Kojima: no more back-to-the-wall for Snake?

I'm not leaning against the wall! I, uh, am just getting a pack of smokes.

Quite interesting. Xgrayninja posts in the IGN Boards what he claims are snippets of an interview between Gamepro and Hideo Kojima, but we can’t seem to find the said interview at GamePro (exclusive to the GamePro mag, maybe?). According to one snippet, the centerfold-quality “back-to-the-wall” stealth pose Snake pulls in prior outings is gone. Hideo, elaborates:

(The signature Snake pose) rarely happens on the battlefield. Nobody is cool enough to hide like that. By eliminating this move, it’s more like real life. Snake can hide behind something, then sneak a peek and shoot. There are more actions to it, and it’s smoother that way.


There would have been some use for a back-to-the-wall, like, you know, up on a ledge only a foot’s length in width, or when you’re trying to squeeze through a gap as narrow as Snake is fat (which is to say, not at all). If all this is true, then we’re wondering how Snake’s gonna handle these situations. We could go over ALL the screenshots of MGS4 since it was first announced, to look for one instance of back-to-the-wall, but besides being time-consuming, it doesn’t cover for the possibility that Kojima Productions might have changed or deleted that move since then.

Oh well, without a Gamepro mag to inspect, our own backs are against the wall on this one, and we’re leaving it as a Rumor until we find confirmation. In the meantime, here are the other snippets of that Gamepro-Kojima interview. That some of these are confirmed adds legitimacy, but just to be sure, we’d like to see the real deal itself.

The list of snippets finds itself with its back to the wall at the full article.

I'm not leaning against the wall! I, uh, am just getting a pack of smokes.

Quite interesting. Xgrayninja posts in the IGN Boards what he claims are snippets of an interview between Gamepro and Hideo Kojima, but we can’t seem to find the said interview at GamePro (exclusive to the GamePro mag, maybe?). According to one snippet, the centerfold-quality “back-to-the-wall” stealth pose Snake pulls in prior outings is gone. Hideo, elaborates:

(The signature Snake pose) rarely happens on the battlefield. Nobody is cool enough to hide like that. By eliminating this move, it’s more like real life. Snake can hide behind something, then sneak a peek and shoot. There are more actions to it, and it’s smoother that way.


There would have been some use for a back-to-the-wall, like, you know, up on a ledge only a foot’s length in width, or when you’re trying to squeeze through a gap as narrow as Snake is fat (which is to say, not at all). If all this is true, then we’re wondering how Snake’s gonna handle these situations. We could go over ALL the screenshots of MGS4 since it was first announced, to look for one instance of back-to-the-wall, but besides being time-consuming, it doesn’t cover for the possibility that Kojima Productions might have changed or deleted that move since then.

Oh well, without a Gamepro mag to inspect, our own backs are against the wall on this one, and we’re leaving it as a Rumor until we find confirmation. In the meantime, here are the other snippets of that Gamepro-Kojima interview. That some of these are confirmed adds legitimacy, but just to be sure, we’d like to see the real deal itself.

  • Story set against the backdrop of a full-blown World War III (Oh great, Philantrophy failed.)
  • Yes, we know Kojima misses rumble. What we haven’t heard is that he’s gone and asked Ken Kutaragi to bring it back.
  • Gunplay to be based, at least partially, “in the near-future world, and will only deviate for the sake of ‘interesting game design’ (he says an example would be the remote controlled missile in MGS1 and #@%!11
    12#@%!).” We don’t know how this affects Ocelot’s bullet-bouncing gunplay.
  • Run and gun = “you have to be prepared.” Nothing on what to be prepared for, but we’re betting a tidal wave of lead, high explosive, and Metal Gears.
  • Trade your gun mods with other gun mods, via online or through some other form of player-sharing.
  • Long cutscenes bringing you down? Hideo says that he didn’t want to cut down on the cinemas on the previous games because the emotional impact would take a hit. But he hears ‘ya. “This time, yes, I am thinking about making them shorter.”
  • Game connectivity between MGS4 and MPO.
  • Working with the Cell (the PS3 chip, not Dead Cell)? “Overall, I think it is difficult, of course. But if it’s easy and simple, then how can you differentiate from other games?… I think that the PS3 was difficult to work with…but so was the PS2.”
  • Well, if you’ve got No Place To Hide but in broad daylight and with optical camouflage, what’s the enemy’s ability to find you? Kojima says the team’s “adjusting” (that AI, we guess), but a safe bet is that if an enemy is scared crapless, he’s gonna be too preoccupied to kick every stone on the street, but if he’s calm, he’s going to be more thorough in his search.
  • Finally, CQC or hand-to-hand. “hand-to-hand weapons play a big role in MGS4, but declines to elaborate because ‘that gives away a little bit of how you complete the game, actually.'” Didn’t every game in the series generally end with a hand-to-hand boss fight?

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