Hideo Kojima’s got a new game out soon, which you can tell because he keeps banging on about death and legacy: ‘I am not going to pass the baton to anyone—I will rather crush the baton’

Kojima Productions’ Death Stranding 2: On the Beach will release on PS5 June 26, with the inevitable PC version yet to be dated. It looks pretty wild and the trailers certainly suggest we’ll be getting a lot more Metal Gear flavouring than the original, even if I could do without promo events where Hideo Kojima himself gets fawned over by the game’s stars.

Old hand that he is, Kojima’s been tootling around the interview circuit, and right now he seems to be in a bit of a maudlin mood. Kojima’s already talked this year about things like a USB stick where he keeps his game ideas, intending to leave it for Kojima Productions’ staff to use “like a will.” He’s got an idea for a game where you age and die, even if “no-one would buy it.” Yes: the 61 year-old creator has reached that stage of life where a certain truth comes to the forefront of the mind. None of us are here forever.

One of Kojima’s stops was over at GQ where, as well as being styled and groomed in a rather snazzy suit, he immediately launches into death, family, legacy, as well as how he feels about Death Stranding 2 in the runup to release.

“So-so,” says Kojima of his feelings towards DS2. “There are so many things I still want to change. I want, like, six more months. Today, I might be satisfied. But tomorrow, when I play the same place again, you have a different sense. I have to set the line myself, where I stop […] there used to be a master [disc] and that was it. Now it’s like, OK, I’ll let it go this time and do it for a patch, or something.”

Kojima goes on to talk about how much time he has left creating games, and says he wishes it took one year rather than three or four to make a new game. He again mentions the ideas he’ll probably leave to Kojima Productions, and the responsibility he feels towards the staff. GQ raises a past quote where Kojima talked about (their paraphrase) “passing on the baton in the loop of life”, and how he wants to be remembered when he does pass it on.

“I am not going to pass the baton to anyone—I will rather crush the baton,” laughs Kojima. “I don’t need to give ‘Hideo Kojima’ to anyone. If I pass the baton to my staff and tell them to make things the same way I do, the company will not succeed and will go out of business.”

Asked what he means by this, Kojima explains that influence is not such a straightforward path.

“Every day, if I tweet something that I like, a director or an actor or a musician contacts me,” says Kojima. “They say, ‘I’m a creator because of your games.’ But they didn’t receive the baton of Hideo Kojima. They received my small fire. They’re not copying me. They’re not trying to be me. They have this fire, and they light up their own. And they’ll probably give that to someone else. There were legendary comic book artists when I was a boy. I didn’t become a comic book artist—I was inspired by them, I was influenced.”