Metal Gear mastermind Hideo Kojima says the “next level” of gaming can’t be reached with the current generation of gaming technology.
In an interview with the BBC program Click, Kojima claimed that the future of gaming doesn’t lie with improvements in graphics and audio quality, but rather in immersive gameplay elements that may not be immediately apparent to gamers. “We will keep on making games for consoles and the graphics and sound quality will get better and better,” he said. “But I think no matter how much we improve the quality, there is only so much we can hear or see.”
“The next level will be when we start improving the backgrounds, the things you don’t instantly see but enhance the experience,” he continued. “For example, there are leaves in the background and when you water them they grow. Instead of the backgrounds being pre-programmed, they actually respond to what a player does. This is not possible right now but maybe in the future it will be, and that is when we will have entered the next era of gaming.”
Kojima has numerous game credits to his name but is best known for the Metal Gear franchise, which first launched in 1987 and has continued over the years through various iterations, leading to the most recent release, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, which launched this year. Kojima has claimed Metal Gear Solid 4 will be the last Metal Gear game he is directly involved in, a move intended to give him more time for other projects, but recently backtracked on those comments somewhat, saying in May that he will remain involved in the franchise, albeit it most likely in a “scaled back” role.
