According to some people, Hideo Kojima is the ultimate troll but if you observe closely, he’s actually nothing but a master of hyping up his own games. It’s a well known fact that he has mentioned Metal Gear Solid 5 many times ever since Guns of the Patriots came out, so much so that (at least) I have taken it for granted that he’s working on it.

Hideo Kojima has been hinting and teasing gamers ever since Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots was released. He revealed to 1UP in 2008, stating that he has three concepts for Metal Gear Solid 5. “I have three concepts for MGS5 already,” he said. But he also admits that he does not want to get involved with the next game in the series. “What would be ideal for me with MGS5, though, is that we don’t do those. If the team picks one of those concepts, I have to get involved again, which I don’t want to do.”

Ryan Payton, the then MGS4 assistant producer also revealed a few tidbits about the next Metal Gear Solid game. “There is still a lot of room for filling in the gaps as far as Big Boss is concerned. There are some misunderstandings that this is the final Metal Gear game. But it’s really the final chapter of the Solid Snake story. That’s all.” So at that point of time we knew that Guns of the Patriots was not the final Metal Gear Solid game.

Fast forward to 2009, Hideo Kojima announces Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. Surprisingly, the game was announced for the PlayStation Portable, a platform which was already dying back then. Anyway, during the planning phase of Peace Walker, the game was actually called Metal Gear Solid 5: Peace Walker. You can see the concept image below for yourself. But when the game was released, the ‘5’ was dropped. On a side note, Peace Walker was directed and supervised by Hideo Kojima himself, contrary to popular belief that Guns of the Patriots was his last Metal Gear Solid game.

During E3 2009, Kojima announced a canonical Metal Gear Solid game called as Rising, featuring the cyborg ninja from MGS4, the much hated protagonist of Sons of Liberty: Raiden. The concept was based on the Japanese words ‘Zan Datsu’, which roughly means “cut and take”. A year later, some gameplay footage and the cutting concept were demonstrated at E3 2010 and Tokyo Games Show 2010 respectively.

A year on and there were reports that Metal Gear Solid: Rising had been cancelled and the game was now undergoing a heavy reboot at Platinum games. This rumour looked more and more concrete when Konami did not show anything of the game at E3 2011. Instead, Hideo Kojima announced a brand new ‘multiplatform’ engine called the FOX engine. A few months back, Hideo Kojima tweeted an image which had a ‘Metal Gear-ish’ feel to it. Of course, it was supposed to be a demonstration as to what the FOX engine is capable off. But the protagonist had a very ‘Snake’ feel to himself.

During the recent Video Game Awards, Hideo Kojima revealed Metal Gear Rising: Revengenace, a spin off game developed by the people behind Vanquish. What is interesting is the fact that Hideo Kojima once again confirms that he had several concepts for Metal Gear Soild 5. “I had several ideas for a game featuring The Boss and the Cobra Unit during the invasion of Normandy. I then handed these plans over to the team so they could take over and make the game. I presented my ideas to the team during the summer of 2008. However, simply dropping MGS5 on the younger staff members was a bit heavy and there was resistance to doing it without my involvement,” he said in a twenty five minute documentary.

After the VGAs were done and dusted, our good old man was at it again. Kojima tweeted yet another image which you can check out below.

He also confirmed that this was running on the FOX engine and just like the one above, this also had a Metal Gear-ish feel to it.

Analyzing the two images, leads us to the following possibilities:

The way the character in the second image is moving, it is a stealth game. Check the hair in both images. It’s long. In Metal Gear Solid, Solid Snake initially had long hair. Snake later borrows Naomi’s scissors to chop his hair so that he does not look similar to Liquid Snake. You can check out that mission briefing video below (jump to 9:50). So the new MGS may be a remake of the classic Metal Gear games. That man is a young Big Boss. The game has a typical jungle setting (refer image), and his gun holding style is pretty similar to that of Big Boss.

Again, we might be wrong and this might be a totally different game. But judging by the evidence we have and the way Kojima has hyped Metal Gear Solid 5 over these past few years, seems to indicate that Snake is indeed coming back. It remains to be seen whether it is Solid Snake or Big Boss.

What are your thoughts? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.