When Metal Gear Solid 3 was announced as a prequel to Solid Snake's adventures, many fans of the series expressed disappointment that the main narrative would not be continued or completed in that game. Now with Metal Gear Solid 4 tightly wrapping up all the loose ends of the saga, prequels may be the only way for Konami to continue fleshing out that same epic narrative.
Speaking in an interview with 1UP a week before the game's release, MGS4 assistant producer Ryan Payton said there is "still a lot of room for filling in the gaps as far as Big Boss is concerned." When asked about the possibility of a Metal Gear Solid 5, Payton responded, "There are some misunderstandings that this is the final Metal Gear game. But it's really the final chapter of the Solid Snake story. That's all."
"I'm happy we could wrap up Snake's story in MGS4," Payton stated earlier in the interview, continuing, "because it gets to the point where if we continue on with Metal Gear Solid 5 with more Solid Snake adventures, we'll get to the point where the game has absolutely no basis in reality. I do like the idea that this character has had four or five big missions and then that's when it ended, rather than have 20 missions where there's no chance in hell a secret agent could ever survive. He's had four or five really big missions, and that seems a little more realistic to me."
In the interview, Payton also discussed the shift in game design in Metal Gear Solid 4 and whether or not Japanese developers should be moving toward a more western style of game design. "If other Japanese publishers want to improve their controls, I wouldn't say they need to adopt western ideas, but rather that they simply need to improve them," Payton said. Later he added, "Most Japanese development studios have producers who came up through the ranks over the course of fifteen years or so, which encourages a xenophobic atmosphere, because, outside of E3 or GDC, they haven't branched out to foreign countries."
Payton also hinted at the future of Metal Gear Online: "We're working on a handful of new maps, skills, and rules that we're bug checking at the moment. A lot of the stuff is pretty far along. It's not going to be too long before people are going to start seeing screenshots of the new stages.... By the time you're tired of the maps that come in the game, it'll probably be around the time we'll be bringing out the new ones."
For more from Ryan Payton, including a look at his career, behind the scenes on the development of MGS4, and his thoughts on product placement in the game, check out the full interview we posted today.
