Metal Gear Solid designer wants Hideo Kojima to come back and work on the franchise

Metal Gear Solid Survive producer Noriaki Okamura wants to work alongside Hideo Kojima on the series once again, but that is highly unlikely to happen given past history with the Japanese publisher.

Back in 2015, Konami surprised the gaming world by firing Hideo Kojima, the creator of the best-selling Metal Gear franchise. Not only was Kojima fired, but Silent Hills, a horror game starring Norman Reedus, was cancelled. A lot of Kojima's original MGS team also left Konami and together they formed Kojima Productions.

But the current Metal Gear producer Noriaki Okamura wants Kojima to come back. In an ideal world, Okamura would team up with Kojima and other former MGS alumni to expand the franchise. But Kojima has moved on with his own fully-fledged game-and-film production studio and created a big hit with Death Stranding, and is currently working on an experimental film-game hybrid OD, as well as Death Stranding 2.

In a recent Konami livestream centered around Metal Gear, series designer and producer Noriaki Okamura expressed great interest in working with Kojima again. Okamura was part of Kojima's team on games like Zone of the Enders and went on to help design Metal Gear Survive, which released after Kojima had left.

Question: Is there any chance that the original staff members will return to work on, co-develop, or supervise any of the Metal Gear series?

Answer, from Konami's Noriaki Okamura:

"Well, it's not my place to answer on behalf of anyone outside the company, or to guess how they might feel about it.

"But just speaking for myself, personally I'd like nothing better than to work with Mr. Kojima and the rest of the team again. If that could happen, that would be the dream.

"But people have moved on to new things and new commitments, and that's just our current reality. We can't just take it for granted that everyone would work with us again, or let ourselves be completely dependent on them.

"I just don't think it's right for us to be the ones to make that kind of demand of anyone."