Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain Live Demonstration at Kojima Productions’ LA studio

Kojima Productions Los Angeles, the first overseas studio for Konami’s Kojima Productions, recently opened in Los Angeles, California, and a live demonstration of Ground Zeroes––the prologue to Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (MGSV) for the PS4, PS3, Xbox One, and Xbox 360––was held at a theater within the studio.

Ground Zeroes is the first in the series to cross over to open world.

Ground Zeroes was thought by many to be separate from MGSV, in his commentary during this demo, director Hideo Kojima explained that it is an opening chapter designed to be the prologue of MGSV. To put it in perspective, it’s similar to the tanker chapter of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty.

Ground Zeroes takes place in a different period of time from the main story of MGSV, so to make this clear, it was put into a separate prologue. Kojima explained, “It’s also a chapter that crosses over from the linear-style storylines of past games into the new open-world gameplay of this one.”

With Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater set in 1964, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker set in 1974, and MGSV set in 1984, looking at the setting of each of the games in the series, it should be apparent that the story always jumps ahead ten years. Ground Zeroes is set in 1975 right after the end of the internationally well-received Peace Walker, and its events lead to the main story nine years later. It also acts as the set-up of the story.

Kojima mentioned that the map of Ground Zeroes has been made more compact than the map of the subsequent main story in order to help players of previous installments not used to an open-world game transition to the new system of MGSV and not get too lost.

Like with the main story of MGSV, Ground Zeroes actually allows players to choose whether they want to reach the target location by using stealth or by getting into the action and taking down enemies.

This demo also included a sort of “accident,” detailed below, that puts this high level of freedom on display.

Improvements are noticeable throughout the Ground Zeroes demo.

The demo featured Yuji Korekado from Konami Production playing, with Kojima offering commentary as he played.

The first thing to come on screen is a movie of “Big Boss” Naked Snake infiltrating a facility in a downpour in order to save Chico and Paz who have been captured.

This may sound familiar - it’s the same scene as the video released at an event commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Metal Gear series about one year ago.

However, there are a few changes with this video: Snake’s voice is being done by Hollywood actor Kiefer Sutherland, a caption has been added introducing the setting as a facility to hold political prisoners, and the patch that Scarface throws from the helicopter has been colored red to match the Los Angeles studio logo.

The demo play went through a mission where Snake searches inside the facility, finds the red patch, and goes home.

The video shown one year ago ended with Snake being discovered by a searchlight as he tried to crawl into the facility, but the demo began with Snake successfully approaching the searchlight tower and artfully killing the soldier on it.

Apparently, the player can operate the searchlight and shine it on the facility to find where Chico and Paz are. When soldiers have the searchlight shined on them, they will shade their eyes and look in Snake’s direction, but because they can only see a shadow, they won’t discover him.

MGSV also includes a new feature that allows players to see the location of enemies and important areas on the main screen by having Snake look through a pair of binoculars that display a holographic-style map. Additionally, in CQC (close quarter combat), players can choose from three different actions: kill, interrogate, and subdue.

The demo play showed Snake attacking a soldier from behind and using interrogation to get him to reveal the location of the red patch, which then updated the map.

The user interface is minimal, and icons appear when approaching things like locked doors or ladders in order to use them. It should also be mentioned that players can tell if the searchlight is shining on them by whether or not the lens flare is being displayed on the screen.

Apparently, deciding the direct route to the patch included too many enemies, Korekado took a more roundabout way by moving along the roofs of buildings, dodging the searchlight as he went. At one point, he threw down a magazine from the roof to cause a sound that diverted the attention of a patrolling officer.

Afterward, Snake hopped down from the roof, but because the building was an open garage, he was spotted by a guard inside. A red exclamation mark displayed and a siren sounded that only the player hears, but Korekado used the slow motion that allows the player to respond immediately and shot the soldier in the head, deftly resolving the situation before it set off any warnings.

Though it seemed like Snake had gotten out of a pinch, he was spotted again afterward while crossing the street, and this time it escalated into a gunfight. A siren went off, and a scene at odds with the series’ normal stealthiness ensued, with soldiers coming out from even around the target destination to attack.

A health gauge is no longer displayed in this game, and players can instead get an idea by the blood spatters shown all over the screen. It was confirmed that players can restore health by laying down in a shaded area where they won’t be attacked.

In this way, Snake was able to overcome this incident and find the patch, and the demo play moved on to the exit of the facility.

Originally, the plan was to hop aboard a jeep to be taken by the unsuspecting driver to somewhere completely different and end in a fashion typical of Kojima Productions, but instead the driver engaged in a gunfight and fell, and Korekado took the wheel and escaped to a location where an ally helicopter could safely land.

Through these developments that require flexibility, it was easy to get a sense of the fun that comes with the open-world style of game that MSGV is.

With Korekado controlling him, Snake was able to make it to the safe area, board the helicopter, and escape safely, and, in doing so, end the demo, but one thing that stood out was that the jeep hit a roadblock and damaged its suspension, making the escape by car a rather cumbersome one. Though it’s not a racing game, the car featured the type of simulation and physics found in one, and it’ll be interesting to see to what extent the main part of the game does this as well.

There was also an interesting scene where the departing helicopter is being attacked by enemy rockets, and Snake returns fire on the soldiers with a machine gun.

The demo was played on a laptop PC with a frame rate of 30fps, which is standard for most current game consoles. The versions for the PS4 and Xbox One will have a rate of 60fps, allowing the talented work of the Fox Engine to be displayed at its very best.

Hideo Kojima told the crowd that the demo at the Tokyo Game Show will use a next generation platform, so the graphics are expected to be even better.

The story-based open world is a departure from past games

Right after the demo, a roughly 2-minute video was shown of Dutch actress Stefanie Joosten, who plays the role of Quiet in MSGV, acting in the motion capture studio at Kojima Productions, which explained that the game combined the various motion capture data with a “3D scan” that took images of facial expressions from a number of different angles. An official video showing this process has been released, so make sure to check it out below.

There was also a Q&A session with Kojima, Joosten, and lead artist Yoji Shinkawa. Some of the responses from this session, along with some of the questions asked, are detailed below.

Do you feel that by including bullet time (slow motion), you’ve made the game easier?

Kojima: It may look that way since for the demo we weakened the AI a bit, and the slow motion is always going to be effective in a smaller area such as this prison, but it’s been adjusted appropriately for the open world in the main part of the game.

The user interface has changed a great deal, hasn’t it?

Kojima: I’d like all the players to enjoy the more photo-realistic graphics as much as possible. I’m still not completely satisfied with how we have it now, so there may be changes made in the future.

This is the first in the series to have an open world. What kind of open world is it?

Kojima: It may differ a bit from most people’s idea of an open world. The game is still mission-based with individual episodes such as this one where the player infiltrates an enemy base and then gets out via a helicopter or other means, but the player has the freedom to decide where he or she wants to go while carrying out a mission.

The idea was that the sub-quests the player can decide to do together make up one mission, and once all of them have been completed, the next part of the story is unlocked. We’ve also included a type of gameplay where the player can gather objects such as the patch in this demo in order to get trophies.

It seems like you put a lot of effort into this game using so many techniques like the motion capture.

Shinkawa: We used 3D scan and motion capture for just about all of the main characters. In future games, we’d like to transition to performance capture 1.

Kojima: Instead of using Japanese actors for this game, we used actors from other countries. Because of that, the animation for Snake and the other characters may look different from the previous games.

Are there no cut scenes in this game?

Kojima: You could see it in this demo, as well, but we used a sort of “one scene, one cut” technique where it looks like it’s all being shot from the point of view of one camera. So, it may be good to think of it as not having the types of cut scenes found in the past games.

Mr. Kojima and Mr. Shinkawa, how did you two communicate with each other as you were developing this game?

Shinkawa: I would show him a sketch, and he would give me his opinion or ideas. At first, I would doubt his opinions and think they wouldn’t work, but then when I would actually go and draw them, most of them ended up working well.

Kojima: Shinkawa is the only person I didn’t fight with (laughs).

It’s been said that you told Mr. Shinkawa to make the characters sexier. Could you share some of the idea behind that?

Kojima: In order to attract more interest from gamers and cosplayers, we decided to emphasize the sex appeal over the masculine military look. I think this doesn’t just apply to the female characters, but also the male characters.

Joosten: Of course, I was surprised to see Quiet’s outfit at first, but you know it fits in the Metal Gear universe, I think...Mr. Kojima has his reasons for deciding why Quiet has her reasons for wearing what she’s wearing. Players will just have to look forward to that.

Is there a reason why many of the recent games have been about Big Boss?

Kojima: On the one hand, we’ve been depicting the world every ten years leading up to the first Metal Gear, but also, Naked Snake is a flesh-and-blood human who laughs and complains. I think writing a story about someone so human makes it very interesting.

Will the storytelling be affected by the game’s open world?

Kojima: The player’s choices affect the story and experience of the game, so the game is no longer linear. Also, to me, this game was more difficult to develop than my previous projects, so I hope the game design has gone a step up.

^1^ An advanced version of motion capture that records expressions, movements, and voices all at once to use in character animation.

Source:4gamer

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