Hideo Kojima is one of the most legendary video game creators ever. Standing out from the crowd, Kojima usually controls every single aspect of the games he and his team work on and can truly be called an auteur more than anyone else in the industry.
His vision, usually surreal and hard to grasp, has helped him to produce some of the most iconic games in video game history. From his first game, Metal Gear, dropping 40 years ago, to Death Stranding 2 taking his penchant for the weird to new levels, Kojima continuously left a mark on gaming.
And now, as he celebrates turning 63, we can look back at his legacy (that is still expanding).
I, for one, was first exposed to Hideo Kojima firsthand through Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain. I had been aware of the Metal Gear franchise since I was a little kid, but having been a PC gamer primarily all my life, I simply never exposed myself to the original MGS titles, let alone the first two games.
And so it was in 2015, as my gaming awakening was in full swing, that I first played MGS5, and boy was I surprised.
I expected a grounded, philosophical, politically charged military shooter, but what I was given was a surrealist and borderline absurdist game packed with elements of horror and postmodern storytelling. It was incoherent at times, often incomprehensible. And it had gameplay unlike any other title I had played up until then.
Now, 11 years down the line, MGS5 remains my favorite in the series, and every time I go back to it, I am equally in awe at what Kojima managed to build there and, actually, didn’t even finish making.
But it wouldn’t be until last year that I would find my favorite of his: Death Stranding. By this point I had played everything the man had worked on, and the only thing left was, ironically, his latest games. I had heard so much bad stuff about Death Stranding, from claims that it was boring to labels such as “walking simulator,” all of which served to put me off the series.
When I finally played it, I realized it was actually a masterpiece, and it immediately led me to preorder the second game and rent out a PS5 from a friend so that I could enjoy it at launch.
I think that, without the oversight of a huge publishing house like Konami, Kojima was given the freedom and space to really let his imagination go, which, of course, resulted in the horrifying post-apocalypse of Death Stranding.
I cannot tell you which element of that game is more fascinating to me: whether Timefall, rain that rapidly ages anything it touches, or the Beached Things, or even the Beach itself. All of it is just so gripping, so haunting, and so terrifyingly beautiful that I could not pick a favorite if I had a gun to my head.
And nowadays I will still hear those same “criticisms” of DS, which couldn’t be farther from the truth. In all of Kojima’s six and a half decades, almost, I think Death Stranding is by far his finest creation, but I’m well aware many would disagree with me.
So, Destructoid, what has the Great Hideo made that stuck out for you the most?
