Metal Gear Solid 5: Kojima talks connectedness, replayability

Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain and Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes will build on franchise creator Hideo Kojima's beliefs that new console technologies enable a new kind of gameplay.

In a Japanese video interview translated by Siliconera, Kojima said one of the beauties of open-world games is the freedom of play style, which means players experience the world in different ways.

The developer hopes players will use the social connectedness of new consoles to share their particular experiences with the world.

“Video game consoles are usually found in the living room, and for the longest time, their world has been contained within that area. From now on, they’ll be jumping out of there," he said.

"It's almost as if consoles will be connecting to many other things, or making their way out of the house.

“By using these functions, I believe that we’ll be able to make games with completely different feelings to them, or even a completely new game altogether. Even for our ‘core’ games, they can now have methods of communication. I think that’s their most exciting aspect, and I also believe that it will only grow from this point on."

Kojima's also quite excited about MGS5's second screen features, iDroid - another series first.

However, it's not all new things; Kojima also hopes to draw on something that has been a hallmark of the series to date, but build on and leverage it to encourage replays.

"I think a game’s best charm lies within its interactivity, so each time a player does something, I believe it’s best met with various reactions. This time, we’re making a game with dynamic developments, where players will be able to think for themselves and execute their own strategies, which will in turn yield its own results in accordance with how they play," he said.

"It’s not about playing [the game] once and then finishing it, but instead, one mission might have various routes, so being able to have fun with it over and over, is another one of the things we’d like to offer with Metal Gear Solid 5."

Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes is due on PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One in March. Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain is undated; Ground Zeroes is designed as a prologue and tutorial for The Phantom Pain, but also to keep fans happy while KojiPro works on the full game, its first next-gen project.