Death Stranding 2 - On The Beach | PS5/PRO | June 26th (24th for Digital Deluxe), 2025

Gizmo_Duck

Gizmo_Duck

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Gizmo_Duck

Gizmo_Duck

blathering blatherskite!
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[GQ] The life and death of Hideo Kojima​


For the first 58 years of his life, Hideo Kojima did not think about the fact that one day, he will die. As a boy, growing up in Japan in the 1960s, time seemed still. Even after he turned 30 and created Metal Gear Solid – the 1998 PlayStation classic that pioneered cinematic storytelling in games – he remembers thinking his next three decades would feel just as long as the first. A flash and they went. Then, in 2020, isolated during Covid as he neared 60, he fell seriously ill. "I thought that I could never recover," he says. "I felt like I might not ever be able to create a game again."

It was the first time he'd ever thought about his lifespan; that there were things he would never get to make. Games, sure, but also films and perhaps other things entirely. "I had all these ideas," he says. "So I wrote them down and passed them to my PA, as if it were my will." He had visions of becoming a ghost – unable to create for eternity. "I kind of understood why people commit suicide. It was the end of the world."
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Around the same time, Kojima had worsening eye pain. He couldn't go outside. Worse still: "I couldn't watch movies or TV." He likes to watch at least one film a day. He was struggling to see well enough to develop Death Stranding 2: On the Beach. In his haste to recover, he elected to have eye surgery that then damaged his optical muscles – the part of the eye that lets you focus. At one point, just before he was on the jury at the Venice Film Festival, he was alternating between 10 pairs of glasses. "The doctor kept saying that the brain would adjust," he says. "I was not convinced."
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You left Konami in 2015, and have been independent ever since. How do you feel about that 10-year milestone?

It was good, these 10 years. It was the most important time… What I am most afraid of is time. I am afraid of dying and having dementia. I am afraid of forgetting things when I get old. I am afraid that I won't even realise what I am forgetting. I became independent when I was 52. I'm 61 now. Also, there was Covid. I was trying to shoot the beginning scene of Death Stranding 2, where Léa [Seydoux] comes to you, in the spring of 2020. The game would've been released in 2023, but I couldn't scan actors, I couldn't do the new casting.
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Your outlook on life has clearly changed since your illness. How's your state of mind today?

I feel nervous. I feel rushed. I still have a lot of things I want to do – that I need to do. I thought I could do anything if I was independent, but the reality is that I can't. I always think of other, more weird stuff to make. But if I do that, and it doesn't sell, my studio will go bankrupt. I know all the staff. I know the families of the staff. I have this burden on my shoulders.
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Really good interview. Way more at:
https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/hideo-kojima-interview
 
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