Gather Your Party

We all knew it was coming. For months now Konami has been teasing their brand new Fox Engine. Today they showed off a tech demo of the engine in action, only it turns out what they showed wasn’t just a demo, but rather a preview of an upcoming open-world Metal Gear Solid game.

“This announcement is a challenge from Kojima Productions to the world,” said series creator Hideo Kojima.

The demo showed off what you’d expect any demo of a new game engine to show off. Weather effects, clothing textures, lighting, all that good stuff. The preview of the game, which was closed to photography, showed Snake being Snake, avoiding searchlights, stealth killing some poor guy, then jumping into a jeep and calling for a helicopter for evac. Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes purports itself to be a “Game without Game Overs”, where even if stealth fails, the game keeps going, and escape itself is a more of a game. Rather than just run and hide, players have the option to call in for support. Let’s just hope stealth remains the heart of the gameplay, and that it doesn’t devolve into a straight up third person shooter. I think we have enough of those out there these days.

The demo was running on a PC with current generation specs, though Konami confirmed that Ground Zeroes is also being designed with Xbox and PS3 in mind. The Fox Engine is intended for use through the end of this generation and into the next, and is also being positioned for use on Cloud gaming platforms. As a whole the presentation seems to have been very well received, with many impressed by the quality of the visuals and the size and atmosphere of Ground Zeroes’ world.

Though photography was forbidden, two promotional images were released for the event, and here they are below.