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Hideo Kojima & Fatih Akin - Marché du Film Cannes Next Panel 2025 - Gamereactor Cut Part II

How does technology influence storytelling? This is the question the co-protagonists of this talk at the Cannes Film Festival answered from different angles, as the Japanese video game creator is about to release Dead Stranding 2 and with the German moviemaker ready to premiere Amrum. Here's the second third of the panel from Gamereactor's exclusive POV.

Audio transcription

"This is the current level we see, but every day, technology is evolving, and we have many other specialists coming into the game area, so architects, psychologists, all work together for the game, so it's really advancing every day."

"So AI would probably come in, so that's, you know, it's limitless.
Since I get bored easily, but this is the reason why I've been creating games, because every day is different.
Anything that you can't do today could be possible tomorrow, or it could be possible two days from now."

"So not like, you know, Tom Cruise, it's like Mission Impossible.
Anything you can't do today, it could be possible tomorrow.
So that's why I'm having fun in the game industry and creating games.
Fatih, you have not worked until now, I mean, with this amount of technology."

"Would you say that for you to be in a more realistic way of filmmaking gives you more freedom or more limitation?
I mean, I have to admit, I work already with artificial intelligence.
You know, like, when I write, you know, it's not that the script is written by it, you know, but I can ask, like, it's mostly like stuff like grammatic, or how do you spell this, or how do you spell that, this kind of stuff, how would you write this line, how would you say, can you do it like in one line, stuff like this, I already start, I use it as a tool, you know, and I also, in Amrum, we also had to work with AI on visual elements, on certain visual elements, you know, so it's a tool, and it's helpful, and I don't see, I see, of course, the dark clouds, I see the risk of it, on the one hand, but I see the opportunities, and there's, yeah, there's a lot of freedom, and I see my kids how they use it, you know, I have a 12-year-old daughter, and I have a 20-year-old son, my son brought me into the game world, actually, my son knew Hideo before I knew him, you know, through Metal Gear, you know, and so, see how the kids are using it, you know, it's kind of like, I learned from them, and I see it as an open space, yeah, helpful."

"And when you see the character, when you see how realistic it looks, do you recall the first time you saw that, and how did you feel? I mean, when I saw the puppet first, you know, I was kind of like, I was kind of like, what? And, you know, like, that looks funny, and then I thought about Metallica, you know, my most favorite album I have is Master of the Puppet, you know, so I was thinking, I'm the master of the puppet, you know."

"Well, we actually have footages of Dolman, the character, let's have a look.
He's a good kid.
Amazing, right?
Dolman is actually connected to Sam's hair. At first, he puts it to his butt, and Dolman doesn't like it, but anyways, we're traveling together this time, so Dolman would speak a lot to the main character, Sam, so when you go back to your private room, Sam sits on the bed, but Dolman sits in kind of a shelf, so he kind of talks to you, and Sam could also talk to Dolman, so I want the people to enjoy that conversation, too. So, you could even throw Dolman, and you could have this, he would be kind of a lookout for you in the open field, so I think Dolman will be very, very popular. I want to say something. I mean, we come here to Cannes as filmmakers, you know, to win the Palme d'Or, you know, this is like the final aim, you know, the final quest, you know, like the Palme d'Or. You know what? Being a character in his game is so much better than the Palme d'Or, man. So, we talked a little bit about technology, and I wanted to bring another subject, which is storytelling, actually, because it is something that video games imply, that the player participates very actively to the story by making decisions, by doing the action. How much of this active part of the writing comes, actually, for you? How would you say writing a video game is different from what you know of movie screenwriting?
Well, it's an interactive media, so you can't decide the timeline, because it's up to the player. So, everyone says I'm a storyteller, but I don't think I'm very successful yet."

"So, if there's a story, and you have like a road, and for example, you're on a car, this is a story. This game is like you're on a highway, and you kind of change lanes, or you go out of an exit here. Usually, you could do anything you want, and the story reveals like limitlessly, but that doesn't happen in everyday games yet."

"So, like for instance, we see this, the con is like an open world, and you're a player, and you have the stage that we're seeing, and you have a mission that you're coming to the stage, and if you make total freedom, people will not probably make it to the stage, and people will not make it in time. So, I have to decide, should I make a game over if the people won't come in time? Should I change the story? So, these games is that the games also change to a cut scene, and they kind of make you come to the stage. So, if you give freedom which seat you give the player to sit down, there'll be so many problems that I'll face. Like for instance, you want someone to have sit in the middle, and you could keep that seat open, or the player could come to this entrance here, but you could make a cut scene, and the cut scene, the player sits in the middle. But that's the storytelling level in a game of today, and I'm not satisfied, because it's not total freedom storytelling. So, I still have, I want the young people to, you know, also become a creator, and think about how to be successful in interactive storytelling. So, I want people, I want some help from the young people. So, it would still be a progress, and it's not finalized yet. Because you have so much evolved throughout the years, and retro careers from the start, when you make the first video game, until Death Stranding 2, you have evolved in a way no one could have imagined."

"Well, I think it's still a long way to go. I'm still old, too old, but you know, I expect the young people to follow. But new technology will come in, and AI might come in, you know, it's okay.
And Faki said, AI is a tool, and you don't have to fear. In the past, people didn't drive cars, remember? So, when a first automobile, everyone was scared about it. But nowadays, everyone drives a car, because it's efficient. So, it's the same. So, the creator could use AI to make it more efficient, and use it to make, become more creative. So, it's a tool that you shouldn't fear. So, the game storytelling is probably still at a start stage, but we have a long way to go."

"So, everyone who has grown up playing games, the era of people who have played games and become musicians, writers, movie directors, I know that there's so many people like that.
I would like to ask everyone to participate and solve this issue together.
Faki, what do you understand from this way of writing stories, compared to the one that you wrote? I mean, what I truly adore on the way Hideo is writing, or how games were writing, are there seem to be no limit of direction where you write, you know?
It's like, you write left, and then in the left, there's like, you reach a point, and then you can left again, or right, or straight forward, and this goes on, and on, and on, and on, and you have to write it all. It's like, in a way, it's such a big work, and it has so many layers."

"It's kind of like, I don't know, it has more layers than John Milton's Lost Paradise, you know?
It's really rich, and as a writer, and in the first place, I am a writer, as a filmmaker, I start with the writing, you know? For me, this is a very inspiring thing, and in Amrum, the plot is, there's a 12-year-old boy, and he tries to get three groceries for his mother in 1945, on an island where there are not these groceries. It's white bread, it's butter, and honey. They don't have it on the island in 1945, and the way he tries to get it, really was inspired by computer games, you know? It was, okay, the next level, he has the butter, what's the next level? He needs the honey, he lost the honey, he has to go back to the second level again, before he gets to the third level."

"I try to write, he was inspiring me, all the games my son was playing, were inspiring me, you know, to write it like a game.
If I go back to the images we had before, and the way your character was made, it implies a way of directing actors which is very different from when you are in front of a camera."

"Hideo, can you explain to us, what are the main challenges to direct actor for performance capture?
For performance capture, it's kind of same with like Marvel movies, and many actors have probably experienced. We're a little bit more like a lot doing it in performance capture, but it's different than you see in the movies, but there'll be like small details like just standing up, or you know, standing up looking sideways, and I have to ask the actors kind of do all this, and we blend it in the end. So, that's a little different than, you know, movies performance capture. Also, we have to do all the muscle simulation depending on the actor's body, or the cloth simulation of how the cloth moves, and we have to make sure that it matches the motion. So, that's not the actor's job, it's our technology job. We also ask the actors to check the outcome. So, I don't think it's not too much different than doing it in the movies and in games."

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