March 16, 2004 - In mid-February, the master designer behind the Metal Gear Solid series, Konami's Hideo Kojima, surfaced from his own self-imposed hiding to give the world a surprise taste of what's to come in the next iteration in the series, Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake-Eater. At the Bambuddha Lounge in downtown San Francisco, Ca., Kojima, translator Scott Dolph, and a small crew of camouflage-wearing Konami staff held a quiet presentation on a single aspect of the game, a game that will most definitely appear at this year's Electronic Entertainment Exposition in May. IGN attended the event to give you this report. The topic of that discussion? Stealth, naturally. But not just "ordinary" stealth. At least not ordinary stealth for a Metal Gear Solid game; camouflage stealth. Or as Kojima liked to refer to it, Camo stealth.

Three is the Magic Number
It's been a while since gamers have read anything on MGS3 Snake-Eater, so I'll bring you up to date. MGS3 Snake-Eater takes place in the 1960s, or at least a place and time that appears as if it's in the 1960s -- Kojima sneakily refused to answer this question directly -- and the game is located specifically in the jungle somewhere in the Eastern part of the world. Players take on the role of the series leading bad-ass, Solid Snake (or at least a guy who closely resembles Solid Snake), who's dropped into a thickly mixed jungle on an unspecified mission requiring him to penetrate enemy lines and use the region's resources to survive and persevere.

The new concepts initially introduced in the game via last year's E3 are Snake's outside environment and his abilities to survive and stealthily progress through said rough terrain. He uses camouflage to hide, stalk, and kill his enemies, whether that means hiding in the grass, high up in trees limbs, below the water surface, or by blending into the jungle itself. Using the environment to attack and to survive are also key new concepts that shape the game's new design. Snake can hang from trees with one hand and shoot from his other hand; he can drop down from tree branches to break enemy necks, and he can climb them to snipe enemies as well. In short, all of Snake's high-level military techniques are now being attributed to an outside environment, rather than an indoor one.

The Round Table event gave us a few new insights into game techniques being implemented into this third and most eccentricly named game in the series. If you remember Kojima's presentation from E3 2003 you'll remember that the number three ("3") was a major theme. In his presentation, "three" remained the magic number with three major themes: 1) A new era, the 1960s; 2) A new setting, the jungle (plus others); and 3) New gameplay, via camouflage and survival techniques.

1) The 1960s setting presents gamers with a time in which the US-Soviet Cold War was at its height and simultaneously, the period was a time of innocence and burgeoning change. 2) The new setting isn't just comprised of forests, instead there will be rivers, caves, bridges, snowy areas and rocky, grassless slopes and foothills. 3) The stealth-based gameplay consists of various elements, but the most significant ones are camouflage, stamina, and survival. Kojima focused solely on these elements in this sneak peak look, while essentially revealing everything else until E3.