"This may sound pretentious, but I don't like being thought of as 'the Metal Gear guy,'" Hideo Kojima laments. The success of his Metal Gear series has propelled him into the spotlight as one of gaming's leading luminaries. However, Kojima's other franchises--Boktai and Zone of the Enders, for example--have failed to replicate that success.

"There's a lot more I can do."

Of course, there's benefits to working on such an iconic franchise. "The Fox Engine, for example, took a lot of time and money [to create]; we were only able to develop it because it was intended for the next Metal Gear," Kojima told EGM. And if Kojima gets his way, perhaps the visually impressive new engine could power non-Metal Gear games in the future.

The Metal Gear games also give Kojima a safe place to experiment with new gameplay ideas. Ground Zeroes, for example, represents a radical shift in Metal Gear's design. "In the next game, I'm introducing concepts intended for entirely new intellectual properties using the Metal Gear brand," he teased.