Metal Gear Solid 4

Aug 23, 2007

At today's Metal Gear Solid 4 press conference, we got another look at the gameplay demo that Kojima Productions originally showed off in Tokyo earlier this summer. And we even got a few interesting tidbits from the Q&A afterwards. But the most interesting part of this personal appearance by Kojima himself was the big reveal of the bosses we'll be facing in Metal Gear Solid 4.

"What transforms a snake... into beasts?"

Before he launched his bosses video and told us about MGS4's elite squad of level-bookends, Kojima mused on what makes Metal Gear Solid so special. Although he tried to make it sound like a happy papa on his child's 20th birthday, we all knew something sneaky was incoming.

Without a translator, Kojima asked the packed room what it is about MGS that has made the series so iconic. "A cool world filled with humor and intelligence," perhaps? Or a "touching movie-like storyline?" He even mentioned the high-tech stealth action gameplay. But with a firm "No!" he shot all those choices down. The bosses, he claims, make Metal Gear Solid what it is. A brief trailer of the bosses through the games so far helped prove his point.

Going over the forces we've fought so far, Kojima showed how each successive unit was even more ferocious and deadly than the last. Metal Gear Solid's bosses were members of a Special Forces squad, but Metal Gear Solid 2's bosses were not just special forces but elite counter-terrorism troops inspired by super heroes and their powers. Ahhh, Dead Cell.

With Metal Gear Solid 3, the unit you fought "topped them all." Although Kojima was referring to the units' backstories, there's no denying that by Metal Gear Solid 3 Kojima Productions had nailed the art of the boss battle. With Metal Gear Solid 4, you'll be facing the unit that Kojima believes is his and his team's best yet. The beauty and the beast.

We got a new trailer to introduce us to the foursome of Crying Wolf, Raging Raven, Laughing Octopus, and Screaming Mantis. The narrator tells us "The beauty and the beast. They weren't even soldiers to begin with, you know. More like... victims of war. They suffered shell shock on the battlefield... the only way they could cope with the reality of battle was to become war machines themselves. The beast... that's what you see on the outside."

War Transforms Us

In the clip, we see the bosses operating as a squad to devastate a group of soldiers. Crying Wolf is a quadruped, metal-clad monster with a whip-like tail similar to the Metal Gear's sensor whips we've seen previously. She stops the armored vehicle her enemies are driving by simply lifting the front end, and as the enemies flank around the vehicle to see what's stopping them, they freak out and try to flee. The enemies who open fire watch bullets ricochet off Crying Wolf harmlessly.

Another of the metallic humanoids swoops by on wings similar to the bombers we saw in the gameplay demo, and Raging Raven's attack is similar as well. She rains bombs down on the battlefield, screaming "Rage!" as she swoops across. Fleeing soldiers find a corner to try and fight from (arguably, cower in), but to no avail.

Camouflaged in the corner is the most visibly human, and feminine, of the group, Laughing Octopus. With a mad laugh, she carries herself on two of the massive metal arms on her back and uses the other two to tear soldiers in half. Bullets, at least from assault rifles at close range, don't seem to make the cut in gunning her down. Lastly, as the few remaining soldiers try to regroup, one of their fellows begins to fight, apparently, himself, bringing his gun around on his squad mates and gunning them down.

Whether it's telekinesis or mind control, he finishes it by killing himself. Snake's perspective (from where he hides, watching and muttering "It can't be!") goes to the hovering Screaming Mantis, another visibly feminine, armor-clad fighter with a set of six robotic arms moving in waves behind her. Two puppets literally hang from her hands.

The unit, Kojima tells us after the trailer resolves, is composed of beautiful women who have been so hurt, so punished by war that they have been utterly broken. Now they hide inside these machine shells to face the world. Real actresses were motion captured to bring reality to the unreal, and Kojima was quick to point out that the innocent being victims of war was quite in line with classic Metal Gear themes.

Lyndall Jarvis, Scarlett Chorvat, Mieko Rye, and Yumi Kikuchi are the various models used for the unit's motion capture sessions. Kojima discussed that while it may be a bit odd that these are "monsters" in Metal Gear Solid ("What kind of game is this? Halo? Gears of War?"), these aren't monsters, really. These are victims, humans transformed by battle. "War trauma has made these women into the ultimate casualties of war... Can these beautiful ladies return to human form, just like classic film? You can find that out when you play the game."

Honestly, we're a bit torn about the beauty and the beast unit. They're definitely more "out there" than anything we've seen from the series previously, but there's nothing wrong with that. We're hoping that these are merely in addition to boss encounters with the likes of Liquid Snake, Vamp, and (please, please) Raiden -- in fact, we don't know how else they could fit into the narrative. If anything, it seems like Metal Gear Solid 4 is going to be a bit boss-heavy.

From the Q&A session after, we did get one particularly juicy tidbit regarding the gameplay demo - the enemy AI was tuned way, way down for the demo. Enemies will, in fact, react to things like the report of a gunshot. The team did hint strongly that we'll see a 360 release sometime -- "Right now, we're making it only for PlayStation 3. We don't have a plan for 360 for now" with lots of emphasis on the word "now."

They also mentioned how much they'd like to be able to include rumble, pointing out that Kojima Productions has a guy whose whole job is to come up with rumble functions ("We call him Rumble Guy") and they'd really like to get him some work. Lastly, there isn't any confirmation on the status of Metal Gear Online as a separate game, yet. Anyone who gets Metal Gear Solid 4 will have some online play available, but beyond that they haven't made final decisions regarding MGO's status as a separate package, or the full details of the MGS4 online features.

We're thrilled to see Metal Gear Solid 4's development one step at a time, and after this great showing we're even more excited to see what Kojima Productions has been holding back for the Tokyo Game Show next month. Stay with us to find out!