It took approximately 0 minutes for Metal Gear Solid fans to claim Hideo Kojima's new espionage game as a spiritual successor

Metal Gear Solid movie — (Image credit: Konami)

Minutes after Hideo Kojima announced his new "action espionage" project, the Metal Gear Solid community was ready to brand it a "spiritual successor" to their much-beloved series.

The closing reveal from last night's State of Play was that Kojima was working with Sony on "a next generation action espionage game." Under the working title of Physint, Kojima says he's got some characteristically grand plans about transcending the barriers between film and video games - he's already dubbed it "the culmination of my work" - but it's genre, not directorial intent, that's got MGS fans in a twist.

Over on the Metal Gear Solid subreddit, the top comment simply reads "I really want this to be a spiritual successor to Metal Gear." Thankfully for that commenter, the comment directly beneath is that "action espionage is way too specific for it to not be a spiritual successor." That sentiment - repeated in various ways throughout the thread - is a bold one considering we have nothing more to go on than a genre and a working title, but there we go.

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To the credit of these excitable Metal Gear Solid fans, there are a few things working in their favor here. Kojima himself is one of them, of course, but another is that Herman Hulst, head of PlayStation Studios, says that Physint is something he's been "encouraging [Kojima] to reinvent for years." The high-profile way in which the Metal Gear Solid franchise all-but ground to a halt during Kojima's departure from Konami makes the overall intent here pretty clear - Sony is hoping that a return to the mood and tone of that series, in partnership with its original creator, will fill a notable gap.

It's worth pointing out that Physint is in a new IP, so there'll be no official crossover. It's also worth noting that we literally only have a working title to go on, so there's far from any guarantee that this new game, whenever it surfaces, will feel or play like a modern Metal Gear Solid game. Of course, that's not stopped any MGS fans from making light of the situation - my favorite trend in that thread are the parody names, from 'Alloy Spoke' for Metal Gear to 'Hard Reptile' for Solid Snake. There's an obvious tongue-in-cheek undertone, but it's clear what the people want.

Of course, Physint was only a small part of Kojima's presentation, which was mostly focused on Death Stranding 2: On the Beach. Yes, that's a real title, and yes, this is a game featuring both a talking marionette puppet that runs at a lower framerate than everyone else and a villain with an electric guitar axe-gun. Kojima is back, baby.

I'm GamesRadar's Managing Editor for news, shaping the news strategy across the team. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I've run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam's latest indie hit.