Metal Gear Solid 5 will feature one long camera shot, fewer cutscenes

At a Q&A session with Kojima Productions boss Hideo Kojima at his new Los Angeles studio Thursday, Kojima said, through a translator, that all of Metal Gear Solid 5, be it gameplay or non-interactive cutscenes, will be told through one long camera shot without cuts.

"We're really trying to get the player perspective, so we're not really gonna... even in the cutscenes we're not going to cut the camera," Kojima said. "We're really going to try to follow the same camera and have the smooth transition between the cinematics and the gameplay."

Before the Q&A, we were shown a live demo of the prologue for MGS 5, dubbed Ground Zeroes, and what Kojima described above was on display in that demonstration, as the game opened with a cutscene in which the camera followed the action without cuts before eventually making its way to where Snake was hanging off the edge of a cliff. The transition to player control from there was seamless. Presumably, however, the game will cut from the prologue to the main game, which take place nine years apart.

Kojima also said players can expect fewer cutscenes in general. "It's an open world, we're not planning on adding as many cinematics."