You may have heard about Phantom Pain when the trailer was revealed at the VGAs. I won’t go into specifics, so tl;dr a soldier is badly injured and held in some kind of infirmary, other patients seem to want to rescue you from some kind of enemy army.

Now, in case you haven’t heard, this one’s a bit odd, so bear with me. The studio with their logo in the trailer is the Stockholm based Moby Dick studio. Moby Dick hasn’t developed any games before. Their CEO, Joakin Mogren doesn’t appear to be a real person.

There have been plenty of theories flying around, and they point fairly solidly to this game actually being a Metal Gear game. Joakin Mogren is an anagram for Kojima, which also leaves a conspicuous “Ogre” to remain- Ogre being the codename of a project Kojima has been involved in.

The visuals (stunning as they were) are oddly reminiscent of the Fox engine (Kojima’s next-gen engine). The bearded supposed protagonist bears a striking resemblance tp…well you be the judge.

Yes, our favorite one-eyed, bearded super soldier appears to be taking a little R&R, though which supposed Snake this is remains a mystery. Speaking of being on-eyed, this guy is missing another fairly important organ: the left arm.

 

Remember kids: our friend Liquid Ocelot lost his right arm back in 1998 in MGS. The whole “arm” situation has held serious significance throughout the series as a whole. Add to this the obvious beard and the missing eye, and you’ve got a Metal Gear recipe if I’ve ever heard one.

There are a few things left unanswered, the imagery is a little…out there. But burning soldiers aren’t anything new (The Fury, anyone?)  but there is a giant whale-thing that appears in the trailer at one point, though the Moby Dick reference isn’t lost on me.

To the real point, then, Geoff Keighley claims that GTTV is running an interview with “Moby Dick”‘s “CEO” “Mogren” on “Thursday.” (Damn, that’s a real word, too late now.)  Details have been super sparse so far, but the Metal Gear fanboy in me has been sweating bullets over this one for a while. Does it connect to Ground Zeroes? Is it Metal Gear Solid V? (Fun fact, if you use the same font and overlay “Metal Gear Solid V” over the logo for “The Phantom Pain” it fits…perfectly) I refuse to make too many assumptions before this reveal. Until then, enjoy this trailer if you haven’t seen in, and await the big reveal.