‘Hey there’s stealth so it’ll be good, we promise’
After the Metal Gear Survive trailer was met with overwhelming negative reaction, garnering a 6.5-1 dislike-to-like ratio on the trailer uploaded to IGN’s Youtube channel, Eurogamer spoke with Konami representative Richard Jones about the new, Kojima-less Metal Gear. Jones confirms co-op play, stealth, a variety of weapons & devices, and that the game will not be fully-priced $60 game. Uh oh.
He starts by summarizing what we can already tell from the trailer: the game takes place after Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, where a number of Mother Base soldiers get sucked through a wormhole as Big Boss and Kazuhira Miller escape, ending up in a “forbidding, foreboding, and alien-looking [desert] landscape.”
He gives some flowery speak that amounts to little more than “it will be co-operative”, and then goes on to assure that despite the nature of the trailer, the game will feature stealth as a major component of gameplay: “I know when you’re watching the trailer it’s all very action-packed and it doesn’t really elicit that feeling, but there will be stealth and one of the really interesting things that we will be exploring and playing with is how stealth and co-op can actually co-exist.” The only Metal Gear game to feature co-op thus far was Peace Walker, allowing up to four players to take on both main story and side-ops missions (pictured below).
Jones explained that up to four players will have to use their individual strengths and draw on a variety of equipment and items that Metal Gear has come to be known for in order to take on “massive biological threats.” He also confirmed it will not be a fully priced game. Am I the only one having Operation Raccoon City and Umbrella Corps flashbacks? If the game is about taking on zombies, how exactly is stealth going to be employed?
Sure you could walk around zombies without drawing attention like in The Last of Us, but then that would be closer to a horror game (not that Survive resembles the Metal Gear we all love anyway). I don’t think zombies are going to stop and look at a magazine with sexy women in it, nor will there be much point in tranquilizing one. Do zombies use guns, operate searchlights, drive vehicles, go to sleep, call-in reinforcements via radio, or perform other actions that create different obstacles to stealth like normal human soldiers do?
We have no choice but to wait for gameplay footage and more information to pass judgement, but so far it’s not looking good without Hideo Kojima, who Konami refuses to speak of. How many more zombie, err, “massive biological threat” games can we take?
