And not any kind of dig at Konami
Hideo Kojima’s “I’m back” has usurpedPoltergeist‘s “they’re here” in my mind as far as ominous announcements of presence so it’s safe to say that his new PC/PS4 gameDeath Strandingis eating through most of the meager teraflops in my brain.
The man descended on Sony’s E3 stage like some alien/rockstar hybrid as he walked down a ramp that illuminated in squares under his footsteps. Later he ended up at a Hollywood movie party in a graveyard. But Kojima doesn’t come across as all ego. Talking toEurogamerhe noted, “Seeing how the people were welcoming me made me feel really, really good.”
Working at Konamidoes thingsto a person, I’m sure, and now we’re seeing Kojima a little bit happier, freer.
“Last year I had some difficult circumstances and my family was telling me: you’re old, you should retire now and take it easy [He’s only 52! – Ed.]. Fortunately a lot of fans around the world are waiting for my games so I decided I wanted to keep making games. I established my own company and within two-and-a-half months we were able to make a teaser and deliver something to the people, finally.” Kojima says the fan response is what, “made me feel really good that I made the right choice.”
Of course: the weird-ass-ness of the trailer itself? “There are a lot of hints in there, hidden,” Kojima said. “The world having this discussion about what this teaser means was kind of the objective.” Remember, this man got a Swede to play “Joakim Mogren,” bandaged his face all up, and made a fake game studio called Moby Dick Studio. Kojima is fun and weird in his own ways.
So of course Kojima isn’t going to spill a lot aboutDeath Stranding. He has debunked a few fan theories, though: that the baby is Reedus’ clone, that the whole thing is a dig at Konami, that it’s aPT-like proof of concept more than trailer for a planned game.
“One thing I really want to tell people is the teaser is running in real-time,” Kojima said. “We made it in two and half months — and generally teasers are not made by the development team. A lot of trailers are outsourced — that happens pretty often — but we don’t like to do that. We made this teaser ourselves, so people can trust us. It is representative. What you see will be in the game.”
Kojima did respond differently to one bit of fan-sleuthing. Regarding the equations on the tags around Reedus’ neck — specifically The Schwarzschild Radius and the Dirac Equation and their connection to black holes.
“What I will say is, I wanted people to find those…”
Hopefully Kojima also wantedthis to happen, because it’s great.
Hideo Kojima on going with Sony – and what Death Stranding could possibly mean[Eurogamer]
