Kojima decides to lead MGS4

Big news for Metal Gear fans; Hideo Kojima, the man who brought the franchise to us all in the first place, the long-standing director himself, will now be in charge for Metal Gear Solid 4.

Despite Konami and the man himself insisting otherwise we’re to see Kojima-san back in the director’s seat for the game. He’s also taking on the roles of producer and designer. What a busy man he’ll be.

Shuyo Murata, who you might know as director of Zone of the Enders 2, is set to join Kojima as co-director.

The news was broken at E3 last week, via a goofy promo video from Konami. The video featured nothing from the new game at all, simply models from the PS2 version playing musical chairs. The giddiness revealed much though. Through the use of director-chair-based metaphor (that old chestnut) we discovered Kojima is in fact the director of the new game, and that Snake, not Raiden is set to be the lead role.

A lot of people will undoubtedly be very happy to hear the news that Snake is taking center stage, as it was presumed that he wouldn’t after the events of MGS2, with the new narrative being set after that period of  the timeline.

Press material art at E3 revealed that Meryl Silverburgh, Revolver Ocelot and Otacon are all to be coming back (Wooooop!) for the new title. There are also a whole load of new characters for the series, who’ve been designed by long-standing Metal Gear Solid (and Zone of Enders) character artist and designer Yoji Shinkawa.

There’s to be an online side to the game of some sort, which is being developed by Hideo’s new Konami studio Kojima Productions. The new development house will also be creating a couple of fresh Metal Gear games, going by the name of Metal Gear Acid 2 (for the PSP) and Metal Gear Solid 3: Substinence, an extension, as you may have guessed, for Metal Gear Solid 3.

If you’d like a look at the crazy “trailer” for MGS4 see below, and we have a few screenshots if that floats your boat. We’ve absolutely no idea when there’s likely to be anything in the way of footage from the game, so keep coming back.