Hideo Kojima discusses key ‘choice’ made while creating Death Stranding 2: On the Beach

With the release of Death Stranding 2 imminent, creator Hideo Kojima is opening up about the factors that drove him in creating the sequel.

Hideo Kojima is responsible for one of the more unique pieces of storytelling we have experienced in recent years, in any medium.

The video game Death Stranding was released in 2019, shortly before the Covid pandemic struck, and explored strangely prescient themes.

The player-controlled character Sam Porter Bridges, portrayed by Norman Reedus (The Walking Dead), travelled across a post-apocalyptic version of the United States. The moment-to-moment gameplay involved delivering packages, and despite the presence of some combat and horror elements, it was a mostly serene experience.

A similarly serene scene from the upcoming sequel.

The broader plot, meanwhile, was about connection. Sam’s journey through a ruinously splintered country, building bridges (pun very much intended) with and between previously isolated people, resonated well enough pre-pandemic, and so very powerfully after it, in the wake of nationwide lockdowns.

It was all reinforced by Death Stranding’s main point of difference: a multiplayer system that saw players indirectly helping each other.

You could leave equipment for other players to use in their own game worlds, for example, or donate resources to build roads that would benefit everyone.

Hence Mr Kojima’s description of DS as its own new genre, a “strand game”. Its message hinged on the strands linking its players – total strangers who would never meet in real life, but were nevertheless sharing a meaningful experience.

Now Mr Kojima is gearing up for the release of the original game’s sequel, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, next week. You can expect it to delve into similar themes, but in a different setting: Australia.

It made sense, then, for the revered Japanese game designer to visit Australia shortly ahead of the release to discuss his latest work.

Hideo Kojima. Picture: Leon Bennett/Getty Images

Norman Reedus as Sam Porter Bridges.

Speaking in Sydney, Mr Kojima suggested players will find the sequel “more accessible” than its idiosyncratic predecessor.

“I had people who loved it and people who didn’t like it,” Mr Kojima said of the first game.

He compared it to his previous brainchild Metal Gear Solid, the stealth game series, which emerged at a time when “nobody knew stealth games”. They weren’t yet their own genre. So he remembers some players, at first, feeling that it lacked action.

“Half loved it, but the other half said, ‘We need more guns,’” he recalled.

“This time (with DS) it was a delivery game, and a lot of people said, ‘It’s a walking simulator.’ That’s fine. It’s a new thing, so there are pros and cons.

“Now, if you create a sequel to that, you have a choice, to be very (similar) or to make it totally different.

“It’s a delivery game, which I didn’t change. But then, I wanted to make it a little bit more accessible, but without changing the theme of it.

“The main character is Sam, and I can make a Call of Duty-style shooting game using Sam. A lot of people might like that, I don’t know. It is not for me.”

Death Stranding: top of the charts for cute video game babies? Quite possibly.

Mr Kojima drew a comparison to the Alien film series. In the first of those movies, the titular alien is mysterious, which makes it all the more terrifying.

“You don’t see the alien until the very end. You see the egg, you see the face. You don’t understand what’s happening, what the alien is, what it’s weak point is. That’s why it is so scary,” he said.

Once you know more about the alien, though, it becomes less terrifying. So subsequent films in the series

“Everyone now knows, it’s not scary anymore,” said Mr Kojima.

“Same with Death Stranding.”

He was referring to the BTs (Beached Things), mysterious horror-adjacent entities that act as probably the most consistent threat to the player throughout DS.

Not relevant to the text here, just a shot from the trailer that I thought looked quite epic.

“Now you know what’s happening in the Death Stranding world. You’re not scared anymore in the sequel,” Mr Kojima said.

So, returning to the Alien parallel: the original film’s sequel is far more action-heavy, which compensates for the drop-off in fear. Mr Kojima’s implication was that DS2, while not a total shift away from its predecessor, will also involve more action.

“The surprise of making (a story) where people already know things was the biggest challenge this time,” he said.

“That’s why I have new characters coming out in this game.”

About those new characters. The first game’s cast included Reedus, Lea Seydoux, Mads Mikkelsen, Margaret Qualley, Tommie Earl Jenkins and Guillermo del Toro, among other names you would recognise.

DS2 adds Elle Fanning (The Great) and Debra Wilson (Mad TV). But when asked to nominate the most impressive new performer on his roster, Mr Kojima highlighted someone whose work is less well known outside Europe: Italian actor Luca Marinelli.

Marinelli (right) in an Italian film, The Eight Mountains.

“We had a good team. What surprised me most was Luca,” said Mr Kojima.

“He’s an Italian actor. And I was watching him in his previous movies. And I kind of wrote a comment when his movie came to Japan.”

(Mr Kojima often posts reviews of the films he watches on social media.)

“And then Luca found out that I wrote a comment for his movie,” he continued.

“And Luca contacted the publisher, and the publisher contacted me. Luca was like, ‘I’ve been playing your games since Metal Gear, since I was a child. I’m so touched. Thank you.’”

He ended up tapping Marinelli to play Neil, a mercenary character about whom we know little, but whom Mr Kojima described as a “very important, very strong character”.

“We did this performance capture in Los Angeles, and his acting was so, so spectacular,” said Mr Kojima.

“When Luca started to perform, everybody put down their phones.”

Elle Fanning joins the cast.

And Leya Seydoux returns.

The performances in Death Stranding were almost universally immaculate. Its writing however, like its so-called “walking simulator” gameplay (to borrow the phrase Mr Kojima mentioned before), was more divisive.

Whatever you thought of the script, or the plot it conveyed, the purpose of it was clear. And Mr Kojima appears to be aiming for something similar in the sequel.

“I want you to have fun first,” he stresses.

“But I also want, at least, the player to feel something. To maybe talk about the themes that you experienced, or you played. Or you could reflect upon what’s happening in your society after you play the game.

“If you can use that experience from the game, I want you to maybe use that experience in your real life. Connecting people, isolation, things like that. Not just in your Death Stranding world, but after you go outside, you feel something in your real world every day, and I want you to link what you felt playing the game.

“But it is a game where you’re really alone. You feel lonely. But the more you find out, all these other players over the world, where you are indirectly helping each other, you feel like you’re not alone anymore.

“Once you power off, and you go outside, you realise there’s this road. There’s electricity. You see a bridge, we see a bridge right here in Sydney.

“Someone made that. Someone who created that bridge may have passed away years ago. But you’re connected. So you’re not alone in this world, even if you haven’t met that person.

“If you could feel like that after you play my game, that would be great.”

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach releases on PlayStation on June 26.