Seventeen games. That’s the count for the Metal Gear franchise, not including remakes, remasters or ports. And the last mainline entry, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, came out in 2015.
Konami hasn’t confirmed a Metal Gear Solid 6. That hasn’t stopped anyone from arguing about who should star in it.
The argument is happening because the series has burned through more lead characters than most franchises manage in twice the runtime. Solid Snake. His “genetic” father Big Boss, also known as Naked Snake. Raiden. Venom Snake, most recently. Keeping the various snakes straight is a genuine chore, and the fanbase does it anyway, because this is a series people track obsessively.
The Kojima problem nobody can get around
Hideo Kojima left Konami in 2015, right after The Phantom Pain shipped. Every conversation about a sixth game runs straight into that fact and stalls there.
Over on r/metalgearsolid, one user put the question plainly: “How would you feel about MGS6 with a new protagonist?” The replies were less about the protagonist than about whether the game should exist.
“I’d rather a spiritual successor myself,” one comment read. “MGS needs to rest; Its story has just finished on Kojima’s terms.”
Another commenter went further, and had clearly been sitting on this for a decade: “I said this ten years ago, and I’m still saying it now. A complete reboot is fine. Don’t try and continue the canon with new stories, just start fresh. Scrap everything except the character of Solid Snake and the concept of a Metal Gear. All new characters, all new settings, all new stories. Put Metal Gear in the title, but call it something other than Solid. Establish it as a separate entity from the Kojima games.”
That’s not a fan asking for more. That’s a fan asking for a firewall.
The Meryl pitch is the most interesting one
In a separate thread, a user floated Meryl as the new lead, and actually built out the premise.
“I don’t know how many people would feel about this, but there is an opportunity to make that character be better than how she was portrayed before,” the post read.
The setup: a hypothetical MGS6 taking place ten years after MGS4, with Meryl and Johnny working together in a similar way as Snake and Otacon. Johnny would still be the comedic levity of this new hypothetical MGS6.
“There would of course be more detailed references to Snake and his final days,” the user wrote. “Maybe even a fond memory Meryl has of Snake revisited from previous games. An older Raiden, Sunny, and even Drebin could also make an appearance.”
It’s a real pitch with real structure, which is more than most fan casting gets. And it lines up with where the medium has been heading. The Last of Us Part II and The Witcher IV both handed the lead role to a woman deeper into an established series. Meryl fronting a Metal Gear game would fit that pattern.
You can also already hear the complaining from certain “fans.”
Everyone’s got a name and none of them matter yet
Beyond Meryl, the suggestions sprawl. Psycho Mantis. Liquid Snake. The Boss. Gray Fox. The options are effectively endless, which is what happens when a series has this much lore and no active development to constrain the daydreaming.
Some want Solid Snake back. Some want Raiden. Some want a familiar face taking up the mantle, some want a character who has never appeared before.
The first Metal Gear came out in 1987. Nearly four decades later, the loudest voices in the fandom aren’t fighting over who holds the cardboard box next. They’re fighting over whether anyone should pick it up at all, with the franchise sitting untouched since Kojima walked out the door.
