Metal Gear Solid 5 originally had an '80s filter

Metal Gear Solid V originally featured an '80s filter screen effect, series creator Hideo Kojima revealed on Twitter last night. He said he was inspired by Ron Howard's new film Rush, which was set in the 1970s and included a texture and tone representative of that decade.

For Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, which is set in 1984, Kojima said developers studied '80s images and even developed an "'80s filter." However, this screen effect--often used in films to help viewers contextualize what they are seeing--was "too heavy" and it slowed down the performance of the game.

"So we had to take it out," Kojima said.

Metal Gear Solid V will launch across two installments: the Ground Zeroes prologue and then the full game The Phantom Pain. Ground Zeroes arrives next month for consoles, while The Phantom Pain might not be out until the end of 2015.

Ground Zeroes is drumming up a fair bit of controversy involving its purportedly short clear time and its visual performance being better on PlayStation 4 compared to Xbox One. The game launches on March 18 for Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation 4.