Ryan Payton, assistant producer at Kojima Productions and the studio’s face in the west has been chatting away about the trials and tribulations of being an American game designer working in Japan, telling his own personal story and giving worldly advice to those with similar aspirations.

In a mammoth interview with 1UP (minor spoiler alert), Payton has put a couple of things in black and white that will be tantalizing to any Metal Gear fan yearning for more after completing MGS4. When reacting to word from Famitsu that Kojima is already penning out MGS5 Payton said, “Yeah, he said he’s thinking about MGS5 already, and we’re all kind of curious what’s going on inside his head. [MGS4] is really the final chapter of the Solid Snake story but there’s still a lot of room for filling in the gaps as far as Big Boss is concerned.”

What does this mean? It means what we knew all along really, but for fans of the series it is that little flicker of golden light in the distance which is now just a teensy bit brighter. Kojima obviously loves what he’s created and feels it is so much a part of him that no matter how much he concludes it — “He’s had three attempts now” — he cannot seem to devorce his imagination from it. Where will the story go now? I haven’t finished the game yet so I couldn’t (and wouldn’t want to) speculate on that, but as Payton points out, there is just so much detail behind this franchise that there are any number of characters or angles that could be explored next. And probably will.