The capital’s Garage Museum of Modern Art held a special event with the participation of Japanese game designer Hideo Kojima, who first arrived in Russia as part of a promotional campaign for the release of Death Stranding.
Experts note that the new game came closest to blurring the line between video games and cinema, between the narrative and visual dynamics of both worlds. Actors Norman Reedus, Mads Mikkelsen, Lea Seydou and others, directors Guillermo del Toro and Nicholas Refn, who served as prototypes for creating characters, took part in the work on the project.
According to the plot, the protagonist must establish ties between the cities of North America, after the world survived a global catastrophe of unclear, otherworldly origin.
“The game takes place in the United States, but it’s very arbitrary - it will be possible to find various references to various countries and cultures there,” Kojima said.
During his speech at the Garage, Kojima explained that he wants to engage players in new game mechanics, where the goal is collaboration, not mindless violence.
“The first tool that man invented was a stick - to be different and to defend himself from blows. After that, he came up with a rope, in order to tie things together. All modern culture is based on these two simple tools. For the past 30 years there has been nothing in the game industry except for the stick ... It’s time for a game with ropes to appear, ”Kojima explained, emphasizing that the main theme of Death Stranding will be the establishment of relations between people and cultures.
Metal Gear Solid Series and Worldwide Recognition
Hideo Kojima was born in Tokyo in 1963. He studied economics at the university, but decided to build a career in the video game industry, although in the mid-1980s this was not considered an honorable occupation in Japan. In 1986, Kojima joined Konami as a designer and planner. A year later, under his leadership, the first game of the Metal Gear series was created.
Celebrity status in the gaming industry came to Kojima in 1998, when Metal Gear Solid (MGS) was released on the PlayStation console - a three-dimensional variation of the game with which he began his career in Konami. In it, Kojima paid close attention to directing the plot scenes and invited professional actors to voice the characters.
Metal Gear Solid also had an elaborate storyline in which Kojima addressed topics of nuclear proliferation and genetic determinism. Together with the fascinating gameplay, all this made MGS a unique, unlike anything game, which became a real breakthrough in the industry, which earned Kojima a reputation as one of the leading masters of the industry.
He firmly consolidated this success in 2001 by releasing a sequel to the game - Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. High for that time graphics detail, sophisticated game physics and new gameplay features made MGS 2 one of the most anticipated games of the early 2000s. Like the first part, it was highly cinematic, but this time Kojima went even further in terms of working on the script.
- Shot from the game Metal Gear Solid 2
- © konami.com
The plot of MGS 2 was filled with references to various philosophical topics: from memetics, censorship and manipulation of the information space to the inherent flaws of democracy and the nature of the world.
Turning out to be overly complex for most players, the Metal Gear Solid 2 script later earned well-deserved recognition among observers and the public, and the game itself acquired a cult status.
In 2004, the third part of the saga was released - Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. The action took place in remote areas of the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, and in part directing Kojima was inspired by classic James Bond films. In 2008, the fourth part of MGS - Guns of The Patriots was released, which was supposed to be the final in a series about the passage of Solid Snake. It used all the advanced PlayStation technologies available to developers at that time. Having become an almost interactive film, the game completed all the complex storylines that developed in the series over 10 years.
The Kojima games brought Konami Corporation such an impressive profit that in 2011 he received the position of vice president of the company.
Silent Hills and the break with Konami
However, soon the ways of Hideo Kojima and Konami Corporation were destined to disperse. In 2013-2014, the designer began work on the Slient Hills project, a new part of the famous series of Japanese video games in the horror genre. To work on it, he intended to involve actor Norman Reedus and director Guillermo Del Toro, who a few years later became participants in the Death Stranding project.
Soon, a small demo version of the game was released under the working title PT, in which the player had to find a way out of the house with paranormal phenomena. Despite the incredible popularity and excitement among the players, Konami unexpectedly canceled the project, and PT was removed from the Sony PlayStation online store.
Soon, news appeared in specialized media that Kojima was in conflict with Konami management due to over-elaboration of the next part of the Metal Gear Solid franchise. The fifth game of the series called The Phantom Pain was released in 2015, and shortly afterwards, messages began to appear that Hideo Kojima had left Konami and his studio was closed.
- Shot from the game Death Stranding
- © imdb.com
Moreover, the corporation defiantly removed the name of the designer from all advertising materials, and forbade him to accept the award for the best action movie at the The Game Awards 2015 ceremony - instead of Kojima, the figurine was taken by the actor Kiefer Sutherland who worked with him.
In December 2015, Kojima announced that he was building his own independent studio. The first game of Kojima Productions was Death Stranding, which the designer introduced in Moscow.
Andrey Tarkovsky and design philosophy
According to Kojima, when he creates his games, he looks at them as a special world that the player looks at from the outside. Despite the advent of modern technology and high-speed Internet, it is still difficult for him to create a meaningful connection between the player, the virtual world and other inhabitants of the fictional universe.
Therefore, in Death Stranding, he decided to use a mediocre communication technique, when players can see the consequences of the actions of others without coming into direct contact with each other.
“You cannot touch each other, but you will see that other players exist somewhere. Monsters do not see people, just as people do not see them. Our game will develop the principle of communication between players through third-party things, ”said Kojima.
- AGN "Moscow"
- © Kirill Zykov
“Thanks to the distributed network and indirect communication, we are restoring the communication tradition that existed a hundred or two hundred years ago, when people had to write letters to each other that could go to the addressee for months,” the designer said.
He explained that in the past people sometimes received such letters when their senders died before they arrived at their destination.
“But the feelings that were embedded in them continued to live. I wanted to put the same aspect into my game. It seems to me that there was a charm in such analog communication. And now, I would like for you all to feel the same connection through my game, ”said the designer.
Answering a question about where he draws inspiration from for his projects, Kojima said that he devotes a lot of time to culture and art.
“Every day I try to watch one movie, and I read a lot and regularly. I often go to museums in Tokyo. All this affects me, and I use these impressions when creating games. Game design is a collective discipline that combines various types of creativity and art, ”he explained.
The Japanese expert added that prominent representatives of Russian culture also had a significant influence on him.
“I was influenced by various artists and artists, of course, representatives of Russian culture, especially film director Andrei Tarkovsky, play a big role among them,” said the game designer.
“And at school I always had Dostoevsky’s book“ Crime and Punishment ”with me. Honestly, I tried very hard, but I didn’t finish reading the “Brothers Karamazov”, ”concluded Kojima.