The man, the myth, the legend behind Konami's Metal Gear Solid series, Hideo Kojima, took to Twitter to share what is, to his mind, one of the best things he's come up with in a game.
"The radio communication system was one of my greatest inventions," Kojima said in the third of a series of tweets about Metal Gear Solid's NPC and buddy system. "Players infiltrate enemy territory alone. In team infiltration, it is difficult to control NPCs. So I thought it would be possible to support the player with only the voice, without [the need for a] drawing, and also to involve a sub-story on the radio side."
The radio comms system is set up across the Metal Gear Solid games as a means for your character to communicate with NPCs, giving them to provide support and develop the storyline from afar. Kojima intended this to help the player adapt to a "strange and different world," allowing us to "gradually become familiar with the world while learning the worldview, objectives, and operation system." It's what he calls the "buddy system", present across the Metal Gear Solid games. It's something he's proud of to this day, stating that these days, radio comms from NPCs is considered a matter-of-fact in most action games similar to the Konami series. We can see evidence of this in Resident Evil 4's radio comms system between Leon and Hunnigan.
Hideo Kojima also looks back on the importance of four-legged friends in the series, not only as companions but as an alternative to a human NPC. "It is difficult to make the NPCs that accompany the player in the game seem [like] human beings," Kojima says in another tweet. "Not only [in] dialogue, but posture synchronization with the player, route control, and motion. It is not yet possible to make them naturally. This is where dogs come in handy."
"They are smart, they don't talk, they are loyal, they don't use tools, they are action-oriented and aggressive," he says. In short, dogs are a far cry from the oftentimes janky AI-operated companions you might find in some of the best action games.
It's been eight years since Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain was released, but it's good to know that the 36-year-old series is still fresh in Kojima's mind. He might have left Konami, but who knows – maybe one day we'll see Metal Gear Solid 6.
Here's a look back at our celebration of Metal Gear Solid's 35th anniversary.
