Oh, Kojima. You’re the unpredictable, eccentric soul that the video game industry deserves, and the one it needs right now. Mostly, we need you to explain just what the heck’s going on with Death Stranding. These tweets? They’re not so helpful.
Hideo Kojima has never been the kind of guy to meekly play by the rules. His beloved Metal Gear Solid franchise is well-known for deftly blending super-serious drama with absolute ridiculousness. Intense half-hour long codex conversations about criminal conspiracies? Check. Hilarious easter eggs and silly jokes to temper all of that? Check. That’s just the way Kojima rolls, and his departure was a colossal blow for the franchise… or what’s left of it.
We’ll never know quite what caused the rift between Kojima and Konami, but never mind all of that now. The important thing is, whether you’re a huge fan of the Metal Gear franchise or you’re mostly indifferent to it, we can all agree on one thing: creative minds in the gaming industry are always welcome, always something to support. As such, gamers around the world were eager to see what Kojima would cook up after cutting ties with Konami.
His first major project, unsurprisingly, is a complete enigma too. Death Stranding is a curious action title set in an open world (because every game ever needs to go the open world route these days), rife with symbolism pertaining to the interwoven nature of life and death.
It was almost a year ago that actor Mads Mikkelson (who will play a character in the game) stated that Death Stranding will be all about "global player collaboration," and we still don’t really know what that means. This air of mystery isn’t just Kojima’s style, it perfectly plays into our desire to tease out secrets and piece things together whenever we are given the slightest new details about the game.
Which brings us to Kojima’s latest Twitter shenanigans. The old tease is at it again, hitting social media with this little doozy:
What exactly is this about? Voice over work, of course, but what of it? That tweet was then followed up by this one:
So, there we are. Granted, it’s no more bizarre than just about everything else we’ve heard from the game so far, but it’s not exactly informative. Still, if anyone can glean details from the un-gleanable, it’s gamers on the Internet. So, what’s he getting at?