Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain launched on this day ten years ago.
Hideo Kojima's final contribution to the series he created launched on September 1st, 2015, and followed the stand-alone prologue release, Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, which was released in 2014.
Taking place in 1984, The Phantom Pain stars Punished "Venom" Snake as the lead character. The game is set in Afghanistan and the Angola–Zaire border region, and is notably more open-ended than previous instalments in the franchise.
The game launched to rave reviews and bumper sales, yet by the time it hit store shelves, Kojima's relationship with long-time employer Konami was already fractured beyond repair – so much so that his name was removed from the cover of the game.
That means that The Phantom Pain is, at the time of writing, the final Metal Gear game to feature any input from Kojima, although Konami has recently remastered Metal Gear Solid 3 for modern systems.
Kojima has since released Death Stranding and Death Stranding 2, working with many of its former Metal Gear Solid contributors, including voice actor Troy Baker and artist Yoji Shinkawa.
David Hayter, the voice of Snake in almost every Metal Gear Solid game, has recently said he's forgiven Konami for replacing him with Hollywood star Kiefer Sutherland for Phantom Pain and Ground Zeroes.