When Snake is moving through an area certain locations will trigger a change to a new fixed camera angle, which can be anything from side-on and distant to up-close and claustrophobic. The top-down camera angle that Metal Gear Solid favours is above Snake's shoulders and slightly angled - but the genius is that it switches both dynamically and to fixed positions. Many of the tricks MGS gets credit for were in fact taken from the 2D games: Meryl's codec frequency being found on the game's packaging, for example, was an idea used with the Colonel in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake.
Nor was this just a matter of modelling: the team hooked up a camera that could be positioned over their constructions and fed to a PC, giving Kojima and his team a 'real life' guide to creating perspective and proportion (the process can be seen in this Japanese making-of video). Kojima approached 3D design in a literal fashion - he built the levels using Lego bricks. The word 'Solid' in the title is a pun, referencing not just protagonist Solid Snake but also the switch from top-down 2D to the more 'solid' world of 3D. Minor as it is, this is Kojima's first 3D trick. You know the ration's there, so run Snake in anyway and get the reward. After codec introductions the first screen to use the game's standard camera angle shows a 'hidden' ration in the water below - but when Snake goes in to retrieve it the angle switches from top-down to side-on, 'hiding' the item behind some barrels. Press start and Metal Gear Solid begins with an FPS view from underwater, looking across the opening dock area. Kojima's techniques have contradiction at their core: an action game about avoiding action, for example, or fusing cinematic techniques to an interactive medium. It was a direct sequel to Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, 8-bit top-down games which had pioneered stealth mechanics, but also a fresh start - the moment when technology could realise these ideas anew.ġ998 was a great year for games - kicking off with Resident Evil 2 and ending with Half-Life - but even among such company Metal Gear Solid stands apart. Though an early 3D title, MGS was not the first third-person game influenced by cinema, nor was it Hideo Kojima's first time as director, and it wasn't even the first game in the series. On September 3, 1998, Metal Gear Solid was released for the Sony Playstation, and games changed forever.
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