Hideo Kojima Talks Death Stranding 2, the Death Stranding Movie, and the Pandemic

He also hints at an "unusual title" being worked on at Kojima Productions.

Hideo Kojima is one of the most well-known and well-respected names in video gaming today. Whether you've been a fan of his since Metal Gear, or only jumped onto his work when you saw Norman Reedus cradling a baby, whatever the auteur comes up with next is bound to be interesting.

Recently sitting down with IGN Japan (as transcribed by IGN), Kojima opened up about the projects he's working on right now, including Death Stranding 2, the Death Stranding movie, and a title for Xbox. Beginning with the film, it seems Kojima is staying away from a typical video game adaptation.

"There were a lot of pitches to make a large-scale movie with famous actors and flashy explosions," Kojima said. "But what good would explosions be in Death Stranding?"

Regarding Death Stranding 2, Kojima is mostly quiet on details, but he does say that he completely "rewrote the themes" of the upcoming title, to reflect the effects of the pandemic on the real world. "You can't pretend that something this big never happened," he said.

Finally, there was some discussion about Kojima Productions' other project, involving Microsoft. Again, few details were given, but from Kojima describing it as "unusual," we can imagine it will have that traditional strangeness often associated with the developer. Kojima also says he's thought about the project for "five or six years," implying there's a lot of depth to it.

"The project we're working on with Microsoft is one I have been thinking about for five or six years already. The project required infrastructure that was never needed before, so I discussed it with lots of different big companies and gave presentations, but they really seemed to think that I was mad. It was ultimately Microsoft who showed that they understood, and now we're working together on the project, including the technology front."

There's a lot to unpack from this interview, but it seems Kojima is moving on to some ambitious projects in the near future.