Kojima’s Concept for Death Stranding 3 | And How the Pandemic Changed the Story of Death Stranding 2
Leading up to the release of Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, genius game-maker Hideo Kojima says he already has an idea conceptualized for Death Stranding 3 but is insistent that someone else will have to direct it, due not only to his busy schedule but also some seemingly personal reasons. With his upcoming Xbox title OD, and a new action-espionage game in development for PlayStation, as well as a planned film production, Kojima-san’s plate is currently pretty full.
In a new Death Stranding 2 preview, Kojima said that a new concept being introduced in DS2: On the Beach called “Plate Gates” could allow for any future Death Stranding games to take place in different countries around the world, which could further open up the possibility for later sequels.
“If I use this Plate Gate concept, I could make endless sequels,” Kojima stated. “I, of course, don’t have any plans to do that, but I already have a concept for another sequel. I am not going to make it myself, but if I passed it on to someone else, they could probably make it.”
Kojima also discussed how the COVID-19 pandemic made him change the theme for the second Death Stranding, after witnessing what the online connectivity associated with the lockdowns has done to human social interaction, which now has the tagline: “We should not have connected”.
“We released Death Stranding before the COVID-19 pandemic,”
“The world was heading towards isolation and division, such as the UK leaving the EU. So I was saying, ‘Let’s connect. We’re headed for disaster if we don’t connect.’ That was the theme, story, and gameplay for Death Stranding.”
“After the release, just three months later, we entered the pandemic, and I was really surprised – it looked like Death Stranding, in a way. In the real world – the 21st century – we have something similar to the Chiral Network, which is the Internet. This was a little different compared to the 19th century, such as the Spanish Flu or the like. We survived the pandemic because of the Internet and people were connected online.”
Kojima, like many others, believes that the online connectivity that helped human beings globally during the pandemic, is now dividing humanity after having changed the way many communicate and socially interact with one another in the real world through every-day encounters.
“What happened was, there are now people in our studio who work from home, and I still don’t know their faces. Even music concerts were canceled, and it all became online streaming. I understand this was unavoidable at the time of the pandemic. The same thing applies to schools; instead of getting to play with your friends or learning from teachers, you just look at a screen online which isn’t any different from watching YouTube videos.
“Everything was leaning into the metaverse. When you turned on the TV, everyone was talking about how it was the age of the metaverse now and there was no need to interact with people. I felt that we were going down a terrible path. Communication between human beings is not meant to be this way. You meet people by chance or see sights you didn’t expect to see. With the way we were headed, you would lose all of that.”
Kojima said that he had a completely different concept for Death Stranding 2 but rewrote the story after experiencing the pandemic and feeling that it wasn’t right, after realizing the terrible path humanity is now on after having shifted so much of our lives to the digital realm of online interactions.
“It’s the strangest thing. After I created a game with the theme of ‘let’s connect instead of division and isolation,’ we had the pandemic, and I began to think, ‘Maybe it’s not such a good thing to connect so much’,”
“It goes back to the stick and rope theory. There’s a lot of foreshadowing in the game, so I’m sure many of you will understand when you play the game, and you’ll know by the end. The things that I felt during the pandemic – there’s a character in the game who expresses those feelings.”
“The logo is a hint: you can see in the logo of Death Stranding that the strands are coming from below the logo – with the theme of ‘Let’s connect.’ This time in Death Stranding 2, you see that the strands are coming from above the logo. It’s like the Godfather logo.”
“Even throughout the game, you see strands from many people, like Dollman and the mech soldiers. Those are all hints. When you really start thinking about what it means to connect, you start to wonder… That’s all I’ll say for now.”
