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The story
Voice actor Akio Otsuka’s comment in a Bunshun interview that he “doesn’t want to do a Metal Gear that Director Kojima isn’t involved with” became a hot topic on 5ch’s Hardware/Industry board (Geha). Otsuka has long voiced Snake in the Metal Gear Solid series, which Konami has kept going with titles like Metal Gear Survive even after creator Hideo Kojima left the company. The thread spiraled into a debate over whether an IP belongs to the individual creator or the company, with crossfire opinions on Peace Walker, MGSV, and Kojima’s work in general.
Otsuka: Basically, for us voice actors, the job is to do it when we’re asked. But when it comes to the Metal Gear series, it was Director Kojima who created it, and I take pride in having helped build it alongside him. That’s why I said, “I don’t want to do a Metal Gear that Director Kojima isn’t involved with.” Now that I’ve said it, I can’t really walk it back (laughs).
Source: bunshun.jp / Original article here
What people said
Fine by me, whatever.
I get it if you like Rising and Portable Ops, but Survive is a no-go.
That game had zero reason to be Metal Gear — total lazy trash.
Peace Walker got made because he was jealous of how good Portable Ops turned out.
As long as he delivers with other games.
No Kojima involved, but the scenario is a genuine masterpiece.
There's nowhere left for it to go from there.
True, but somehow Kojima went ahead and put out Peace Walker and 5 anyway — pointless, trashy tacked-on scenarios. It's a mystery.
It's not a mystery at all.
They just made new entries because it was popular.
Kojima keeps running his mouth about Metal Gear being "his," so I'm going to keep trashing those tacked-on scenarios.
If only it had ended at 4…
PW and V were way more of a side-story than Portable Ops ever was.
Not a single mention of them in the later timeline either.
Something about how 5 hypes up Ocelot is just gross…
Also, Kojima owes Hideyuki Tanaka an apology.
It'd be forgivable coming from some uninformed fan, but
for a veteran who's been in the industry this long to think this way is just scary.
There's a mismatch between anime IP (when there's a source manga) and game IP.
Is the IP holder of Dragon Ball Akira Toriyama or Shueisha?
I bet a lot of manga fans would say "Toriyama, obviously!"
I'd want a Portable Ops remake.
Sorry, but I'd genuinely want to play one.
IGA hasn't put out anything besides Bloodstained either.
You'd think going indie would make him more nimble, but it hasn't at all.
It's a common story.
Same with Square's Sakaguchi.
And Falcom's Kiya…
In TPP, Ocelot's name and "Director Kojima" kept flashing up in English at the start of every mission.
That killed the pacing so badly.
And in the end they didn't even make good use of the open field.
They should've just stuck with building on Ground Zeroes.
Enough that former die-hard fans are turning into haters.
If Project Itoh were still alive, he'd probably be an anti too.
(that vibe)
Everyone ending up that way is entirely Death Stranding's fault.
Boktai was good though.
Metal Gear had already stopped selling at all anyway.
Just like the crawling mechanic, the delivery-game concept is ripped from Western movies too.
Nothing's going to change unless people stop hunting for what he "copied."
I watched like 5 minutes once — it was just voice impressions and reaction shtick.
Zero actual commentary on the game itself.
They're simply on a different level than some company like Konami.
Rub them the wrong way and grizzled Sony loyalists — vets going back to the Betamax days — will crawl out of the woodwork everywhere to run a smear campaign on you.
Grandpa, it's bedtime now.
Background and Key Points of This Topic
Akio Otsuka has voiced Snake since 1998’s Metal Gear Solid and has worked alongside Hideo Kojima for many years. Kojima clashed with Konami and left the company in 2015, and now runs an independent studio producing titles such as Death Stranding. Konami has kept the series going even after Kojima’s departure, releasing Metal Gear Survive among others, and Otsuka’s remark should be read against that backdrop. What split the thread was the question of whether an IP belongs to the production company or to the original creator personally, with comparisons drawn to IP ownership in other media like manga. At the same time, there was friction between those who dismiss the Peace Walker and Metal Gear Solid V scenarios as unnecessary “tacked-on” content and those who defend them — a split in how fans themselves rate Kojima’s work that isn’t easy to grasp from the quoted remarks alone.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry [Geha]) thread “Akio Otsuka: “I Don’t Want to Do a Metal Gear Without Director Kojima”.”
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