Development
The game was publicly announced first at Tokyo Game Show 2005, by means of a humorous and slightly abstract gag machinima using characters from Metal Gear Solid 3, under the slogan of "No Place to Hide".
Hideo Kojima wished to implement a new style of gameplay which was set in a full scale war zone. Kojima wanted to also keep the stealth elements in the game, which made the team abandon the "No Place to Hide" concept. The only announced war zone before release was the Middle East. Using several locations emphasized Kojima's original intention to portray the world in full scale conflict.
During development, the game's exclusivity was continuously questioned, even after Kojima officially confirmed the exclusivity several times. The exclusivity of the game was still in doubt from non-PlayStation 3 owners for a long period after the initial release.
Hideo Kojima announced that he would be retiring as director of the Metal Gear series after Snake Eater, and would leave his position open to another person for Metal Gear Solid 4. As a joke, the new director was announced as "Alan Smithee", but in R, a 400-page book bundled with Metal Gear Solid 3's Japanese "Premium Package", the director was revealed to be Shuyo Murata, co-writer of MGS3 and director of Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner. He also contributed Easter eggs to Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and Metal Gear: Ghost Babel. However, it was announced that Kojima would be co-directing the game with Murata after substantial negative fan reaction, including death threats.
The title was described as "essentially finished" by January 2008, and went through extensive beta testing. At Destination PlayStation on February 26, 2008, Sony announced that MGS4 would be released worldwide on June 12, 2008, along with the special MGS4 PlayStation 3 bundle.
It was announced that Guns of the Patriots is the first PlayStation 3 game that uses a 50GB dual layer Blu-ray Disc even with the use of file compression.
Originally, one of Kojima's endings for the game would have had Snake and Otacon turn themselves in for breaking the law, and subsequently they would be convicted and executed, but this idea was vetoed by his team.
Read more about this topic: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns Of The Patriots/Archive 1
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—George Orwell (1903–1950)
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—Zerelda G. Wallace (1817–1901)
“The man, or the boy, in his development is psychologically deterred from incorporating serving characteristics by an easily observable fact: there are already people around who are clearly meant to serve and they are girls and women. To perform the activities these people are doing is to risk being, and being thought of, and thinking of oneself, as a woman. This has been made a terrifying prospect and has been made to constitute a major threat to masculine identity.”
—Jean Baker Miller (20th century)