Hideo Kojima is one of the most renowned figures in the video game industry. Known for working on the Metal Gear series, then leaving Konami to found his own studio, he’s since released two new games: Death Stranding, and its sequel Death Stranding 2: On the Beach. In a new interview with SSENSE, Kojima talks about the state of the games industry and his views on it, and he also reveals whether he’ll play Konami’s remake of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.
While Kojima has often been criticized for being a little too high on his supply, there’s no doubt that he’s a pretty brilliant innovator in the video game space. Whether you love or hate his games, you can bet that he’ll be there to take some risks and try doing something different. Death Stranding was the very first strand-type game, after all.
According to the interview, when watching the new trailers shown off at Summer Games Fest, Kojima felt like everything revealed involved fighting an alien monster or a medieval monster. “Even the visuals and the systems are pretty much the same,” Kojima says, “And a lot of people enjoy this, I understand, but it is important to put something really new in there for the industry.”
He also mentions visiting an unnamed studio to consult on a new stealth game and was described as “being deeply unimpressed by what he saw”. He stated that most people making military games probably don’t know how to dismantle or shoot a gun, and yes, Kojima confirms that he does indeed know how to do those things. It would explain why Snake is always so weirdly detailed and obsessed with his different guns in the Metal Gear games.
On the topic of innovation in video games, Kojima also speaks a little on OD, his upcoming project with Jordan Peele. He says the game will be “something totally different” and “people will love it or hate it”. He goes on to say that the game’s reception at launch won’t matter as much because “the real evaluations come later — 10 or 20 years from now.”
Oh, and when asked if he’d play Konami’s Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, Hideo Kojima simply laughed and said no.
