Death Stranding creator Hideo Kojima sat down with Rocket Beans Gaming, after his appearance at Cologne Film Festival where he had held a panel with Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn. The interview covered a lot of Kojima's personal life and the life of a game designer, including his most recent project as well as many that he intends to work on in the future.
Players who have enjoyed P.T. will be happy to know that Kojima still has aspirations to continue creating horror titles in the vein of the long canceled Silent Hills. It would seem, however, that while Kojima does intend to visit the genre again, his focus remains mostly on Death Stranding and other projects already underway at Kojima Productions at the moment.
When asked about his views on developing horror games and the fate of Silent Hills, Kojima responded, "Yes I want to do a horror game one day. Yes, of course. Because I have some new ideas that I could kind of get out there, but I don't know when." His focus on horror leans heavily on how horror games are more interactive than film, even if the two mediums have lent characters to each other before, which he believes enhances the terror in a way that other mediums cannot. Specifically, Kojima states that he wants to challenge the horror genre, pushing it to a limit where perhaps it's okay if the game goes unfinished because it's just that scary, or if a player reaches the end to find the biggest scare waiting for them before the credits.
The interview also covered a number of other topics, mostly involving the upcoming Death Stranding, where Kojima spoke on the future of the franchise as well as the intricacies of development. According to the interview, there isn't a concrete plan for Death Stranding to extend into sequels or spin-offs, but he is prepared to continue into more stories depending on the community response to this first title within the Stranding world. Additionally, Kojima went in-depth on how Death Stranding has been developed, as well as the culture of crunch in AAA games and how he tries to approach development as a creative process.
A lot of what Kojima focused on crossed over with his love of film, which is obviously a large influence on his creative process when considering the length and quality of cutscenes within Death Stranding. However, if this means that he'll be taking his signature cinematic style to horror, there may be more to come from Kojima Productions that brings new ideas and concepts to the genre in the same way P.T. did when it first released.
Death Stranding releases on November 8th, 2019 for PS4, and is expected to come to PC in Summer 2020.