The latest and reportedly the last game in the Metal Gear Solid series, Guns of the Patriots, was announced by Konami in March 2005. The fourth in a highly successful line of stealth games, it will be produced by Kenichiro Imaizumi, developed by Hideo Kojima, and co-directed by Kojima and Shuyo Murata.

Ever since the first Metal Gear Solid game was released by creator Hideo Kojima in 1987, the Metal Gear series has been hugely popular with the gaming public, and Guns of the Patriots is expected to be no different. In several interviews, Kojima has announced that the game's tagline will be “No place to hide” and promised fans several new features, including being able to affect soldiers opting to be Snake's friend or foe.

Story
According to what has been revealed about the game so far, Guns of the Patriots is set some years after the Manhattan incident which occurred in MGS 2, in a world where many mercenaries fight proxy battles for business purposes; and the need for private military contractors and automated weapons is high, due to the fact that military intervention on foreign soil is less restricted.

If that doesn't sound depressing enough, the five largest private military contractors are also run by Liquid Snake through a single company called Outer Heaven. The hero of our game, Solid Snake, once again must save the world by breaking into Outer Heaven's headquarters in the Middle East.

Characters
Hideo Kojima has confirmed that Solid Snake will be the primary playable character, and that he will be suffering from advanced aging effects of his cloning. Other characters confirmed to be in the game include the following:
Meryl Silverburgh
Naomi Hunter
Otacon
Colonel Campbell
Liquid Ocelot (Revolver Ocelot, rumored to be completely possessed by Liquid Snake's arm)
Raiden
Mei Ling
Vamp
Johnny Sasaki

The only potential new character which has been revealed is a child which was featured in the game's E3 poster, although developers have yet to comment on this.

Currently, Guns of the Patriots is a PlayStation 3 exclusive and is estimated to have a 2007 launch date, although an exact launch date has not been released.