Kojima Bases a Lot of Death Stranding on His Personal Struggles
During a recent interview, Hideo Kojima opened up about his work developing Death Stranding, his first title under the Kojima Productions. Kojima mentions how hard it is to express loneliness in life even with friends and rather than leaving some things unexpressed, he translated that feeling into Death Stranding. Many of the connections gamers make in Death Stranding have them unlocking parts of the story without directly interacting with characters but rather through holograms and other means. Apparently, Hideo Kojima identifies with Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, an off-axis character from Martin Scorsese’s classic film. Death Stranding is currently exclusive to PS4 but is expected to release on PC next year.
“Death Stranding features a delivery boy in a post-apocalyptic future. He must venture into desolation alone and reconnect a totally fractured society. But, as we progress in Death Stranding,” said Hideo Kojima. “We notice that there are actually several thousand of us playing the same game, through the structures and objects that we have all built and that remain in a common environment. You don’t see the faces or avatars of other players, but what they leave in this universe is intended to provide cohesion, a sense of calm in the face of the harshness of the Death Stranding world.”
“As a child, I felt and still do feel a little today: loneliness. I struggled to express it to my friends. It was something that was not said and I don’t think they would have really understood it. I felt like a weird person, a little like Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver,” Kojima continued to express his struggles with self-identity. “I identified myself in what the off-axis person in Scorsese’s film felt and the fact that a guy in New York could be suffocated by the feelings I was experiencing myself helped me a lot. I realized that I was not sick, just linked to others through a kind of melancholic connection specific to the human condition.”
Can you identify with Hideo Kojima’s struggles with loneliness or do you feel you can express such feelings with your friends? Do you think these conflicting feelings were translated into Death Stranding well? Let us know in the comments below!
Source: Gaming Bolt