[Uchiha Sasuke]

May 22, 2002 - At the Electronic Entertainment Exposition 2002, IGN was able to sit down with game creator, creator and designer Hideo Kojima, the mind behind two of the most acclaimed videogames of the last five years.

Metal Gear Solid and the sequel Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty were widely acclaimed across the world, and both showed gamers how to integrate a complex story into a game, and how to take technical advantage of both the PlayStation and the PlayStation 2.

We sat down with Mr. Kojima, a soft-spoken, shy but highly articulate man, and his translator Scott Dolph, who has worked with Mr. Kojima for many years, at Konami's second story rooms overlooking the E3 show floor.

IGN: First of all, I really appreciate, as a gamer and as a journalist, all of the fantastic things Mr. Kojima has envisioned for the Metal Gear Solid series, and that I have tremendously enjoyed his games over the years.

Hideo Kojima: (Laughs.) Arigato.

IGN: After Metal Gear Solid 2 Sons of Liberty came out, Mr. Kojima told the world that he might be taking on a slightly different role at Konami and perhaps to work on different games. At work capacity are you involved with MGS2 Substance and ZOE2?

Kojima: I am the game designer, planner and the producer for MGS2. For ZOE 2, I am the producer. I make sure that everybody is heading in the right direction, and I try to get as much out of each of my team members as possible. I try to stick to that. I try not to do too much.

IGN: As every gamer knows, Mr. Kojima was very involved with MGS2, and so with these new games, I'm just trying to get a feel for what capacity he is working at now, you know, how closely he is working with the projects. Is he as hands-on and close to the projects like he was before?

Kojima: With Sons of Liberty, I pretty much did everything hands on, I designed the maps, did the levels, just about everything. Now, I have my team members come to me and present me with an oral presentation. The say, I would like to do this or maybe approach the game this way or that, and then I make suggestions. If I come up with any of my own ideas, I toss these ideas out to them and then they realize it in the game and they show it again to me.

IGN: So, then, Mr. Kojima is getting maybe eight hours of sleep per night instead of 2-4, as he was with MGS2?

Kojima: Ahhh, maybe not eight hours, but more than before (laughs). Ah yes, but then, what am I doing with all of my time? Well, I am working on these games, and I am part of the corporate management and then I am also working on projects we cannot speak of. Even if I concentrate working as a producer on these two games, that takes up a day.

IGN: Metal Gear Solid 2 was such a massive undertaking you must have been tired and spent after it. What inspired Substance, and how long have you and your team been working on it?

Kojima: One of the modes, alternative missions, was supposed to be in Sons of Liberty, but we couldn't do it because of time. And we got a lot of comments and responses from Sons of Liberty when it came out, and many people said, "There's too much story; where's the gameplay?" You know, "The Codec talks too much." So, then OK, why not give them what they want?

It would be ideal if we could release a Metal Gear Solid game each year, but that's not going to happen, unfortunately. That's why, whenever Metal Gear Solid 3 is going to come out, we can give our fans something to play before the release of Metal Gear Solid 3.

When Metal Gear Solid 1 came out it was very well received for being a very good action game, along with a story, a proper story that you did not see in many other games. And since Sons of Liberty was a sequel to that game, we wanted to have a good story and so we were ending that story here. Since this is a story-driven game, certain items were not used to their fullest. But we wanted to do the story for Sons of Liberty. But now that we have done MGS2 Sons of Liberty with its story, we are done with that approach. What we can do now is focus on the gameplay, the action part, the other half of Metal Gear Solid 2 Sons of Liberty. And that's what we wanted to achieve with Substance.

IGN: I read in another interview that Metal Gear Solid 2 Substance was the "substance" of the game, and that was what you really wanted to depict, not so much the storyline. Which is a slightly different thing than what you are saying here.

Kojima: We're not trying to boil it down, but we're saying that with the true Sons of Liberty, you've got the story and you have got the gameplay that you can enjoy with the building blocks of Metal Gear Solid 2 in Substance.

IGN: I'd like to draw a comparison between VR Missions and Metal Gear Solid 1, and Substance and Metal Gear Solid 2. Is Substance parallel in that way to VR Missions? Or is it something more?

Kojima: Same kind of relationship, I guess. First of all, this game does come with Metal Gear Solid 2 Sons of Liberty. Many of these missions are not taking place in the VR stages, they're taking place in stages that come from Sons of Liberty. So, you're basically playing without the story in an arena, and that wasn't the case with VR Missions.

IGN: So if I buy Metal Gear Solid Substance, I'm getting Metal Gear Solid 2, the whole game. Is that right? And additionally, once I beat that, I can play all these other games. Can you explain it?

Kojima: Please think of it as two games in one. It comes with Sons of Liberty. And you don't have to complete it, but it's there. And then you have all of this other stuff, you know the non-Sons of Liberty stuff. But the thing is, Sons of Liberty already filled up one DVD, so it's amazingly full. So what we're doing is we're releasing this on a double-sided DVD. So, there's Sons of Liberty as one option, and then the Alternate missions, Snake Tales, and VR Missions. And Alternate missions, Snake Tales, and VR Missions are inspired by Sons of Liberty, but you don't have to play Sons of Liberty to enjoy those other arenas.

IGN: Will the game sell for the same price as the original? At $49.99?

Kojima: We haven't decided that yet. We don't make those decisions. It's not something we come up with.

IGN: It would be a fantastic price with all of those missions in one disc. Anyway, so, sorry to belabor this, but is there a story to Substance?

Kojima: First of all, you have VR Missions, that's basically what you saw in the previous VR Missions. You basically have all these missions, where there is Sneaking Level 1, Grenade Level whatever, where you practice using these various weapons and arenas, snipe enemies, and stuff like that. And you have 200 of these levels. And you can play with different characters through these missions, so there is an enemy positioned in different spot each time you play the game with a different character. That's VR Missions.

In Alternative Missions, unlike VR Missions, these missions use the Big Shell, the Plant, and the Tanker, and Arena you saw in Sons of Liberty, and you're given different missions, like say, diffuse this bomb in a different area, whereas before, you never had to do this on the Tanker. So, that's what you do, and you have 100 of these. And depending on which character you use, the difficulty level changes. So, that's 100 times whatever choices you have. Like there may be a mission that's like, "Go take a picture of this or that."

And then you have Snake Tales. This is for those people who want more Snake. Because everyone loves Solid Snake. These are story based. We have short ones, medium ones, long ones, and they each have little stories. And you'll see characters like Emma appear in one of the Snake Tales, but not as Emma in her role in Sons of Liberty. She could be there as someone else, like a girl, such as Meryl. And as you saw, you can go skateboarding.

IGN: Yeah, I was curious about that. Do Evolution Skateboarding and MGS2 Substance share the same engine?

Kojima: The skateboarding level in Substance uses the engine that's in Evolution Skateboarding. (Laughter.)

IGN: Are there any new characters or weapons introduced in Substance?

Kojima: Not new weapons, but in Sons of Liberty, Snake could only use a few weapons, you know, in the Tanker, when you played as him. Now, you can use all of the weapons that Raiden can use. But Snake doesn't like blades so he is not going to use the sword. (laughter). He's against blades.

IGN: Are there any differences between the Xbox, PS2 and PC versions of Substance?

Kojima: They're basically the same. The Xbox version could look a little better. You know, it could look a little different, the effects or when you put on your IR goggles, things like that. Little things, but basically they are the same. What you saw on the screen is the PlayStation 2 version.