Metal Gear Survive: "Nothing to do with me" says Kojima

Series creator Hideo Kojima may have left Konami after almost 30 years of service, but the Japanese firm has no intention of letting the Metal Gear brand fade into history. At the Tokyo Game Show, Konami showed off a chunk of its current work in progress, the Phantom Pain spin-off Metal Gear Survive. It sees a quartet of elite soldiers sucked into an alternate dimension, where they have to use their skills of stealth, infiltration and shooting things with guns to hold out against an army of zombies.

Built using Metal Gear Solid V's Fox engine, Survive looks like a solid multiplayer action game, though some series fans may wonder what the shuffling undead have to do with Kojima's celebrated stealth series. Kojima was also at TGS, and wondering exactly the same thing. 

At the event to promote his first post-Konami game, Death Stranding, Kojima nixed any lingering hopes that he might have helped develop Metal Gear Survive before his departure from Konami in 2015. "That's nothing to do with me!" Kojima said, according to a report on IGN.

"The Metal Gear games are about political fiction and espionage," Kojima observed. "Where do zombies fit in with that?"

Yoji Shinkawa, the artist and designer who gave the Metal Gear games their distinctive look, added, "If I had worked on that game, it would have mechs in it."

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Metal Gear Survive doesn't exactly have the seal of approval from its creator. What impact that'll have on its popularity remains to be seen; that Surviveappears to lack Kojima's trademark oddness - and, yes, Shinkawa's giant mechs - may prove to be a bigger turn-off for the series' legion fans. You can take a look for yourself at Survivein action below.

Metal Gear Survive is scheduled for launch in 2017 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.