After bringing you the gist of what the Kojima Report podcast had to reveal this week, one might think that there's nothing else to be said. But then, one might be wrong. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots has been touted as many things, not the least of which being a huge hit waiting to happen for Sony, just waiting to show what the PlayStation 3 is capable of. It has also been touted as possibly being the final Metal Gear Solid game helmed by Producer Hideo Kojima, and the final adventure of Solid Snake. And who knows? These things could all very well be true. But at the same time, this truth could yet mask a deeper truth still. Kojima Report host Ryan Payton might have let slip something more than he intended on the recent edition of the podcast when they began talking about the bonus preorder disc "Metal Gear Saga: Volume 2," exclusive to North America and Europe as its predecessor was when included with Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence. In it, he discussed the lengths they were going to so that the case for Volume 2 would match and sit well alongside Volume 1, and during that conversation, he said the following to his guests:
Have you seen the Metal Gear Saga: Volume 1, do you have that? It's in that same kind of clear DVD case, it's designed [indecipherable], it's got that embossed silver on it. We designed it just right, right next to the Volume 1, so if you put it on your shelf, it's gonna be, you know, symmetric, and it's going to look like a collection, so hopefully if there's a Volume 3, it's gonna look-- [he pauses, and what he says after is hard to make out; sounds like he says "it's gonna look awesome," but is drowned out by Mark McDonald].
Now, let's stop and think about this for just a second. Metal Gear Saga: Volume 3? If the first was a preorder exclusive for Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence, and the second was a preorder bonus for Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, and if MGS4 is speculated to be the end, then what could it possibly come with? After all, the guys at Kojima Productions would know better than anyone as to what they have in their future after Metal Gear Solid 4. And a fair bet is that such an item wouldn't be a preorder bonus for a new Boktai. We already know that Hideo Kojima is ready to move on to other ventures that lie outside the realm of the Metal Gear universe. And between Solid Snake's age thanks to FoxDie and imagery like this, it's at best questionable as to how much longer our heroic homage to Kurt Russell and Michael "Kyle Reese" Biehn will be around for. Of course, one has to ask, what is a Metal Gear Solid game without Kojima? But it's no small secret that Kojima has tried previously to step down from his role, which of course elicted some very negative reactions. But it would certainly not be the first time that a creator has stepped away from a franchise which they helped birth; creators of Sonic the Hedgehog Naoto Ohshima (character design), Hirokazu Yasuhara (game planner), and Yuji Naka (programming) have all left SEGA and the Blue Blur behind; Keiji Inafune, often regarded as the father of Mega Man isn't nearly as involved as he once was with the many, many successive series that have since spawned; and even Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of Mario and Zelda, is so busy overseeing so many of Nintendo's projects that he's not quite the creative force in those properties that he was when he imagined a carpenter braving a construction site to face a towering ape. Not to say it would turn out bad if Kojima handed the reigns over; Castlevania has made a nice name for itself ever since Koji "IGA" Igarashi took the reigns. As regards our protagonist, some may wonder how the Metal Gear Solid franchise could possibly continue without Solid Snake. But long before there was Metal Gear Solid, there was simply Metal Gear, and other iterations of the series have dropped that part of Snake's namesake for the likes of Acid and Ghost Babel though admittedly the latter was renamed "Solid" for the US release on Game Boy Color. And furthermore, true fans of the series know that Solid Snake, as well as his brothers Liquid and Solidus, are actually clones of the original Snake from Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, who later became a series villain. In addition to that, Raiden's role in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and the presence of an Online game shows Konami's willingness to extend the role of protagonist beyond Solid Snake, and a number of avenues which they could follow in order to do so. Of course, this is all conjecture based on what we know from past installments in the series, plus Payton's words, though accidental they may be. Kombo will attempt to follow-up on this story, and see if fans of the Metal Gear franchise will have anything to look forward to after the Guns of the Patriots sound off.
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