Hideo Kojima’s new podcast isn’t for everyone, so thankfully it’s not the only place we can turn to for development stories from the games he’s worked on. Like this about a very boring idea for Metal Gear Solid 3.
The latest episode of Do you know gaming– narrated by none other than Snake’s original voice actor, David Hayter – is all about content excised from the series, drawing on information published in old interviews (love the quotes from hyper) and books. There’s things about guns that were too crazy, story elements that never made it, and gameplay that was cut and then turned into cutscenes.
However, the funniest and most interesting part of the video is the part about a boss fight that was planned Metal Gear Solid 3made it into the test and then ended up so bad that the devs started booing Kojima about it. Here’s the story above Kotaku AU:
The story goes on like this during production Metal Gear Solid 3Kojima had fallen in love with the works of novelist Stephen Hunter, his books The master sniper and impact point, was about snipers embedded in the mountains who gradually tried to eliminate each other. Kojima’s idea was for Snake’s boss fight with The End to be as close to an actual sniper fight as possible and be played out in real time over two weeks. The player would have to use their surroundings to stay hidden and silent, search a vast area for clues to discover where The End is hiding, and once found, prepare the perfect shot. This too would play itself out two real weeks.
The crazy thing is that this boss fight actually made it to the prototype stage. It was a real part of a playable build at one point. However, when it came time to test the fight, no one who played through it could find any trace of the old man. Numerous players have searched for The End for hours and found nothing, effectively hampering their progress in the game. The team found the fight so annoyingly boring that they started booing Kojima, convincing him to abandon the idea entirely.
I want to believe that this is the entire experience of working with Kojima condensed into a single anecdote. You can watch the full video below; maybe you already know some of it, or maybe like me, you knew almost nothing about it and it’s 42 minutes of really interesting stuff!
