Elysium Magazine had no doubt that Hideo Kojima could not stay away from “Metal Gear Solid” for very long, as soon as Konami announced yet another game in the franchise, “Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes” we were super excited!
Beyond the expectedly ridiculous name, viewers of the trailer that came with the announcement at PAX Prime last week managed to glean quite a few details. For example, we know that the game will be returning to the series’ tertiary protagonist, Naked Snake/Big Boss!
The trailer shows a disfigured general wandering through an American military base on the southern tip of Cuba, out of United States jurisdiction. He appears to be working for a military group called ‘XOF,’ whose sign bears some similarities to FOX. It’s also clearly fox spelled backwards, so it’s likely that it has some connection to Big Boss’s former unit.
Some other details we know include that the game appears to take place in or immediately after 1974, as Chico (a young boy from the last game, which definitely did take place in 1974). Paz, another Peace Walker character, is also mentioned and seems to have survived her ordeal from the closing moments of the previous title and would had to have been rescued shortly after the finale in order to have realistically remained alive.
Adding to Kojima’s ever-growing pantheon of self-references, Big Boss has adopted the physical appearance of his cloned progeny, Solid Snake. He now looks like the “Metal Gear Solid 4” version of the character, otherwise known as Old Snake. In case you had ever wondered just how crazy Kojima’s franchise could get, now you have an idea.
Guess what, a preview of the gameplay left us in awe, it looked amazing! The reason it looked so good was because Ground Zeroes was shown entirely on Kojima’s new Fox graphics engine. Characters move distinctly and fluidly, rain and water effects leave the environment looking slick and the demo’s lighting is superb!
While some actual game play is shown in the trailer, the PAX Prime demo was reportedly run entirely on a PC, rather than a current console. While Konami is claiming that the Fox Engine will be able to run on current generation hardware, many media outlets are suggesting it maybe for the next-gen consoles!
If “Ground Zeroes” really is a game built for the next generation, it sets a high mark for things yet to come. Discussions of a day/night cycle only adds to the anticipation of the next MGS instalment! We are very excited about what trouble Snake could get himself into this time but we have a long wait to find out!
