Hideo Kojima, who partnered with Sony on his upcoming game Death Stranding partly due to their relationship, said at Develop Brighton earlier today (through a translator) that the PlayStation is to thank for Metal Gear Solid.
When Mark Cerny brought up the rapid console hardware advancement between Metal Gear 2 in 1990 and Metal Gear Solid in 1998 (skip to 7:20), and how it changed what he was able to create, Kojima replied, “I made Metal Gear 1 and 2, and at that point the series, for me, was complete and it was finished, and I started working on other adventure games.”
Mentioning that Metal Gear was always meant to be a hide and seek game, and the original idea was to have players hiding and the viewpoint would change as a result, Kojima added, “However, back then we didn’t have any 3D polygons, we had to do everything in 2D. So for Metal Gear I had no choice but to use game design where you look from up above.”
When working on those other adventure games after Metal Gear 2, Kojima learned that a new piece of hardware called PlayStation was going to be released, and it would allow for real-time polygons. Because of this, Kojima says he was able to fulfill his original vision:
For me, Metal Gear was a series that was complete and finished to me, but at that point I thought I would be able to make what I originally intended to do with this technology of being able to polygons in real-time. So, you can say in a way that thanks to PlayStation Metal Gear Solid existed at all. The technology that PlayStation had was what made Metal Gear Solid possible.
You can watch the full keynote in the above video.
[Source: GamesRadar, Develop Brighton]
