Hideo Kojima is known for playing tricks with fans when it comes to marketing his games. This could first be seen leading up to the release of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, where marketing material and trailers hid the fact that most of the stealth title featured an entirely new protagonist. When it comes to Death Stranding, however, he has taken a different approach.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Kojima spoke about the gameplay trailer for Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, which many players have discovered features scenes from late in the game, and how he has stopped trying to mess with fans with his trailers. This, he noted, came down to a change in the media environment.
“Harrison Ford played the Red Hulk, if you remember that movie, and this was supposed to be a big reveal. But when we went to see it, the poster was already on display at the movie theater,” Kojima said, referring to Captain America: Brave New World. “We’re living in that kind of era of information, and I wanted to use that as a hook.”
He also spoke about a similar trick played by Naughty Dog leading up to the release of The Last of Us Part 2, which hid the fact that The Last of Us protagonist Joel would be killed off quite early in the sequel, with protagonist duties then being split up between Ellie and Abby. “Remember … when the main character died. Many people became furious,” he noted.
With his own projects, however, Kojima spoke about wanting to build more bridges with his fans by not hiding too much from them. Rather, he is more interested in drip-feeding spoilers without context, as we saw with the gameplay trailer for Death Stranding 2: On the Beach.
“I’m trying to make it different from a movie or a book, where people say, ‘Oh, I knew that all along,’” he said. “It’s more like if you play 60 hours, and at the very end you feel it’s great that it was a happy ending, just as you hoped at first. I put that in deliberately. I deliberately drip-feed those kinds of spoilers.”
Kojima has quite a bit to say about the recent state of things when it comes to the gaming industry. Back in July, he spoke about the development teams working on AAA games being too big and bloated. He also noted that games unveiled during Summer Games Fest earlier this year looked too similar, since they involved players fighting either alien monsters or medieval monsters.
“Even the visuals and the systems are pretty much the same,” he said, “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 spoke about the importance of game developers understanding the subject matter of the games they’re working on. Remembering a story about advising a studio on the development of a stealth game, he recalled being disappointed that “People who are making military games, they probably don’t know how to dismantle a gun or shoot a gun.” He continued, “So that’s kind of sad.”
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach was released on PS5 earlier this year. For more details about the title, check out our review.
