Konami E3 press conference notes

Konami Digital Entertainment made a couple of important announcements during its press conference this afternoon at E3 worth noting. Amidst all the Dance Dance Revolution and Karaoke Revolution stuff, Konami revealed five keys franchises that active gamers will want to know about. Most of them you already know about and one is kind of questionable but I’ll mention it anyways for the sake of completion.

Kojima Productions’’ Hideo Kojima announced that his company is working on four games: Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker, Metal Gear Solid Rising, Metal Gear Solid Arcade and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow.

While you may already know about Metal Gear Solid Rising and Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker, what you may not have known is that Kojima is only working directly on one of those titles: Peace Walker.
Why? Because he considers Peace Walker to be the direct sequel to Metal Gear Solid 3. The game will feature a new character named “Naked Snake” and will be set during the rise of Outer Heaven in Costa Rica - circa 1974.

Metal Gear Solid Rising will be produced by Kenichiro Imaizumi, though Kojima said elsewhere earlier in the day that he still has the power to complain. Oh, and Metal Gear Solid Rising is not an exclusive to any particular platform; it will be out on PS3, PC and Xbox 360. Naturally Kojima will have some input on the game as a co-producer (mainly in title only), but the bulk of the design decisions will be left to Imaizumi.

Metal Gear Solid Arcade is described as a game played in “arcades” (do you remember those places?) using with a set of special 3D glasses. The game was built on the PS3 and will use some kind of networking system so that players in different arcades can compete against each other. The game will be released in Japan later this year, with the hopes of bringing it to North America at some point.

But the biggest surprise came when Kojima announced Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, one game that managed to stay a secret until now. Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is a brand new game in the series that is in no way connected to the other games in the series - at least that is what producer Dave Cox told the audience.

The game features a new protagonist named Gabriel who has the power to bring the dead back to life through a mysterious mask he wears. somehow this will be a part of the gameplay and the storyline, but how we do not know. Naturally as a Castlevania game it has to be about revenge, retribution and vampires, but Konami sees the game as a fresh start for the series. It’ll be out sometime in 2010 for PS3 and Xbox 360. Development is being handled by Mercurysteam with Kojima Productions overseeing the project.

Finally, there’s the game based on the SAW movies. Konami showed off some gameplay featuring Jigsaw’s minions (apprentices who wear pig heads and try to lead players into traps), a bear trap that does unspeakable things to human flesh and much blood and gore. Konami says that this game captures the “texture of the film,” The original SAW film was basically a self-snuff film where the protagonists had to make hard choices in order to survive. If Konami can’t capture that essence, that disturbing imagery, in ways that won’t get its game an Adults Only rating than SAW could be good..