Kojima Clarifies MGS4, PS3 Comments

Hideo Kojima

It wasn't long ago when the Internet was a-buzz with what Hideo Kojima had to say about his latest brainchild, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. According to the reports, he had said he wasn't completely satisfied with the final result; the graphics didn't even come close to his ultimate vision, and it seems he had expected more from the PlayStation 3. However, depending on how these comments were viewed, most agreed it was just Hideo being Hideo: the biggest perfectionist and one of the most ambitious developers in the industry.

But now, Kojima has had a chance to clarify those comments, and you're going to want to read the entire breakdown over at Kotaku. It's quite long, but we'll summarize: in short, he said his comments were taken very much out of context. Here's a snippet for a better understanding (we think)-

"Let's say this developer is making hardware, in this case a game, and that hardware is at the level of a car. And when looking at the specs, the developer claims the car is able to fly. Now there is no stopping when you say, "This is a car that can fly." When you claim that it can fly, the speculation grows from "oh so it can FLY?!!!" And the developer would set his goals higher. The specualtion is that if the car flies, then it should reach a MACH speed...but it doesnt stop there...it'd go beyond the specualtion of then "it should go into space!" with all the excitement around, and the developer would go deeply into making the car going into space... however, he'll come up to the public and say the car reaches the MACH speed, but it fails to go into the space. But he shouldn't give up, because for a car to even reach a mach speed and go into air is revolutionary. I wished to convey my thoughts like that, but I guess it didn't work very well."

Well, it's still a little muddled there, Hideo. But we do get what you're saying, and we think we got this before. And here's one final quote from him that shows a distinct difference between the American and Japanese gaming press; at least, from Kojima's standpoint.

"Recently I've been thinking about not giving interviews. That's not my job. My job is making games... The next time I interview in America, I will just say "MGS4 is the best, the end." It's not cool for a Japanese to speak so blatantly, and I don't want to say that. But if I don't, things like this can happen..."

You can read the rest of it by hitting the afore-listed link, but you get the idea. The bottom line is that Kojima didn't really like how his comments were interpreted, and we have read the EDGE article and the ensuing articles on the Internet very carefully. While Kotaku had kind of a knee-jerk reaction and wondered why Kojima is suddenly "making excuses for the PlayStation 3," we do agree with the miscommunication and misunderstanding part. Nothing we see here is Kojima playing the part of a Sony employee, so we advise you not to blow that out of proportion, either. Maybe Kotaku is just a bit peeved that Kojima's clarification flies very much in the face of their interpretation of that article...

But either way, it doesn't really matter, does it? We're all expecting great things from MGS4; let's not allow this to boil down into another adolescent console war.

5/11/2008 Ben Dutka

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