Metal Gear Solid 4 - First Look Preview

Without doubt Hideo Kojimaâ??s Metal Gear Solid has once again stolen a show; Metal Gear Solid 4 ushers in a new dimension for the series on the Playstation3, however Kojima-san isnâ??t happy to rest on the typical visual upgrades weâ??ve come to expect.

â??Realismâ? is one element Kojima-san wants to detach himself from, claiming that such a feature within videogames refers to photo-realistic images and is reality from an external perspective, not taking into consideration the inner aspect â?“ yes Snake has found a softer side it seems for gaining the emotions of players.

Kojima-san talked at lengths what this means to a videogame, painting a picture that describes the soulless state of current videogames; buildings similar to those found on a movie set with pictures pasted onto the surface of a polygon model, characters devoid of living signs such as inner-flesh, blood or most significantly hearts.

With the Playstation3 Hideo Kojima and his team at Kojima Productions aims to change this, tasked with the purpose of creating these â??inner qualitiesâ?. Kojima-san moved on to talk about what these means; an object breaking with sound determined on the weight and hardness of the object, exposing the contents that were hidden within; a character that sustains injury would not only experience physical change, but accompanied with an emotional, sensory and spiritual change.

When Kojima-san first talked about taking cuttings from a tree and planting them to watch new ones grow, we thought he was slightly barking; it looks like the joke was on us however as he talks about wind making gradual shifts in the configuration of sand, and trees burned to the ground releasing seeds for new ones to sprout from the earth and grow. The â??inner aspectâ? is something that remains largely unseen to the player, only becoming evident through time and the will of the player; itâ??s this concept that Kojima-san believes will lead to a revolutionary change in videogames, moving away from â??realityâ? to â??naturalâ?.

Kojima-san moved on to talk about the setting behind Metal Gear Solid 4, a time far beyond where MGS ends and MGS2 picks up. In MGS and MGS2 players snuck into buildings, in MGS3 players tackled the natural landscape of the 1960s; what follows with MGS4 is an entirely new concept, which promises that the harshest infiltration missions will be need to be performed in completely new situations. MGS4 promises an all-star cast with shocking scenarios as Kojima-san suggests that the secret behind winning the warfare of the next-gen is not found in any place but rather in â??senseâ?.