“The Phantom Pain” Announced At The VGAs, Is Probably Metal Gear Solid V

[drop2]The first previously-unannounced game has just been trailer’d over at the Spike Video Game Awards in the shape of “The Phantom Pain”.

The long trailer, punctuated by rhetorical questions on-screen, showed a man waking up in a period-looking hospital with a hook for a hand after an apparently very long coma.

Oh, and he can barely walk. What follows is a freaky looking creature at the end of a corridor, a whole bunch of other patients with various ailments, and a menacing-looking army. Did I mention that at the end, a giant flaming whale flies through the air and eats a helicopter?

Now here where it gets interesting. The only details we have are that what was shown was 100% gameplay, and that “Moby Dick Studio” is somehow involved. There’s no publisher or platform details, or even any recognisable names at all.

Moby Dick’s website has barely any details, except that the studio’s “goal is to deliver an uncompromising, exciting and touching game experience to people all around the globe.” Trailer and image gallery tabs are empty, but the site does include PS3 and Xbox 360 logos in the footer, and given that The Phantom Pain is the only game associated with them, it’s safe to say that it will be coming to current-gen platforms.

Now there may be more to “The Phantom Pain” – the character in the video does look from the back and side ever-so-slightly like Metal Gear’s Snake, and the trailer seemed to almost deliberately not showing the character’s face. I’m not claiming some conspiracy here, but Kojima is well-known for not being entirely forthcoming, so don’t be surprised if there is some kind of connection. I mean, the founder of Moby Dick Studio is listed as Joakim Mogren – Kojima, Project Mogren, anyone?

And this? Looks like MGS V to us.

For now though – conspiracy theories aside – The Phantom Pain looks like it could be something interesting to keep an eye out for. The trailer itself has yet to surface officially online, but you can watch it at about 10m45s here.

29 Comments

  1. I thought it was a new trailer for Metal Gear Solid Ground Zeroes when I saw the back of this guys head. But the Moby Dick stuff threw me off the MGS trail.

  2. Moby Dick has something to do with MGS I’m sure of it.

  3. Joakim is an anagram of Kojima.

    Despite certain people thinking that’s a real person, it’s clearly a reference to MGS.

  4. I hope it’s not MGS5 only because of the ‘Xbox 360 logo’ bit :-/ I want MGS5 PS3 or 4 only :P :P :P

    • A Metal Gear game is never going to be an exclusive.

    • feck off and die.

    • Because being exclusive automatically means it will be a decent game. *sarcasm*

      Guys, just ignore the fanboy/troll/the person who most of us ignore.

      • There’s a reason you never see a decent comment-conversation involving JBoo…

      • Is it because of SCEE? :O damn that SCEE! Or was it cats?

    • Haha.

      Not only will the 360 ruin it, it’ll far worst on PS3. :P

  5. Also Phantom Pain could be a reference to phantom limb pain amputees sometimes get. Remember Ocelot had his arm chopped off in MGS 1 only to later replace it with Liquid Snakes arm.
    Maybe Liquid is back and he is the Phantom Pain!

  6. Sorry for double post, but I’m awake again now and want to add more: I find it hard to believe that an unknown studio can get a VGA reveal like this. It has to be Kojima behind it. It even looks like it’s their new engine. And the guy himself was there! And at the second screen behind the scenes stream, which I watched before the show started they said that some people had already got an early showing of “a cryptic trailer” for an upcoming game, which turned out to be this.

  7. I want to start this series so I bought a MSG HD Collection for Vita but i can’t start playing because i don’t know how and where to play the first game. Should i play the first game btw?

    • Metal gear really doesn’t have to make sense, I started out on sons of liberty & from there it made sense. Snake eater is the first MGS then the ps1 version is 2 I think, sons of liberty 3 & it’s more to do with raiden rather than solid snake then mgs4 is all solid snake.

    • You can download mgs1 from the PSN store which I’m pretty sure will be playable on Vita. The controls are a little clunky but the story makes it worth playing. I recommend starting with mgs2

  8. MGS Nerd/Spoiler Alert:

    Look up the ‘Snatcher Project’ on the MGS database/MGS fansites – it will explain an awful lot of what you see in the trailer, and who you see too…. Looks like a prequal to MG2:SS to me :)

    • Wow, those are some huge similarities to what we’ve seen. I’m really excited to find out what the story is behind this.

      • I am too. I was hesitant at first because it all looks a bit crazy but Kojima does crazy very well…

  9. I don’t see why people are referring this to MGS is it cause the dude at the end looks like snake? And there was no Kojima productions in there what so ever it didn’t look nothing like fix engine. Maybe a new ip that just looks like a clone

  10. Looking at the back of the character, he certainly seemed to be Snake.

    But why would they do something like this? They’ve already revealed the next two Metal Gear games with Rising and Ground Zeroes, is The Phantom Pain going to be the THIRD Metal Gear game being worked on at the same time?

    It seems unlikely…

    Either way, this looked fantastic last night.

    • Rising is surely almost done, it’s out in February. Besides, it’s being developed by Platinum, who we know is a completely different studio ;)

      Maybe Moby Dick is a second team at Kojima Productions? Like how Naughty Dog was working on Uncharted 3 and Last of Us at the same time?

      • Possibly. The name might be related to that giant whale thing near the end of the trailer.

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