Mamoru Oshii, the director of legendary anime movie Ghost in the Shell, has said that he’s played Fallout 4 for 10,000 hours while avoiding its main quest.
In a Japanese video interview to mark the 30th anniversary of Ghost in the Shell, Oshii chatted about his love of games — and specifically Fallout 4.
“Looking at Steam, my playtime (in Fallout 4) is around 8,000 hours but before that I played it on PlayStation, so I think altogether I’ve put in about 10,000 hours,” explained Oshii, the director behind anime cyberpunk movie Ghost in the Shell and its sequel Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, in remarks translated by IGN. “I’m still playing now,” he added.
So what is the appeal of Fallout 4 to Mamoru Oshii? The 74-year-old called it a “game that seems to have been made for my own desires,” and described how he wanders the ruins of the post-apocalyptic world carrying a rifle and accompanied by the game’s canine companion, Dogmeat.
Outside of Fallout 4, Oshi explains that he’s also a big Hideo Kojima fan and plays every new game from the Metal Gear Solid creator — he recently finished playing Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, in which he actually appears as an NPC known as The Pizza Chef.
But for almost a decade, Oshi said he had followed a cycle where he breaks off from playing Fallout 4 to play Kojima’s new game upon release, completes it, and then… returns back to Fallout 4 once more. “There are no other games I want to play,” Oshii simply said.
“I once tried PUBG and racked up 250 hours,” he casually noted, but said that he didn’t really like online multiplayer games or first-person shooters that require quick reflexes. “They’re not for me,” he noted. (He does recall taking a commemorative screenshot after getting a Chicken Dinner in PUBG, but only once.) “After all is said and done, I prefer playing games on my own,” he said.
“Fallout 4 is just right,” he continued. “Although it’s an action game, as people who play it will know — it has the VATS system.” Fallout’s slo-mo aiming system allows even people who are no good at aiming to land shots, he suggested. “If the game didn’t have this, I probably couldn’t play it.”
Mamoru Oshii previously revealed in great detail to Automaton that he has a rather eccentric way of playing Fallout 4 – that he doesn’t ally with any factions, and has ignored the main storyline in favor of spending hours on side quests and raids with Dogmeat as his sole companion. His playstyle seems to be that of a community-minded lone wolf, stripping all the gear off raiders and gunners.
“It’s a win-win,” he noted, “I get to enjoy the pleasure of stripping scumbags naked while also contributing to the local community’s welfare.” He’s said that he is particularly hostile towards Brotherhood of Steel members (who he likens to Nazis) and always sneak kills whole units (at one point, he amassed so many Brotherhood of Steel Power Armors that he used them to build a moat). Back when he played on console, Oshii apparently gathered so much loot at his base that his PS4 struggled to run the game.
“Around 4 years ago, I ran out of things to do (in Fallout 4),” Oshii explained. “So I installed mods.” However, the Angel’s Egg director noted that Fallout 4’s new version (i.e. the 2025 Fallout 4 Anniversary Edition update) rendered his mods unusable. Upon launching Fallout 4 after the update, Oshii says that instead of his customized character, “some random bald guy wearing a suit suddenly appeared, and it took a lot of effort to get the game back to normal. I wish they’d stop changing things without asking.”
Image credit: Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images
Verity Townsend is a Japan-based freelance writer who previously served as editor, contributor and translator for the game news site Automaton West. She has also written about Japanese culture and movies for various publications.
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