Hideo Kojima says he ‘fully rewrote’ Dying Stranding 2 after the pandemic
On: December 23, 2022
Hideo Kojima says that he “fully rewrote” Dying Stranding 2 within the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Chatting with IGN, Kojima explains that the sheer scale of Covid-19’s impact on the world made it unattainable to not consider.
“You may’t fake that one thing this large by no means occurred,” he says. “Whereas the video games themselves are primarily based on characters who usually are not sure by our actuality, the gamers themselves have gone by way of the pandemic, and a narrative written earlier than that have simply would not resonate with them in the identical means.”
Kojima discusses the pandemic at size within the interview. Alongside its impact on Dying Stranding 2, he additionally voices his considerations concerning the distance he believes the pandemic continues to place between folks. “I personally really feel a way of hazard relating to the continued motion towards selling distant work, leaving Tokyo, and minimising the quantity of face-to-face contact required due to the pandemic,” he says. “People exist in a bodily actuality. Once I went to America and eventually bought to hug folks once more, that feeling was simply so completely different.”
It is value noting that Dying Stranding itself was eerily prescient concerning the pandemic, notably its themes of humanity being scattered and remoted within the wake of a catastrophe. That is one thing Kojima feedback on straight within the interview. “Creating connections was the best factor to do in Dying Stranding, and there are plenty of remoted individuals who had been capable of survive due to connections as soon as the pandemic actually occurred. I simply ponder whether we ought to be doing that through the Web alone.”
Kojima additional believes that these problems with “isolation and division” affecting the world straight away usually are not completely associated to Covid. He would not specify what these different elements are, but it surely’s cheap to imagine he is referring to the struggle in Ukraine, and probably the rise of fascism within the US and Europe (though it ought to be mentioned that humanity combating problems with social and political division will not be precisely a brand new downside). In any case, Kojima believes leisure can play a job in resolving these points. “Leisure cannot intervene in politics, nor can it’s used as a weapon. The existence of leisure can change the world although, and I wish to assist put life into folks by offering them with leisure.”
On the similar time, he worries that know-how will proceed to have a distancing impact, each between people, and between folks and artwork. “I feel gaming {hardware} platforms will in the end vanish, and it’ll all be sharable anytime, wherever and with anybody,” he says. “My concern, although, is that the world may grow to be one where leisure is introduced all the way down to us from above. Even now, AI will advocate what it thinks you will like, and I feel we’ll finish in a spot where particular person movies change relying on who’s watching them.”
This wasn’t all the things Kojima instructed IGN. He additionally spoke with them in depth about Kojima Productions’ plans for the Dying Stranding film, which he says is “taking a path no one has tried earlier than.”
