Yoshikazu Matsuhana
Key:
Green font = Matsuhana
Red font = interviewer
Could you briefly introduce yourself?
I first started work with Mr. Kojima about five or six years ago. That was with the PC Engine working on Snatcher. I was in charge of the programming. Since then we prety much worked together all the time. Other titles I've worked on are Lethal Enforcers for the Mega Drive and Policenauts.
What is the difference in role between the director and assistant director?
On one side you have the director who draws up the plans for the project and explains his idea for the game. On the other side you have the actual programmers and designers who actually make the game. I am in the middle coordinating the flow of communication between both sides. In addition, I am in charge of environmental developement as well. The MGS team consists of programmers, designers and sound engineers, etc. It is my job to decide how to best put these groups together in order to create the best game possible.
Was the theme and style of the game developed before the engine?
When we were planning the project, Mr. Kojima had already decided on the concept and theme. From this point we started the development. However, this time the game was completely 3D and from the very beginning we had to spend a lot of tme considering the camera sytem. We did a lot of experimentation with the operation of the camera's view points while developing the game.
Did the final version of the graphics engine have a big influence on the game itself?
Right from the start we wanted to have a top-down view, often called radio-controlled style, where you can go forward and turn left and right. We put a lot of importance on this kind of action feel to the game so that when you're being chased by the enemy you can soon turn left or right. This area didn't really change much. Rather, as we progressed with development, we found that we were able to do a lot of new things as well, such as various stealth effects which we incorporated into the game.
It is very popular in America at the moment to make 3D dungeon games. Why did you decide not to take this approach for MGS?
First of all, we wanted the game to respond quickly to the player's actions, but in a Doom-like game, you have to run first, them move forward. This kind of camera system was to slow for us. Next, many of us felt ill when looking at that kind of visual display. It depends on each person, but Mr. Kojima suffers from this kind of 3D sickness a lot.
Did you use storyboards or any similar film production techniques?
Yes we did. In particular, the motion designers created storyboards before starting work on creating the motion itself. It plays a very important role in this area. MGS is not like a static cartoon where it has to follow a set path. The polygon world actually exists, and we can feely move the camera to look wherever we want. We often find that we can create better scenes than the ones we first envisaged.
Did you create any special tools to enable the director to literally put himself into the game?
At first we considered having a program where we could quickly create buildings and move around them, but in the end we found it was easier to create the locations out of Lego's instead. We created 1/30th scale Lego models up to about one-and-a-half meters square. We also made various objects such as the enemies and furniture out of Lego as well and placed them inside. Then we got a very small videocamera from Sony, which we could move around inside the lego model and look at the view on a monitor. After we were happy with the room's design we then created a digital version of it inside the computer.
Who playtested the game, for how long and how many people were there?
Usually, during the later half of development, team members do the bug check, and in Konami we have a special section that handles this kind of work as well. However, this time the project was very large and we couldn't afford to have any bugs at all. In addition, we were very tight on time as well, so in the end we had a specialist bug-check company check MGS for us. Of course, we assisted them and gave them advice about which areas were the most likely to have problems. They had about forty to sixty people testing the game for about two months.
Which part of Metal Gear Solid are you most proud of?
If you look at the game you get the feeling that the characters are really alive. The guards slouch forward when sleeping and they yawn as well. When you defeat the bosses they don't just fall over and die straight away. You can see the blood flowing from their body. Recently, there have been a lot of games where you just shoot the enemy as if it's just a polygon target, but in MGS you can see that the enemies are real people. I'm happy that we've been able to do this.