First things first: if you get squeamish at the sight of blood, continue with caution.
With Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain just over a month away from release, you'd think that fans of the franchise everywhere would be elated. Sadly, that's not the case: the launch of MGSV has been overshadowed by an even bigger threat: the "fight" between series creator Hideo Kojima and series publisher Konami.
Said fight doesn't seem to be getting any better, either: last night, Kojima revealed the game's final Japanese promotional poster, and everything looked fine. Sure, it features two of the game's main characters absolutely drenched in blood, but given the direction of the game's story, it seemed (at least somewhat) par for the course.
Unfortunately, that's when people noticed that something was missing — specifically, Kojima's own name.
Just when it looked like things could possibly start dying down, something like this pops up. It's a trend that's been going on for months now: every time something new about the game is revealed, Kojima's name is nowhere to be found.
What's even worse is that this is just the latest in a long line of bizarre choices made by Konami. It all began back in March, when Kojima's production company (aptly named Kojima Productions) was seemingly dismantled and rebranded. Employees were seemingly stripped of their privileges, entire studios were renamed and Kojima himself was reportedly put on social media lockdown — it was also the first time the "A Hideo Kojima Game" branding was removed. To put it lightly, things didn't look good ... and they haven't gotten any better.
In the following weeks, Konami announced that it would not only refocus its efforts on developing mobile titles, but that it would continue to support the Metal Gear franchise — with or without its creator. Then, with almost no warning, another one of Kojima's projects was scrapped entirely: Silent Hills, a reboot of the long-running survival horror series, was straight-up cancelled. Even its hugely popular playable teaser (nicknamed P.T.) was pulled from the PlayStation Network. Again, it was all done for seemingly no reason other than to pull Kojima's work down.
Even now, Kojima's name is still being pulled from promotional materials: aside from the recently-revealed poster, Kojima's name won't even appear on the game's box art — again, Konami has yet to reveal why it's doing any of this. The closest thing fans have to a concrete reason is the word of Big Boss' Japanese voice actor, though it's far from an official statement.
Truth be told, it does look like Metal Gear Solid V will make it to launch intact — that being said, with everything that's been going on between Kojima and Konami, there's no telling what will happen to the game once it's in players' hands.
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is set for release on Sept. 1.
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