Hideo Kojima Talks Death Stranding and Metal Gear
Hideo Kojima. He’s either a certifiable genius or a total whacko…or a little bit of both depending on your taste! After a well-publicized falling out with Konami, legendary video game creator Hideo Kojima called it quits. Known for his vaunted Metal Gear series and the ill-fated Silent Hill, Hideo Kojima exudes a tremendous amount of weight on his projects. His latest game, Death Stranding, sees Hideo Kojima pick up Norman Reedus of Walking Dead fame. The above video is the E3 trailer for Death Stranding and sees Norman Reedus buck-naked and surrounded by ghostly hand prints and dead sea creatures. Yeah, that sounds just like something Hideo Kojima would do!
Hideo Kojima spoke on the difference between Metal Gear and Death Stranding. “Metal Gear was an action game. But it was an action game where you happened to be hiding. There was no genre for that back then, and now it’s classified as a stealth game. In that regard, Death Stranding will also be an action game, but I want to make something new, something different.”
How exactly does he intend on doing that? Hideo Kojima referenced a story. “In this short story, Abe states that the first tool mankind created is a stick,” Kojima said of his inspiration, a short story by Kobo Abe. “He states that the stick is the first tool that mankind created to put distance between himself and bad things — to protect himself. He states that the second tool mankind created is a rope. A rope is a tool used to secure things that are important to you.”
He continued, “Most of your tools in action games are sticks. You punch or you shoot or you kick. The communication is always through these ‘sticks.’ In [Death Stranding], I want people to be connected not through sticks, but through what would be the equivalent of ropes… But of course you will be able to use the sticks too.” At least that’s a little different than basing an entire game off Dwight Eisenhower’s final speech, right? Either way, we’ll be keeping an eye on Hideo Kojima and his latest project!