If you are holding out for a proper fifth Metal Gear Solid, the rumor mill has handed you another reason to hope. According to a report credited to PSM3 magazine, Hideo Kojima has two announcements lined up for E3 in June. The magazine describes one as a natural next step for an existing game, says little about the other, and adds that it would be stunned if MGS5 failed to appear in some form.
Neither Konami nor Kojima Productions has confirmed anything, so treat this as a rumor for now. What makes it worth a second look is that it lands on top of a year of hints from Kojima himself, and those clues keep circling back to the series that made his name.
A Year Of Hints From Kojima Himself
The clearest statement so far came last July in a Famitsu interview translated by Andriasang, in which Kojima said his next game would be either MGS5 or an original game, and that those were his only two choices. He described the engine for it as already running, said his top staff had been gathered for it, and apologized to Zone of the Enders fans, explaining that a new Anubis would have to wait.
Since then he has kept fans guessing on Twitter. In early February he wrote about working on what he called his “devil project” in a pair of tweets, mentioning plot adjustments and an additional project, but he has not said what the devil project is. He has also joked at a Metal Gear cosplay event that making a fifth entry would let him stay at Konami a few more years, and he has said he would like to show a new game at Tokyo Game Show 2011 on which he handles the design, the script and the direction himself.
Where A Fifth Metal Gear Solid Could Land
Fans have good reason to be careful. Kojima has talked about stepping away from Metal Gear more than once, and each time the series has pulled him back. Peace Walker, which he directed and which launched on PSP last year, was at one point treated as a numbered sequel during planning before the five was dropped, and Kojima himself has called it a full scale follow up.
The series is hardly idle in the meantime. Metal Gear Solid Rising, the Raiden focused action game announced for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC, is still in the works, and a Metal Gear Solid project is coming to Nintendo’s 3DS. Metal Gear Solid 4 was a PS3 exclusive, but Rising’s multiplatform plans show Konami is no longer tied to a single console, which leaves plenty of room for speculation about where a true MGS5 would land.
For now there is no announcement, no platform and no date. E3 runs from June 7 to 9 in Los Angeles, and if PSM3 has it right, fans may not have to wait much longer to find out what Kojima has been hinting at.