Hideo Kojima isn’t subtle. The Japanese game developer has built a career on excess and melodrama with the likes of Policenauts, Metal Gear Solid, and Zone of the Enders. But he manages to effortlessly partner that absurdity with larger-than-life characters and gameplay innovation that few in the industry are able to match. Even today, it’s difficult to play any of the Metal Gear Solid titles without being blown away by what each one brought to the table.
Many of us expected the series to reach its natural conclusion with Guns of the Patriots in 2008, partly because Kojima himself said again and again during interviews that this would be the end of Solid Snake’s story. But the series returned several years later in the form of The Phantom Pain, which went down in history as a masterful stealth game, but one that was left unfinished after a strained relationship between Kojima and Konami resulted in him being ousted from the company shortly after its release. A business relationship that had endured for almost 30 years went down in flames, and since then hasn’t been spoken about.
Death Stranding 2 Is Sending A Message To Konami
Kojima has likely remained quiet about his feelings for Konami and Metal Gear Solid over the years out of respect for his former colleagues, and having a shouting match with your former employer on social media is never a good look. Instead, he formed his own studio in December 2015 and began work on what would eventually become Death Stranding. I’ll never forget him walking on stage at Sony’s E3 press conference the next year and being met with open arms.
People were excited about whatever Kojima planned to do next, and the fact he had already poached multiple members of his existing team and begun development on a new project this quickly meant he wasn’t messing around.
Now untethered from Konami and seemingly given a blank cheque by Sony to explore his eccentric ideas, this was Kojima like we’d never seen him before. And the results speak for themselves.
While polarising with critics and its players alike, to this day, there is still nothing quite like Death Stranding, with its combination of distinct gameplay mechanics, oddball characters, and an undeniably sincere approach to narrative that speaks to problems going on within our own world and those Kojima faced during development.
Every Piece Of Art Has Meaning, Even Death Stranding
Most notably, his mother passed away as Death Stranding was first getting off the ground. In an interview with Vulture, Kojima expressed regret about keeping his new studio a secret just so his mother wouldn’t worry, choosing to wait to tell her when success was in sight. But this wasn’t possible, and years later you can see themes of lingering motherhood and the role of female parental figures peppered throughout Death Stranding in many of its characters and themes. Kojima has rarely shied away from this connection, and now it’s more poignant than ever.
Here’s what he had to say at the time: “The ghosts in the game — maybe my parents are one of them, seeing me in this world. I wanted to have that kind of metaphor, that within you, you’re connected to the people that passed away.”
Everyone you’ve met, everything you’ve done, and in the case of Hideo Kojima, everything you have ever made, is going to stick with you no matter what. To act like leaving behind parts of yourself like this is trivial is nothing short of absurd. Metal Gear Solid is one of the most iconic video games ever made, and without Kojima’s direct involvement Konami knew that daring to touch the series in any significant way was going to cause public outroar.
Kojima lost his last remaining parent just as he was losing Metal Gear Solid, a child of his own he had spent the better part of three decades nurturing from nothing.
Metal Gear Survive was the first and final nail in the coffin, a Phantom Pain asset flip that tried to capitalise on the popularity of survival games at the time to mediocre effect. With the exception of Master Collections that compiled existing games and touched them up, it would not be until this year’s Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater that the series would stage what many consider a comeback. Whether this will result in new games later down the line is still a mystery, but if I were Konami, I wouldn’t dare. Especially now Death Stranding 2 seems to be making Kojima’s feelings on the matter loud and clear.
Kojima Isn’t Afraid To Burn It All Down
One of the taglines at the end of the most recent Death Stranding 2 trailer is ‘we should not have connected’, which alludes to pretty much everything the game stands for. The way that players connect by building structures and collecting packages, the way characters within its narrative are trying to connect the fraying threads of a broken world, and how, despite failing to stay alive in a vision of our planet where civilization has long faded away, embracing every single human connection we can is the key to survival.
It could also be referring to the regret Kojima feels about leaving Metal Gear Solid behind in the first place, and how the only way to recapture those creations is to recreate them in his new vision, as we see at the very end of the trailer, just as this quote leaves the screen.
A new character known as Neil then appears before a flaming church surrounded by candles and embers, ready to fall to pieces as he ties a familiar bandana around his head as a unit of skull-faced soldiers rise up alongside him. It’s easy to connect all the dots here if you know anything about Kojima and Konami’s relationship. A moment of reclamation so on the nose it’s hard not to laugh out loud at the gall of its existence, but that’s why it’s so damn special.
Throughout his career, Kojima has never been afraid to make his personal feelings obvious through his work, whether it be working through emotional milestones in his personal life by transplanting them onto characters and themes or spending hours on overlong cutscenes wrought with needless exposition just because he really wants to let us know how much he likes classic action movies and military helicopters.
He’s built his career on this shameless excess, and it’s why people like myself keep showing up ready to shower him with praise and critique in equal measure.
Don’t even get me started on the tar mech deathmatch at the end of the trailer, which feels like a deliberate reference to Metal Gear Ray duking it out with Metal Gear Rex.
With its latest trailer alone, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach has proven it has more to say about the world than most triple-A games in recent memory, and that is enough for me to be there on day one. I want to see how this plays out, and how far Kojima is willing to take this story before reaching its end.
- Released
-
June 26, 2025
- ESRB
-
Mature 17+ // Violence, Blood and Gore, Partial Nudity, Strong Language