METAL GEAR SOLID: PEACE WALKER
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker is a game in the Metal Gear series. It was released for the PlayStation Portable in 2010.
Peace Walker was officially announced at Sony's E3 press conference on June 2, 2009. Hideo Kojima designed, wrote, produced and directed the game. To reflect the different gameplay style, the series tagline "Tactical Espionage Action" was replaced by "Tactical Espionage Operations." The game is set in 1974, ten years after the events of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, and takes place in Costa Rica. It explains the story of Big Boss and leads up to the events of the founding and the creation of Outer Heaven. The theme song for the game is titled "Heavens Divide."
The game was released in Japan on April 29, 2010; North America on June 8, 2010; Europe on June 17, 2010; and the UK on June 18, 2010. On a related note, this was the first time a Metal Gear Solid game was released in Japan first instead of overseas first/internationally since the first Metal Gear Solid. The game's development was dedicated to Satoshi Itō, a.k.a. Project Itoh, the author of the Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots novelization, who died from a battle with terminal cancer a year before the game was released.
The year is 1974. In Costa Rica, an unknown army of well-equipped soldiers has taken over the defenseless country. The soldiers have also brought along a nuclear warhead labeled "Peace Walker", to set off their last nuclear warhead for deterrence, and demonstrate their power with the perfect deterrent. Big Boss is asked to save the country along with his Militaires Sans Frontières (Soldiers Without Borders). It is later learned that the soldiers that invaded the country are a rogue CIA unit, as well as the fact that the MSF's client, a University for Peace professor named Ramón Gálvez Mena, is actually an agent of the KGB. If Big Boss fights them then he will become an enemy of America. Eventually, Big Boss and his soldiers would come to be known as the founders of Outer Heaven.
Hideo Kojima officially announced Peace Walker at Sony's E3 2009 conference, after running various countdowns for the announcement on a Konami website, stating that the team that made Metal Gear Solid 4 would return to help develop the game. Kojima also stated that the game was not a spin-off, nor was it a side-story. He referred to both Peace Walker and Metal Gear Solid: Rising as Metal Gear Solid 5, while specifically calling Peace Walker "the MGS5 inside me." Before its official announcement, however, Metal Gear Solid 4 hinted at its development during Act 2 of that game in Naomi's explanation scene, where it briefly showed a timeline of all the Metal Gear series games that came out up to that point, plus two blank squares saying "under construction". It entered development in 2006.
A trailer for the game shown at E3 2009 also described it as the "missing link" in the Metal Gear series. A trailer was later shown at Gamescom 2009. The latter trailer also revealed multiple Big Bosses, indicating multiplayer or co-op gameplay, which was confirmed by both a commentary video by Ken and Aki of the trailer, and by Famitsu in August 2009. Credits appearing at the end of the trailer revealed that Kojima was writing, directing, and producing the game; Shuyo Murata was also a writer on the game; Yoji Shinkawa was the character designer; and Kenichiro Imaizumi was also producing the game.
While developing Portable Ops, Kojima originally planned on only creating the overall guidelines and concepts for Peace Walker and then leave the rest to the next generation of developers at Kojima Productions. He was also planning on only being a producer of the game and focus on games not set in the Metal Gear series. He made the setting for the game in Costa Rica and created a story with themes about nuclear deterrence and the Cold War. When it looked like the story may be too confusing to a younger audience, he decided to become more involved in the development of the game and decided to direct it, feeling that it was still a little too early to leave the game in the hands of the developers without his help.
In an open letter to fans in August 2009, Kojima stated that Peace Walker would be a "full-featured" sequel that would "require hundreds of hours to complete." Kojima further stated that Peace Walker would include many features unique to the PSP and a new gameplay system. At the 2009 Tokyo Game Show in late September, a demo of the game was playable and was available to download for anyone who brought a PSP to the event, which IGN later made available on their site. A nine minute trailer was also shown that introduced the characters that would be featured in the game along with "Heavens Divide", the game's theme song. Kojima revealed that the theme of Peace Walker was "PEACE." This falls in line with the themes of past titles, including "GENE" (Metal Gear Solid), "MEME" (Metal Gear Solid 2), "SCENE" (Metal Gear Solid 3) and "SENSE" (Metal Gear Solid 4).
It was also revealed that Ashley Wood would be illustrating the game's cutscenes, similar to how he illustrated the cutscenes in Portable Ops. Also during the 2009 Tokyo Game Show, Kojima stated that President Richard Nixon's resignation during August 1974 might factor in the game's story. Kojima also stated: "Solid Snake's storyline has ended with Metal Gear Solid 4. But there's still a lot more when it comes to Big Boss' storyline. The Cold War was a time where people, neither good nor evil, were manipulated by various factors, and they became good or evil. The same goes for Liquid Snake, and we'll get to see just what happened to him."
Kojima also stated that there would be flashbacks to events from Metal Gear Solid 3 and that the game's theme would be nuclear deterrence.
In early December, Famitsu stated that Peace Walker would be released in Japan on March 18, 2010, though on January 29, 2010, Konami declared that the release date would be delayed to April 29. On December 3, Konami announced that the game would be released in Europe on May 28, 2010. The following day, Konami announced that the game would be released in North America on May 25, 2010 and that an English demo would soon be available. On December 17, Konami released an English demo onto the European and North American PSP PlayStation Stores. This demo contained everything the Japanese demo had plus a new level which involved infiltrating an enemy facility located in a mountainous region.
On March 16, 2010, Konami announced that the game would be released in North America on June 8, 2010, pushing the release date by two weeks. They also announced that it would be released on June 17, 2010 in Europe and on June 18, 2010 in the UK, pushing the release dates up by three weeks. Because of this, Peace Walker is the first canonical Metal Gear entry since Metal Gear Solid to be released in Japan first instead of America.
According to an FAQ on the official site, a few new details were revealed about the game. The reason that Konami had chosen the color yellow as being the main color for Peace Walker related materials was because the target audience was going to be slightly younger than before (school aged kids), so they went with the POP style. It was also stated that they based the Skull logo mark of the Militaires Sans Frontières off of Gondwanaland (Pangaea). The limited edition PSP containing the logo in the bundle pack was also unique from the others, as the MSF logo was in a different spot in each PSP.
Kojima also revealed that, due to it lacking blood and less violence, Peace Walker was going to be rated "T", although he would have preferred it if it were rated "E" for Everyone.
Konami President Shinji Hirano poses with a customized Land Rover Defender on the North American release date of Peace Walker.
On the release date for North America version, Konami President Shinji Hirano helped release the game "rugged Snake style" by posing on a customized Land Rover Defender.
