On the latest edition of the Kojima Productions podcast, the crew talks plenty about Metal Gear Solid 4, revealing some interesting tidbits:
- The gunmetal “steel” PS3 isn’t a painted-over PS3, but an actual different type of material. Also, the Konami Store is already sold out of the bundle for that, so you’ll need to do your shopping elsewhere.
- The second Blu-ray disc coming with the Collector’s Edition isn’t done yet; in fact, they’re still trying to decide what to put on it, admittedly “cutting it close.” They say they should have an announcement about it soon, however.
- The normal edition of course just features the game, which they note is on a dual-layer Blu-ray as previously reported. They’ve been quite surprised at the reaction to that news, too; they really don’t get what the big deal is. “It’s just disc space.” They do admit that Metal Gear Solid 4 is the first game to use a dual-layer Blu-ray disc, confirming earlier rumors.
- Regarding Kojima’s story that there wasn’t enough space, the “real story on that” is that the game was originally planned for a single-layer Blu-ray disc, and they had everything allocated, but as they went on, they realized that a regular Blu-ray wouldn’t be enough. They pondered going to two discs, but then Sony came to them with the idea of being the first to try a dual-layer, which required a lot of testing and preparation.
They knew they were going to be going over the 25 GB limit, and from there, they began adding new stuff and allocating space, and before they knew it, they were nearly out of room on a dual-layer Blu-ray as well. “And so it’s really, really close at this point.”
- In addition to the game disc, and the bonus disc, there’s also the preorder disc, titled “Metal Gear Saga Volume 2,” available only in Europe and North America. It features a documentary of sorts that will help players get caught up with the fictional history of the franchise. It differs from Volume 1 in that it’s done by a different production house, and is said to wrap 4 into it a little better, plus a different narrator and writer help give it a fresh perspective on the saga of Metal Gear.
- Plus, in North America at least, you’ll get a code for the “MGO Premiere Beta,” as they’re calling it, as Japan already had a closed beta some months back. This version will feature two maps instead of one, including Grozny Grad, a stage taken from MGS3. Plus, there’s a new stage known simply as “Blood Bath,” which they say is a smaller stage better suited to close-quarters combat.
The beta will begin at the end of April, and run for about two weeks. As for when its released, they note that it’s not like a game, where they can say “Do not open ’til…” so it would be more a matter of whenever the retailer gets theirs, which they expect will be during the first two weeks of April. Harassment and calling the guys at EB and GameStop every day is their recommendation. They do note that the beta is not on the disc, but rather, you’ll use the code to download it from the PlayStation Store.
- They also note that the preorder disc won’t come in a cheap paper sleeve, but like Metal Gear Saga Volume 1, will come in a clear plastic case with embossed silver on it. They designed it alongside Volume 1 to appear as a collection should. Interesting to note, they say “hopefully, if there’s a Volume 3, it’ll look right” alongside the others.
- They go into some discussion about the award-winning Metal Gear Solid Mobile, which is carried exclusively by Verizon Wireless, and can be purchased on “Get It Now”-able handsets for $4.99 for monthly access, or $10.99 for unlimited. They mention the game has replay value, suggesting branching paths, but didn’t want to give away too much.
- After some discussion of Monster Hunter for the PS3 and mustaches, they get to talking a bit more about Metal Gear Online, as a listener asks about what methods or game-types are being implemented, and whether players will be forced to group together and if there will even be any stealth/tactical gameplay.
They describe the core concept of MGO as being cooperative gameplay, rather than one-man-for-himself-styled online multiplayer. The two key elements are the skill system, wherein you decide by yourself what skills you want to equip, which changes the gameplay as you choose between faster movement or mastery of handguns; they liken it to Call of Duty 4 in that regard. But unlike CoD, you can level up those certain abilities, swapping in others to level up, and coming back to your originals later.
“If you have handgun mastery equipped, you’ll start at level one, and the accuracy will be pretty good, better than normal if you have that equipped, but if you play with it enough and use enough handguns, that’s going to gain experience and you’ll go up to level two with even better accuracy.”
- They describe the cooperative elements of the game, the “SOP” (for “Sons of the Patriots”) system, which encourages players at the beginning of the match to link up with their teammates. Hit the triangle button, and all the squad members will do a sort of salute as they link up through a sort of “digital stream.”
They liken the visual aspect to Halo, where you can see where teammates are, but also what they’re doing through a digital silhouette. It enables you to tell whether they’re in battle or not, what their health is, or even if they’re dead. But, if someone dies, then they’re out of the link, and have to find a teammate and reconnect after respawning.
“That kind of seperates the novices from the more experienced players, because the beginners forget to link up; sometimes even at the beginning of the match, they’ll forget to hit the triangle button and just go off, playing at random… So I just hope that the experienced players are going to teach the beginners, and say ‘make sure you link up at the beginning of the match, because this is going to help us win.'”
- Moving on to how MGO is going to be accessed, a listener asks “How will we load up Metal Gear Online? When we load up Metal Gear Solid 4, will we choose whether we want to play MGS4 or MGO from a menu?”
“When you load up MGS4, you get the main menu: Load New Game, New Game, Options, then Metal Gear Online. And then from there, you go into Metal Gear Online, so it’s not going to be something that’s on the cross-media bar when you put it in the disc. You have to go into Metal Gear Solid 4, and then you go into MGO.”
- Another reader asks about rumors of the original Metal Gear Solid for the PS1 hitting the PlayStation Network soon, and if they’ll confirm/deny.
They say that the original is available on the Japanese PSN, in Japanese of course, and that you can download it for play on the PSP. All for about 800 yen, or about seven or eight dollars.
However, there are no plans for the US at this point; they’re going to gauge user interest in Japan and how much they download it. They add, in jest, that “interest is very low, so we’re probably not going to do it.”
They wrap things up with some talk about “crazy things done in the name of getting a Metal Gear game,” and there’s one anecdote that’s pretty good about a guy using “CQC” on a thief in a mall that’s pretty good, but too long to quote here. If you’re interested in that and their thoughts on Monster Hunter, be sure to listen to the podcast linked below.
