Over the years, Metal Gear Solid's iconic character designs have become a hallmark of the series, and it all stems from director Hideo Kojima's rather rigorous requirements for the first instalment.
In a 1998 interview with The PlayStation magazine, now available on Shmuplations, Metal Gear Solid director Hideo Kojima and designer Yoji Shinkawa discussed the duo's approach to character design, and how Kojima's requirements ended up causing Shinkawa more than a bit of trouble.
When asked about what kinds of character design requests he had, Kojima frankly answers "Hardboiled. It's a serious, heavy story, and I wanted characters who could handle that world." Further to this, he adds a few caveats for what he wanted to avoid in a character design, laughing that "Designs that are 'dishonest', weird, or that are just meant to be visually stimulating - like female characters with huge busts - I don't like those."
- Metal Gear Solid's former art director once said he spends "a lot of time fussing over the details of the characters' backside since that's the side the player sees most in-game"
- Hideo Kojima originally had "no plans" for a character like Metal Gear Solid's Cyborg Ninja until Yoji Shinkawa's art had him saying "hell yeah, a ninja cyborg!"
The reason for these strict criteria was simple. "I wanted characters who, just from looking at their clothing you'd be able to tell what kind of person they were, and what their motivations were," he explains. Shinkawa chimes in to say "That's one reason why I struggled a bit with Snake's design," to which Kojima replies "I remember. You struggled a lot. (laughs) The first design looked like Captain Future, and he was orange-colored."
Of course, one could argue that Kojima broke this streak with MGS 5's Quiet, who has received criticism for being over-sexualised in her design, though it would be hard to dispute that her design hasn't since become iconic in its own right. With Kojima having now left Konami permanently, however, it remains to be seen whether or not his stringent design philosophy will be present in any future Metal Gear Solid titles.
If you're a Metal Gear Solid fan, check out our list of the best stealth games to play right now.
