As we slowly inch towards the June 26 release date for Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, director Hideo Kojima has been revealing more and more details about the game. In an interview with Edge magazine (via GamesRadar), Kojima spoke about some of the themes of the upcoming game, and how they compared to the themes of his previous work.
According to Kojima, the themes of some of the games in the Metal Gear franchise came about from the loss of his father. This should come as no surprise considering the fact that parenthood and passing done one’s “memes” and “genes” are central to the storylines in most of the Metal Gear games. With Death Stranding, however, Kojima points out that the themes, while still involving fatherhood, put players in the shoes of the father rather than the child.
“The loss of my father was a major theme in the Metal Gear series,” Kojima explained. “Those games explore the theme of how you surpass your parents. Death Stranding looks in the other direction: you assume the parent’s perspective, looking toward the child.”
It is worth noting that, aside from the concept of “memes” and “genes”, the Metal Gear franchise has had plenty of things throughout that would hint towards this concept of parenthood. Solid Snake’s ancestry, for example, along with his relationship with key characters like Meryl – who has her own issues with her father throughout the franchise – are also big parts in giving Metal Gear the themes about parenthood.
As for Death Stranding, there were also some themes about parenthood present in the original game, especially with regards to the nature of BTs and BBs. The character Målingen – also known as Mama – for instance, has being a mother as one the central parts of her character, as her nickname would imply. Even the central storyline involves a father trying to get some revenge for his child, and protagonist Sam Porter Bridges himself takes on the role of a father the further you get in the game.
“You think you know everything about your son, but there are some things that you don’t,” Kojima continued. “In the first Death Stranding, Sam travels together with Lou, but he doesn’t interrogate who Lou is very much. In the sequel, that has changed. It’s like how an adoptive parent might not know everything about their child. They might have questions. That’s the emotion I wanted to elicit.”
In the same interview, Kojima has also compared the changes between Death Stranding 2: On the Beach and its predecessor to the differences between classic sci-fi horror movie Alien and its more action-oriented sequel Aliens. “The first Ridley Scott film was so frightening,” said Kojima. “There were facehuggers and monsters bursting from people’s chests, and at first nobody knew what it was all about.”
“When James Cameron came to make the sequel, Aliens, he made a very smart decision to make the film not about horror, but about action,” he continued. “It gave the story a new dimension, which was unfamiliar. That is what I wanted to do with this sequel. Everyone understands Death Stranding’s world, so now we’ve introduced battles to give it this new dimension.”
