Hideo Kojima is probably well-known to gamers around the world as being the director and producer for the Metal Gear series of video games. That being said we’re sure that Kojima would love to branch out into other areas and other games, wouldn’t he? After all no one likes being pigeonholed, even if they’re pretty damn at their job.Well it turns out that Kojima has expressed his interest in taking a step back from the role of producer for the Metal Gear series so that he can concentrate more on newer games and ideas, but unfortunately it seems that passing the torch and finding a successor is not as easy as he would like to think.
Speaking with Game Informer, Kojima compares passing the torch to how Ridley Scott handed the reins of the Alien franchise to James Cameron. “At Kojima Productions, if our studio were a kitchen and the head chef changes, then it changes the flavor and it changes. The world franchise usually becomes more open, as in Alien […] Alien is a very successful example [of a new director coming in]. Unfortunately in our case it’s more like Terminator, that once Cameron steps out of it there was kind of a mess.”
Kojima adds that he would like to work on games with a more indie feel, a sentiment in which we’re sure Ken Levine of Irrational Games can understand, after recently announcing the closing down of the studio to focus on smaller and more indie projects.
He concluded by stating that he would like to see Metal Gear Solid reach the level of what Rockstar did with Grand Theft Auto, which was an open world concept, but at the same time stated that, “It’s still a business. In parallel we have to work on other projects and make things balanced towards Konami as a whole. Finding that balance with how to work on all our projects proves to be a little difficult.”
What do you guys think? Will the franchise be very different if Kojima were to step aside?
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