Metal Gear Solid 4's Graphics Are Not All What They Should Be

Hideo Kojima is a videogame legend because of two things. First, there's the vision of the Metal Gear series and the deep and engaging games that came out of that vision. Second, there's his unrelenting quest to develop the perfect game. And while the "perfect" game is just in itself an impossible task to achieve Kojima pushes himself and his team as far as he can, even coming close to laying some criticism on his latest effort, Metal Gear Solid 4.

While talking to Edge gaming magazine, Kojima has stated that "the graphic, side things like motion-blending and the size of the map, totally was not accomplished to my original vision - to my satisfaction". His main issue is that the gameplay is being refined with every new game in the Metal Gear series, but the graphics, although they are improving, simply cannot keep up the pace and offer what's needed to complement the gameplay.

Kojima is quick to point out that there's no real flaw with the game and its graphic. He declares "I remember saying three years ago that we wanted to create something revolutionary, but in reality we couldn't really do that because of the CPU. We're using the Cell engine to its limit, actually". It's not failure, it's the impossibility to do any better given the resources available.

He continues: "The original vision was to go ten steps further, the reality was just one step, which isn't to say we didn't progress. I'm not criticizing the PS3 machine, it's just that we weren't really aware of what the full-spec PS3 offered - we were creating something we couldn't entirely see".

In a gaming industry where most of the time polish is just a buzz word and more and more games are released without having gone through a thorough process of quality assurance and a proper beta, it's reassuring to see that one of the most important game creators has the vision to think that a game should be pushed as far as it can be pushed in order to deliver the best experience to the end user.