Videogame creator Hideo Kojima and art director Yoji Shinkawa celebrated the final stage of the Death Stranding World Strand Tour 2 with their Italian fans at the convention Lucca Comics & Games last year. As the last stop of the tour, the festival scheduled panels, screenings, and even a fan gathering with the creators behind the second installment of Death Stranding.
The creatives were accompanied by actors Luca Marinelli and Alissa Jung, who performed as characters in the game. The fandom couldn’t hide their double excitement as Marinelli is an Italian actor with a long trajectory.
Both Kojima and Shinkawa were part of a press conference with Italian and international media to talk about Death Stranding 2, their work process, and inspirations for the game narrative. They even added insight about their collaborations, as they have been together since 1994–even before the first Metal Gear Solid!
Portions of this press conference have been lightly edited for clarity. This press conference was conducted with the assistance of an interpreter. This press conference contains major spoilers for Death Stranding 1 and 2.
Q: You often say that Death Stranding (DS) is about connection in a fragmented world. Today, we live surrounded by hyper-connected social networks that often feel increasingly hollow. Do you believe that video game storytelling can still mend the gap between real and virtual interactions?
Kojima-san: In the 2000s, the Internet became a real thing for everyone, so we were able to connect in real time. That connection was supposed to be the strength of us humans, but social media went differently. Since it’s anonymous, people can say whatever they want, and we end up “too close” because of it. I’m not against social media.
However, I want people to have the analog experience our generation did as well. DS is not about gaining connections, but “losing connections.” I wanted to see how the audience would react to these “losses of connections.”
Q: After so many years collaborating with Kojima-san, DS 2 shows great consistency between your artistic vision and Kojima-san’s narratives. How did this harmony come about?
Shinkawa-san: I’ve been working with Kojima-san for quite a long time. The initial concept art I draw is always based on early writings from Hideo Kojima. Any hints could give me direction. Drawing something from scratch is very difficult. These early writings from Kojima-san give me the basic idea.
Q: In the first DS, the theme of connection was expressed as “we should connect.” But in the sequel, the question changes to “Should we have connected?” That suggests an ethical tension between the characters and players. To what extent did you want players to feel responsible not only as participants in the story but also for the message?
Kojima-san: Connection is important, and I draw that in the first installment. But looking at what we are facing today, I can give you an example. Responsibility for the connection is like when you are playing DS 1 and get connected with the Elder. Then people continue the story and forget about the Elder. If they remember to give him medicines, they will find out he’s already dead. You had a responsibility once you were connected. I wanted people to think about it.
But after the release of DS 1, I rethink about it since we experienced the pandemic. Many things went remote, including work. Are we on the right track doing this all remotely? No, animals and humans evolved through travel. A metaverse world could be dangerous. You can lose your privacy.
Q: Shinkawa-san, you have been working with Kojima-san for decades. Is there still room to surprise each other?
Shinkawa-san: It’s always the same whenever I work on a new title with Kojima-san. I’m basically blown away by the new concept that he has to start with. For DS 2, our mission was to create a sequel, and it had to be better than DS 1. Of course, when I thought about it, Kojima-san gave me the idea of DS 2, and that idea really surprised me. I draw a few characters and show them to him. He always tries to pull more things out of that first draft. I rethought and did the drawing over again. I worked with other directors and projects, but this workflow is very unique from Kojima-san. Working with him is always a surprise every time.
Q: Kojima-san, after the first game, you had a myriad of directions in which to focus your development effort, such as exploration-based gameplay, world-building and map design, stealth or action mechanism, player connection, or quest design. Once you all sat down to work on DS2, how did you decide which aspect to focus on to create the sequel you had in mind?
Kojima-san: I changed the whole concept of how to make a sequel in DS. As I said before, the first suggestion of a new style of game was brought forth from DS 1. But I also acknowledge that there are pros and cons to this new concept of DS at that time.
In Metal Gear Solid, every time I did a sequel, the game design was totally different. Of course, the stealth remained the same, but the game design, or the mechanism where I put it, was totally different. For DS, it was more of a “normal sequel.” I had to keep the best parts of DS 1 to satisfy the people who loved the first installment as well.
However, I also acknowledge that a lot of people didn’t finish till the end because maybe it was really tough for them to walk in the snowy mountains or just traverse a lot. Overall, I wanted to widen the number of people who would love DS. I wanted to add something that was good in DS 1 and also make it more speedy, more comfortable for the players, giving them more freedom.
And as a result, I see that a lot of people have played DS 2, even more than the first one. I’m kind of happy that I hit the mark with this new change in the game design.
Q: In the game, “likes” function as a social currency. You receive them from other players, but they cannot be spent like other resources. During development, did you ever consider making them an actual expendable resource, or was the idea to keep them symbolic as a form of recognition rather than exchange?
Kojima-san: The idea was to keep only the positive and not to see any negative in the game. I didn’t want to make the game for money. Instead, I wanted to convey my own feelings. That was the original goal of the game. The game was successful up until DS, so I decided to keep it that way.
At the beginning, I didn’t want to change the “likes” to anything like kudos, money, or credit. This was actually a kind of an argument when we started with DS 1 among the staff as well. We decided to leave every positive thing and not leave any negative things in the “likes” system.
People might just give likes because they want money, or they want credit for their items, or whatever. That really changes the game design. In DS 1, the whole concept of the “likes” system was expressing your feelings.
That creates the game atmosphere. I’m pretty much sure that I didn’t want to change that, and also, our DS users are happy with this system.
Q: Is the music in DS a narrative language in its own right? How did you decide when a piece of music should come in? Is it an emotional, technical, or purely instinctive decision?
Kojima-san: If you look at my game’s cut scenes, I want to convey a cinema-like feeling. All the songs in those cut scenes are used to convey emotions. You could say the music in this game is the game.
A lot of people will know that I listen to many kinds of music and artists. When I find a music, artist or song that I like, and fit on a route of the game, I contact the artist and establish a relationship. We sometimes go into a talk about writing a new song specifically for the game, and where it could be played. I have been doing this for around three or four years. That’s how I made DS 2.
The biggest change you might see in DS 2 is singer-songwriter Woodkid. We worked a lot with Woodkid. Of course, we also worked with composer Ludvig from DS 1. When talking about Woodkid, I selected his two songs for the director’s cut. I found out that our feelings and way of thinking were quite close. He came to the studio many times.
When he started to create something, we went back and forth with feedback. It’s similar to Shinkawa-san’s description of workflow. It was a unique experience for me too. He stayed in our office and did most of the work in place. Once we talked about something, the next day, he already had a rough draft. In these interchanges, I explained to him more about the game and how it should be experienced through the songs. That’s why the music fits well in DS 2.
Another important factor in the music production was musician Low Roar. When I was trying to reach out to him for DS 2, I received the very sad message that he passed away. However, his relatives sent me his works that weren’t announced yet. I used a couple of songs for DS 2. For DS, is essential to have Low Roar in the music.
Q: You have worn a couple of different shirts with the cover of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures album art. Can you talk about the influence their music had on you while making DS? Do you have a particular favorite song?
Kojima-san: I listen to them because I love them. I see that a lot of people love it as well. But I’m not going to put them in DS because I believe that it doesn’t match the DS world. I listened to them when I was a teenager, when my father passed away. They helped me a lot. I still listen to them to cheer myself up. I have at least what, 15 T-shirts? I wear them all the time. But it’s not necessarily related to what I do.
Q: What character or design piece of DS 2 are you most proud of? What design element do you think players might have missed or might not have noticed?
Shinkawa-san: I would definitely say Magellan Man, the colossal. It seems it was designed that way, but it wasn’t at all. At first, we had to create new BTs for the sequel, so I created head-BTs, or hand-plus-crab-BTs, and things like that.
During the climax scene, when we were creating the game, Kojima-san came over and said, ‘Why don’t we really connect everything?’ We tried, and it kind of worked as colossal. Kojima-san also said about the Magellan, he said it looks like a head, ‘Why don’t we connect the head?’ All of a sudden, the Magellan man was born in that way.
Even after a while, we see the finished product, and we’re still surprised that it looks like it was designed from the beginning. That’s why I like that character even more.
Kojima-san: Let me add a couple of things to that. I kind of asked Shinkawa-san to create a Magellan in the first place, a ship this time, for the crew to get together. Shinkawa-san made around 50 designs, but they looked submarine-like; it wasn’t the actual long vessel that I was looking for.
I tried to explain how my ideas were “a little small”, using as an example the movie Fantastic Voyage (1966). It reminds him of the Prometheus ship, so he made a small and funny enough design. It looked like Rex from Metal Gear, and I thought that it was a very cool design. But I noticed that it didn’t have a head, so I suggested attaching this and made it look like Rex’s head, as a joke. Nobody felt that we were going to make it happen, but we went for it and created it.
Q: Excluding Sam, which of the supporting characters is your favorite, and why? Here in Italy, we have a particular favorite.
Kojima-san: In DS 1, there was a character called Cliff (played by Mads Mikkelsen), who was very popular but died in the first installment. I have to thought on a character that was “better” than Cliff, and I thought of Neil. At that time, I was already a big fan of the actor Luca Marinelli, so I asked him to portray Neil in the DS sequel.
Neil is one of my favorite characters, but my favorite is Fragile. Sam may be the main character, but Fragile is actually one of the hidden main characters in DS 2. We brought up the technology level of capturing the actress’s portrayal, so she feels more natural in how she says her lines and how she acts.
I love Fragile so much that I also asked Woodkid to create a song dedicated to Fragile. Every time Fragile comes in the game, you can hear the theme running in the background. Overall, it’s a great character, and if you haven’t played the game, you’ll be surprised by how good the acting and how good the character of Fragile. Make sure you play until the end!
When you hear the ending, you’ll hear the wounded song of that as well, so make sure you listen to that too when you play the game.
We are thankful to Hideo Kojima and Yoji Shinkawa for their time for answering questions about their works. Having both creators as part of Lucca Comics & Games was an invaluable experience that veteran and newbie fans appreciated. We hope to see more works of Kojima Productions in future editions of the festival.
Don’t forget to check out our article about Lucca Comics & Games!
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