that with Metal Gear Rising, however just during pre production conversations he saw how the younger developers were going to struggle to handle they true weight of the numbered ‘mainline’ titles.
He saw how they struggled to write for it, develop for it, and carry the financial/marketing weight of such an IP with as much renown as Metal Gear.
So being that Kojima is a man of endless ideas, he always found himself in a position where, being that he was the executive content officer at Konami, it made more sense for him to continue carrying the weight of the franchise himself as he was much more experienced with it; he knew how particular the IP was, how easy it was to do poorly, and how grand a failure it would be for everyone involved if handed to the wrong person.
Now with this constant stream of ideas he decided to tell the last strand of Big Boss’ story, while also building off of/refining a some of the mechanics he had lightly dabbled with in Peace Walker.
He decided to make this title in the MGS franchise much more interactive than ever before, and to assist this endeavor he also decided to make MGSV an open-world game with the setting of Afghanistan/Africa.
As the team developed all these mechanics they put together a smaller project to test some of these ideas on a smaller scale, and thus Ground Zeroes was born.
Ground Zeroes was made to test mechanics in this ‘open world’ type of gameplay, as well as to tell the first chapter of The Phantom Pain story through the eyes of the real Big Boss.
One of the main fundamental mechanics he brought back over was the Fulton Recovery System from PW, but this time you could recover far more than you ever could before, and all of which would be used to further develop and build out your own personal Mother Base.
For instance you could now recover full cargo crates of resources for your base and gear upgrades.
Or any enemy soldier you met on the battlefield, to basically any type of wild animal you could find throughout the open word of Afghanistan/Africa.
Or maybe any one of a various array of military weaponry/artillery, from tanks and humvees to literal artillery cannons.
You could even ‘tactically recover’ something from inside an enemy base to distract or draw the attention of the enemies within. Your options with the new Fulton System were truly interactive with the surrounding environment and the new enemy AI, making your tactical potentiality basically endless.
Speaking of all this ‘new enemy AI’ and ‘interactivity’ between these mechanics.
The new take on enemy AI was rather ambitious and remarkable.
You see, MGSV didn’t have a difficulty slider, instead it had ‘Adaptive Difficulty.’
All enemies had their own day/night routines, and routes that they’d follow throughout the days that you could learn to exploit.
Though that’s not to say these ‘exploitations’ would always work.
Because along with this rather complex enemy AI came a system that would also learn what ‘weaknesses’ you were exploiting, and would compensate by developing counter measures against your strategies.
For instance if you typically found yourself taking out enemies with headshots, then after a while, more and more enemies would begin wearing helmets that prevented you from popping them in the head with one single bullet.
If you always attacked through the night, they would begin wearing night vision goggles.
If you always attacked with snipers from afar, then they’d begin using spotters and mortars to take care of you from afar.
Hell if you even used too much CQC, they’d begin to learn how to counter CQC.
Another mechanic that was ‘refined’ for Phantom Pain was the signature cardboard box, and that too came with a load of upgrades.
You could pop out the top of it to surprise and shoot enemies that were nearby, you could cannonball slide right of the front of it, or you could even develop a version that had a decoy sticker of the enemy that would stand upright along with snake to confuse real enemies when standing up in the box.
One of the main mechanics brought back from PW was the whole base building portion of the game, only this time it wasn’t controlled through just a menu, it was also real physical base you could walk around, talk and taunt your soldiers, and see develop slowly with your own eyes over the course of your playthrough.
Basically everything you do in MGSV is to either progress the story, develop more gear for your missions, or build out your own personal private military on your own personal private Mother Base.
Mechanically, The Phantom Pain is still an incredibly remarkable title.
Now what I’ve given you is a much more truncated overview of what all the things you could do within the game.
I still haven’t even mentioned how awesome the viewfinder worked, the whole buddy system, calling in various supports via your trusty helicopter, all the arm augmentations, etc…
What it mechanically sets itself to be, it pulls off and works far better than I think anyone really gives it credit for, and its in a lot of ways ‘Tactical Espionage Action’ at its most ‘mechanically’ refined form.
So based off of what a remarkable game I’ve told you Phantom Pain was, why did so many fans draw ire with this title?
Well that was an issue of its story…
Or rather an issue of its ‘missing’ story.
The Real Phantom Pain
To describe MGSV’s story as ‘nonexistent’ is truly a brutal statement…
However as a massive fan, who up to today will preach that the game definitely has ‘value’, that statement is unfortunately true.
Kojima had set off to tell this final piece of the Metal Gear puzzle, fitting perfectly in between Peace Walker and Metal Gear (1987).
His plan was to tell this story in a somewhat ‘episodic’ sort of style.
But not in the literal ‘I’m waiting for the next episode’, ‘Telltale eqsue’ sort of way.
What he planned to do, was quite literally what he had just done with Peace Walker.
A mission by mission, story beat by story beat, sort of format; only with full voice acting, fully rendered cutscenes, and his ‘trademark’ endlessly thoughtful way of storytelling.
I want to create a game that even people like me that don’t have too much time to sit down and play the game for a long time can play through it. There will be long missions, there will be rather short missions, there will be kind of episodic chapters like a TV series and if you have time you play these chapters. When you have time, you build up your Mother Base. Eventually your character starts developing, and when you put it all together it becomes a huge story, that’s the way I try to create it.” - Hideo Kojima, in an interview with Tim Turi with Gameinformer
Sounds like an alright plan considering how well he showed a story could be told in this way with what he did with Peace Walker, which only leaves one question.
Where did this damn story go?!
Well, there’s a lot of takes on what happened, and being that within the files of the game there was script for a non-existent ‘Act 3’, the overall consensus has been that the game released in a unfinished state.
But why?
The long in short, in my humble opinion, is that there was a lot of contractual red tape barring Kojima from speaking on the true reality of MGSV. But I also believe that after an alleged ‘falling out’ with Konami they began to surgically remove Kojima from his work, forcing the game to be mechanically finished, sealed, and released regardless of the progress of the rest of the game.
I also believe there’s enough reliably confirmed information to paint a picture of what happened.
Some call Kojima a ‘visionary’, or an ‘auteur’, or a ‘genius,’ and that’s all fine and dandy.
But pretensions and aggrandizement aside, he’s a creative that understands the concept of ‘creating for an audience of one.’
He had also shown a level of persistence, or some might even call it ‘stubbornness’, with bringing his ‘vision’ to life, and I think that behind the scenes that might have been quite the pain in the ass for executives at Konami.
Then by the time of MGSV development, with a project this large, and a marketing scheme this high effort; I think they had enough.
Around the time the release date for MGSV was announced, Konami announced that they were going through ‘corporate restructuring’. They made no mention of then executive content officer Hideo Kojima.
Soon after Konami quietly removed ‘Kojima Productions’ and ‘A Hideo Kojima Game’ from all marketing for MGSV
Gamespot soon after reported on a falling out between Konami and Kojima Productions citing “power struggles,” the report said, Konami had “restricted access to corporate internet, emails, and phone calls” for senior Kojima Productions officials.
They then shelved the Silent Hills project entirely. A project that was a collaborative effort between Kojima, Guillermo Del Toro, Junji Ito, and Norman Reedus.
They did so in a way that Del Toro has described as a “scorched earth approach.” He noted, “It was not a gentle and ambiguous cancellation.”
On October 9th of 2015, Kojima left Konami’s offices for the last time after a ‘farewell party’ that some employees described as ‘rather cheerful but emotional’.
And that was it, that was the end of Kojima Productions as we knew it then.
The result of this for MGSV is that the game is ‘mechanically finished’, however its story is very clearly unfinished; or rather ‘abandoned’.
Now from what is there, along with was Kojima had teased in interviews, you can definitely get the idea of what the story is about.
The greatest secret of the Big Boss is revealed, his secret clone, the realities of the ‘legend’ he was crafting through this double; all the key details are there, but its not told in the most compelling way, and its missing certain contextual details that we all know Kojima would’ve definitely gotten into.
Most of all..
We all know this wasn’t was Kojima intended the game to be.
Its a husk of what it was supposed to be, and that visage we had all built in our heads of ‘Kojima’s MGSV’ leading up to its release has in the most ironic turn of events, itself became its own sort of Phantom Pain for what ‘Konami’s MGSV’ actually is.
Now this isn’t a sad story for Kojima.
Its more so like those moments for a character where they are beaten and broken, only for them to lick their wounds, then return with a determination they never had before.
Kojima went on to get a loan from a bank to start a new Kojima Productions, only to find that Konami had spread word and had him basically blocked from obtaining a loan from most national banks over in Japan.
Only to, out of happen stance, reach bank teller who was a huge fan of his.
Strings were pulled and he got his loan.
His process searching for a studio to work out of was similar.
Consistent rejection due to Konami’s word, only to find a friend within one of his fans, then he had a studio to work from.
But without the Fox Engine he had developed for Konami over the last decade or so, he went to fellow studios to ‘shop’ for a pre existing engine to use for his next title.
He found himself at Guerilla Games (Killzone Franchise, Horizon Franchise), and when they heard what he was looking for they stopped him, then brought out a little gift box, and within this gift box was a drive with their entire Decima Engine.
They simply gifted him their own in-house engine.
And thus the new era of Kojima Productions was in place.
The key in all of this was Kojimas persistence, his love for creativity, and his innate ability to ‘create for an audience of one.’
But how he was able to move on from a franchise he worked on for over 30 years, and how he was even able to create a franchise that would last that long I believe is within the second reason why he always said “This is my last metal gear”
I told you I’d give you this later, and no I have not forgotten.
The Second reason why he always says he’s working on his last title, and such like that, is because he is focused on the present.
And this time — I’ll say it again — this is the last one. Not the last Metal Gear, but the last one I’ll work on. This is my focus when I go into working on a game. Every game I make, I create thinking it’s really, really going to be the last game I create. So I put as much as I can in and make sure I have no regrets. - Kojima with Time magazine
He’s not so much saying that because he believes it’s truly his ‘last’, though that definitely was the case with MGSV, he’s saying that because he’s able to focus and pour everything he has within him into the project he is currently working on.
All for the express purpose of making it the best he possibly can.
He does it so that he has no regrets.
He does it for his ‘audience of one.’
He does it for himself.
2: Creative Insights From Us
I. Put your everything into your art. We as creatives must have output, so that we can have input. Or in other words, you’ll surely never run out of creative ideas if you keep getting them out, but if you don’t get them out then you’ll become ‘creatively constipated.’ So while you output, give it your all!
II. Stay the long road, stay persistent, seek to bring your vision into the world in a way that communicates with the consumers of your art. Create for an audience of one, create for an audience of just you.
3: Inspirational Quotes From Hideo Kojima
I. “It’s almost like a disease. I’m imagining things all the time. … Even when I’m talking to my family, in my head I’m in a totally different world.”
II. “Well honestly, there are only 24 hours in a day. If I could, I would love to use all those 24 hours as creative time … what I want to emphasize … creation is always priority number one.”
III. “We live in the era of the search engine. … Ours is now a life of passive acquisition. But the joy of finding is gone, as is the catharsis of going to great trouble in searching for something and finding it.”
Thank you so much for reading!