Kojima has revealed that he and the team felt "really low" after the release of Assassin's Creed as it managed to do what Metal Gear Solid 4 couldn't at the time.
As revealed in a recent DidYouKnowGaming episode, Kojima had high ambitions for Metal Gear Solid 4, so high in fact that they were essentially unobtainable. As the video explains, in an interview with outlet G4 back in 2009, Kojima was asked if his original vision for the game was different from the final product, to which Kojima said: "There were differences from the beginning - when we started in the concept stage to the final product. But in the midst of development, when we saw the actual PS3 and its limits and things like that, we changed our vision and goals."
In the same interview, Kojima elaborates: "At the beginning we only heard rumors about the machine - that we could do anything on it, that it was a monster machine. And so we set our dreams too high because we believed it could do anything." The developer continues, "but when we saw the actual machine, of course, there are a lot of limits to it, and there were things we could do and could not do. It wasn't about the PS3's power, it was us dreaming too big."
Originally, Kojima apparently wanted Metal Gear Solid's maps to be huge, "the size of Grand Theft Auto environments" in fact, however as we now know this didn't end up being the case due to the hardware limitations and Kojima's management duties taking up a lot of his time, the video reveals.
Unfortunately for Kojima and the rest of his team though, right before Metal Gear Solid 4 was due to release in 2008, Ubisoft released its now iconic gaming series Assassin's Creed. The stealth game managed to do everything that Kojima wanted to do with his game: "I thought [Assassin's Creed] was brilliant because it really fulfilled the basic concept that MGS4 had at the beginning: how you could go anywhere in the environment and also you could climb anywhere, run anywhere."
The quote continues, "we kind of gave up on this because it was just too difficult, but when Assassin's Creed came out, we saw that they accomplished what we were really aiming for at first. I have to tell you that my staff and I were really low for the next three days after it came out."
Speaking of Assassin's Creed, catch up with all of the announcements made over the weekend during the Assassin's Creed showcase at Ubisoft Forward.
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