Let's recap: Hideo Kojima left Konami on such bad terms that the company didn't even allow him to receive his award during The Game Awards 2015 ceremony. Meanwhile, Konami delisted from the New York Stock Exchange, canceled Silent Hills, and announced a “change of strategy” in favor of mobile games. However, yesterday was the first day (for the press) of Gamescom 2016, and Konami presented Metal Gear Survive, a new entry in the saga set in a parallel universe. The game will be cooperative multiplayer and will feature zombies as main enemies. No, I'm not making this up.
The Kojima Incident
The “Kojima Incident” is not something players will forget easily. His work goes far beyond the Metal Gear saga (allow me to place a token on Zone of the Enders here), but it was definitely what opened the doors to the world for him, giving way to millions of loyal fans. Fate led him to join forces with Sony, and the trailer for his next game Death Stranding is a brain-melting machine. On the other side of the street we have Konami... or rather, “we announced that we were only going to develop mobile games, although that’s not quite how it is” Konami. After all, Pro Evolution Soccer 2017 is just around the corner, and now a new Metal Gear game is added. Yes, Kojima left, but the intellectual property remains in Konami's hands, so at some point next year we'll see this:
About Metal Gear Survive
Its official name is Metal Gear Survive. From a chronological point of view, Survive takes place immediately after Ground Zeroes. Everything seems to indicate that the survivors of the attack on Mother Base, along with a good part of the destroyed base, are transported through several wormholes and end up trapped in a parallel universe full of “biological threats”, a group of zombies whose heads were replaced (in part) with red crystals. The end of the trailer suggests that there will be a gigantic zombie variant, or at least a monster big enough to make the ground shake when it walks. Some theories even point to a “zombified Metal Gear”.
Granted: we have seen very strange things during the Metal Gear saga, including unexpected clones and half-naked women who breathe through their skin, but the new style of “multiplayer with interdimensional zombies” takes a considerable distance from previous titles, and that's obviously what Konami wants. The problem is that the trailer leaves us with a feeling of “generic Left 4 Dead” that carries the name Metal Gear on its shoulders just for convenience. Of course... at least it's not a slot machine. Survive debuts next year on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Windows.
