At the beginning, there was the theme of “connecting,” and after that, I made a lot of notes about character settings, game ideas, and so on. Like how to connect it. I put it together while maintaining a balance…But I had to rewrite everything because of corona. In Death Stranding, it was justice to connect, but with the corona crisis, pseudo-connections such as remotes have come to be emphasized. On the other hand, I felt that such pseudo-connections alone would not lead to fulfilling human lives. After all, humans need to go out into the outside world and move.
Buckle up everyone, between 2024 - 2030, everyone’s lives will be uprooted, and we will be forced to live outdoors and keep on moving, all thanks to landlords, real estate speculations, climate changes, government and tech surveillances. Thank you Kojima for predicting our lives again.
That’s bit harsh to say that all his great works are not his.
I do share the sentiment that Kojima’s writing has been in downhill for quite sometime and he really in need of a good editor. I actually think that his stories are more coherent or at least entertaining in his earlier works, e.g.
What I actually like is his obsessive attention to details that barely matters when it comes to gameplay, e.g. melting ice cubes, aiming at enemy’s crotch to get dog tags, etc.
Kojima games started clicking for me when he introduced the ‘R&D system’ in Peacewalker, where it’s actually a RPG progression system but the rewards are absurd equipments. As the matter of fact, I like the ‘walking and R&D’ parts of Death Stranding a lot, but really dislike the enemy encounters and the story in that game.
And it’s okay, not every games are for everyone, I’m glad that someone is giving him blank cheques for his absurd ideas that are not the norms.