In a recent interview with gaming website Glixel, Hideo Kojima of Kojima Productions talks early development for Death Stranding, ideas that went into it, and things he wants to continue to bring to the table with game design.
Kojima is dedicated to making games, with that as his main focus. His family tells him to take a break, while his friends urge him on, “You don’t have time! People are waiting to know what your next game will be,”
Citing Metal Gear, he brings up the little tricks he used in past games, like the memory card gimmick from Metal Gear Solid, to make his own type of AR aspect, bringing the game to the players’ surroundings, and how he wishes to bring that back to future games in new and exciting ways. “I don’t want to use the same tricks again in the future but I would like to continue to break the fourth wall.”
He goes into a bit more detail with his situation with Guerrilla and their DECIMA engine, saying, “We’re using Guerilla’s engine, but we’re not creating the same type of game as them, so we need to add to and modify it. We’ll take those modifications that we’ve made and give them back to Guerrilla, and together we’ll create an even more powerful engine.”
Hideo Kojima believes video games, as an art, should evolve with the world around them. Death Stranding was originally supposed to be a short film, but his story was best told through a game. Hopefully we will learn more about his process as the game progresses, but one thing’s for sure: Kojima will deliver a rather interesting product.