Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops

Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops
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Developer(s)	Kojima Productions
Publisher(s)	Konami
Designer(s)	Masahiro Yamamoto (director) Noriaki Okamura (producer) Hideo Kojima (producer)
Series	Metal Gear
Platform(s)	PlayStation Portable
Release	December 21 2006 (JP) [1] December 12 2006 [2] (NA) TBA (EU)
Genre(s)	Stealth-action
Mode(s)	Single player, online multiplayer

Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops (officially abbreviated MPO) is an upcoming stealth-based game being published by Konami and developed through Kojima Productions for the PSP. During an interview with Famitsu magazine, Metal Gear series creator Hideo Kojima confirmed that this project was "a completely new Metal Gear Solid" for the PSP and will be part of the series' canon. It will not be a side-story like the previous portable Metal Gear titles (Ghost Babel and the two Metal Gear Ac!d games), nor a remake (like the Mobile Phone versions of Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake).

Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops has attracted the talents of several high ranking members from Kojima Productions including Shinta Nojiri as the project's director and producer, Shuyo Murata, and Kojima himself. Ryall is gay

Session 56 of the HideChan! radio program revealed details about the game. It will be an interquel set between the events of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and the original Metal Gear, starring Naked Snake (aka Big Boss, who at this point still refuses to accept his new title and admit that he is better than The Boss) during the early days of FOXHOUND. Gameplay will consist of squad-based action, in which the player takes control of several soldiers at once. The game will feature full cinemas and voice acting. The game's graphics will be on par with those of the series' PlayStation 2 installments, but with a lower polygon count.

Interestingly enough, not only do Naked Snake, Para-Medic, Sigint and Major Zero appear as playable characters central to the plot, but in the teaser, Ocelot, EVA and Raikov appear as recruitable characters that will lend him a hand as well.

The game will also contain a Wi-Fi-enabled multiplayer mode similar to the one in Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence. Like in the main game, the player and his soldiers do not respawn when they get killed. Instead, the player has the choice of becoming a ghost or surrendering to the opposing team, becoming a member of their team. The player's performance in the Online Mode will affect their gameplay in the single player campaign.

The player can recruit the members by using the ad-hoc features of the PSP. Once a member of Snake's squad is killed, he or she cannot be revived and must be recruited once again from the same wi-fi hotspot.

Storyline

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A young Roy Campbell befriends Naked Snake early in the story.

Set in 1970, six years after the events of Operation: Snake Eater, the FOX unit has become corrupt, taking over a military base in South America, where a new prototype weapon based on the Shagohod is being developed. Big Boss, a former member of the unit is convicted in conspiring with the revolt. In order to prove his innocence, Big Boss goes on a mission to hunt down the remaining members of the FOX unit, assist in the establishment of FOXHOUND, and assume leadership of it. The storyline will explore Big Boss' motives for creating Outer Heaven and his reason for sending Solid Snake in Operation: Intrude N313. The forming of the Patriots will also be explored in the game's plot.

The game starts off with Naked Snake waking up in a prison cell in a base located in the fictional region of South America known as "La Peninsula de los Muertos" (The Peninsula of the Dead). He quickly learns that the FOX unit, his former comrades, have gone rogue. They have stolen nuclear warheads from the CIA and plan to start an international incident by aiming them at the Soviet Union. He meets a young Roy Campbell who helps him escape. Realizing that they cannot stop the FOX unit by themselves, the two formulate their own team of specialists, FOXHOUND, to overthrow FOX.

Controls

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Naked Snake, wearing his new Close Quarter Combative Enhancer suit and firing an M-16.

Although the PSP doesn't have the R2 and L2 buttons, or two analog sticks, its controls do resemble those of Metal Gear Online in Subsistence. The square button is the melee attack and/or CQC, depending on which weapon is equipped. If the right trigger is held it will fire the equipped gun. Circle merely brings up a cross-shaped weapon selection interface (assault rifle, tranq gun/knife, sniper rifle, grenades). Triangle performs actions like climbing and pressing against walls. X is the same as always, for diving and lying prone. Finally, holding the left trigger enters first-person aiming mode, while the D-pad moves the normal, third-person camera.

Voice cast

MPO will feature the return of several characters from MGS3, of which MPO is a direct continuation. Because of this, the game will feature the return of several Snake Eater characters with both the Japanese and English voice actors reprising each of their respective characters. New characters will also be introduced, including a young Roy Campbell and Null, a Ninja-like member of FOX who resembles the Cyborg Ninja (Gray Fox) from Metal Gear Solid.

Japanese version

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Null, a Ninja-like member of FOX serves as Naked Snake's rival in the game.

Some of the cast members for the Japanese version of MPO were revealed in Session # 93 of the Japanese Hidechan Podcast. All of the surviving characters from Snake Eater will return in MPO. A young Roy Campbell will also be featured, played by Toshio Furukawa, who provided the voice of Allen Iishiba in the Metal Gear Solid Drama CD, as well as a new DCI (presumably a fictionalized Richard Helms, the actual DCI in 1970) played by Masaharu Sato. Also returning is the voice actor of Sokolov, Naoki Tatsuta, who will be reprising the role in the new game. In Session #94, the rest of cast were revealed, which included most of the new characters. However, their names were bleeped out during each interview.

English version

According to Kojima Productions representative Ryan Payton and actor David Hayter, all of the actors from the English version of Metal Gear Solid 3 will reprise their roles in MPO as well. Voice actress Kari Wahlgren is the voice of "Teriko", as confirmed on her official website Voice cast for the new characters includes Dwight Schultz, Tara Strong, Steven Blum, Noah Nelson, and David Agranov as the younger Roy Campbell. Quinton Flynn, the voice of Raiden, will voice some soldiers in the game, designated as Sound Effects (soldier grunts, moans, and screams).

Character	Japanese voice	English voice
Naked Snake (Big Boss)	Akio Otsuka	David Hayter
Para-Medic	Houko Kuwashima	Heather Halley
Sigint	Keiji Fujiwara	James C. Mathis III
Major Zero	Banjo Ginga	Jim Piddock
Ocelot	Takumi Yamazaki	Joshua Keaton
EVA	Misa Watanabe	Suzetta Miñet
Nikolai Stephanovich Sokolov	Naoki Tatsuta	Brian Cummings
Ivan Raidenovitch Raikov	Kenyu Horiuchi	Charlie Schlatter
Roy Campbell	Toshio Furukawa	David Agranov
DCI	Masaharu Sato
Teriko		Kari Wahlgren
Gene	Norio Wakamoto	Steve Blum
Null	Jun Fukuyama
New Character	Rika Komatsu
Python	Yusaku Yara	Dwight Schultz
Elza	Saori Goto	Tara Strong
Cunningham	Daisuke Gouri

Trivia

• MPO was originally conceived by Hideo Kojima as a competitive battle game with no relation to the Metal Gear series. However, due to the huge demand for a conventional Metal Gear Solid game for the PSP (rather than the card-based Metal Gear Acid games), the game was heavily altered to meet popular demand.
• The concept of having the player recruit other soldiers to form their own squad was heavily influenced by the movie The Seven Samurai.
• On the July 2006 issue of PSM, Kojima reveals in an interview that there's a possibility of producing several MPO sequels, due to the long time span between the events of MGS3 (takes place in 1964) and MG (takes place in 1995).
• The plot of MPO, where FOX becomes the enemy and (Naked) Snake must stop his former unit is very similar to the storyline of the first MGS, wherein FOXHOUND took over Shadow Moses and (Solid) Snake was sent to stop them.