Hideo Kojima has come up with a pretty good metaphor to use when he develops new games like Death Stranding, his highly anticipated game that has gotten a new trailer each year that never ceases to confuse and horrify people. Kojima has said that making new video games is a lot like being a chef.
Each new video game requires you to be more familiar with new ingredients, a new recipe, and a new stove. Developers often work with cutting-edge technology that they don’t quite know how to use yet, and always have to make new scripts, new voice lines, new motion capture, new programming, and more in order to make a game work the way it’s supposed to.
Part of being a developer, according to Kojima, is that you have to constantly search out new techniques and more novelty, and be able to make all of that work together in a way that also takes effort and cost into mind.
Considering Hideo Kojima’s pedigree, making a large number of different narrative games that involve a good deal of plot twists along with interesting gameplay, one might even think of him as a master chef; all of his games have turned out great (except for the last one he worked on with Konami, Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain). If anything, Death Stranding is sort of like him making an experimental dish, trying out things people have never considered before.
The last Death Stranding trailer that was released was at the 2017 Video Game Awards, and was the most confusing one yet, yet it was also the one that was the most coherent. We got at least something of a plot out of it, which included invisible monsters invading Earth, among other things.
Just what “Chef Kojima” is actually making with Death Stranding remains to be seen, but we’ll still be waiting awhile until Death Stranding actually releases, or even gets a release date.
