With Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker finished and released, those hoping that MGS creator would now begin work on another Zone of the Enders game, bad news.
In an upcoming Japanese magazine interview, Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima states that development on the next Zone of the Enders has been pushed back a tad.
As early as 2006, there have been stories circulating that Kojima's giant mecha series would be coming to the PlayStation 3. It's 2010, and the last Z.O.E. title was Zone of the Enders 2 in 2003.
Kojima reportedly was moving on from Metal Gear Solid in 2008. Kojima apparently had design documents for a title that did not include MGS.
The game designer, however, went on to develop yet another Metal Gear title, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker.
And in 2009, Kojima Productions, Kojima's studio, was gauging interest in Zone of the Enders 3. Then Kojima said he and his team were "really considering" Z.O.E. 3, followed by a promise that there would be a Z.O.E. sequel someday.
The mere mentions of a possible Z.O.E. sequel that Kojima made on his blog got his staff in a tizzy last October. "The reverberation has been bigger than imagined," the game designer wrote at the time. KP staffers who worked on Z.O.E. have been stopping him on the elevator, in the office, in restaurants and in Tokyo Midtown, saying "Is it true?", "When do we start making Z.O.E.?" and "Please let me join the team!" One guy even has a Anubis (Z.O.E.) print out tacked up on his cubicle! "No, no, a little longer," Kojima wrote. "I want you to wait."
Kojima is using Zone of the Enders 3 as a carrot to dangle and then jerk quickly away — something he'll continue doing this until he actually begins work on the next Z.O.E. game.
So what is he working on? Kojima tells the magazine that it is a home console game, and he is choosing between Metal Gear Solid 5 and an original title. The game, Kojima adds, will contain things that he was not able to do in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker.
(Recently released Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker was originally going to be Metal Gear Solid 5.)
"Kojima-san doesn't have to make Metal Gear any more."
The game's design document, however, has been completed, and it deals with the "taboo" topic that Kojima tweeted about. His "next title", Kojima tweeted last past April, will "challenge a certain type of taboo." According to Kojima, "If I mess up, I'll probably have to leave the industry." A melodramatic overstatement.
The magazine asks Kojima how long the development will take for this new title. "If I get moving," he replies, "quick."