According to the Japanese genius, Microsoft has not rejected his ideas, and he also said that he has completely rewritten the story of Death Stranding 2 to appeal to gamers.

In an interview with IGN, Hideo Kojima touched on several topics. For example, he believes that video game hardware, including consoles, will eventually disappear: “I think that gaming hardware platforms will ultimately vanish, and it will all be sharable anytime, anywhere and with anyone, on devices like smartphones, tablets, and PCs. My concern is that the world might become one where entertainment is brought down to us from above. Even now, AI will recommend what it thinks you’ll like, and I think we’ll end in a place where individual videos change depending on who is watching them.

The sound of music changed once it started being released on CD instead of vinyl records. You can instantly skip tracks on a CD, so the order of the verses, bridges, and choruses in a song began to shift [to engage the listener from the start of the song]. Maybe it’s inevitable that only good works of entertainment will survive as entertainment changes because of the medium, but there is a danger to that as well,” Kojima said.

The long-rumored (Norman Reedus told us a few months ago that it was in the works!) but only recently confirmed PlayStation 5 title Death Stranding 2, which has no release date, and whose story has been rewritten due to the pandemic, was not left out of the discussion: “It was the same with 9/11. Fiction changes when something that big happens. When something takes place that nobody thought was possible, works of fiction written before it becomes less effective as entertainment, that’s why I completely rewrote Death Stranding 2 from its themes up as well. You can’t pretend that something this big never happened. While the games are based on characters who are not bound by our reality, the players have gone through the pandemic, and a story written before that experience just wouldn’t resonate with them in the same way, whether it was a fantasy story or a sci-fi one.”

The film adaptation was also touched upon during the interview. Kojima received many offers but accepted one from Alex Lebovici of Hammerstone Studios because he is not making the film as a blockbuster movie but with an artistic approach that takes it in a direction that game-to-film adaptations have not yet attempted: “We haven’t quite decided that yet. The failure of film adaptations of games from a while back has led to many movies that cater to gamers, right? That’s why they have the same kind of look as a game. I don’t want the Death Stranding movie to be like that. Rather, I’m taking the approach of changing and evolving the world of Death Stranding in a way that suits the film well. I made Death Stranding to be a game, and games are games. There’s no real need to turn them into films. So in a way, the Death Stranding movie is taking a direction that nobody has tried before with a movie adaptation of a game. I think I need to make something that will inspire some of the people who watch it to become creators 10 or 20 years down the line.”

Finally, he talked about the new cloud project he is working on with Microsoft (it could be Overdose). It’s an idea he’s been thinking about for a long time, and Kojima says that the Redmond tech giant didn’t think he was crazy and listened to his concept: “I tend to get easily bored. Part of why I’ve been able to make games for 30 years is because new technology replaces the old so quickly. The tech you use today may not be applicable tomorrow, and I’m interested in figuring out ways to incorporate the new. Making the wrong choice can fail, of course. It’s a bit like a space program in that way. 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 many big companies and gave presentations, but they seemed to think I was mad. Microsoft ultimately showed that they understood, and now we’re working together on the project, including the technology front.”

It turned out to be a hefty interview, but at least Christmas could be taken lightly!

Source: WCCFTech