When Metal Gear Online was announced last week at the Metal Gear Solid 20th Anniversary party, I, along with millions of my MGS loving brethren, spent the rest of the day with a big ole goofy grin on my face.
The details were scant, but what was revealed showed to a solid degree that they knew what they were doing.
The ability to capture enemies and "jack-in" to their neuro-tech systems to see their teammates and point them out to your team should work to bring in a whole new level of stealth strategy that has been absent from most stealth based online games. (The Spy Bullet was a nice idea to have in the Splinter Cell games, but it never worked as well in practice as it did in theory.
More than anything this interview reinforces my faith that Metal Gear Online will be more than just another online killing game. The interviewee states that he often encourages the development staff to embrace their "Japaneseness" [sic] and make the game that they want, rather than emulating western developers.
Tucked away discretely in a bit of a slip of the tongue by Associate Producer Ryan Payton is the nifty quote, "We’re still working on how we’re going to release this, it’s separate from MGS4." Could Metal Gear Online be the next Warhawk, and see release on the Playstation Network as opposed to a traditional retail release? The PSN seems to be getting quite popular amongst the Online-Only-TripleA-Shooter crowd.
