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Hideo Kojima’s upcoming game Death Stranding will be unlike anything the developer’s made before, according to BBC Newsbeat.
"We want this game to be something that people can get into easily but after an hour or two they’ll start to notice something a little different," Kojima told BBC Newsbeat via a translator. "It’s not like anything they’ve played before."
He also spoke about his long-term visions for his new studio, Kojima Productions, hinting that future projects might try to combine movies and games into one form of entertainment, giving players the choice to access extended movie-like content within it.
"In life people are very busy doing lots of things," Kojima said. "The time you have to choose what media or entertainment you experience is dwindling. More and more people are looking at types of media that combine elements together. If we just make a game people are less likely to choose that as something to do. They would rather engage in something that combines different forms of entertainment together. That’s where we need to focus our efforts, on this convergence."
It’s a vision that sounds awfully familiar to Remedy Entertainment’s original vision for its Xbox One and Windows 10 title, Quantum Break. When Quantum Break wasfirst unveiled in 2013, Remedy described it as a "transmedia action shooter video game and television hybrid", where players would be able to watch and influence a live-action TV show alongside playing the main game. Both forms of media would impact the story of the other depending on what choices players made, and Remedy promised the experience would finally blur the lines between games and TV.
In the end, the final version of Quantum Break didn’t quite match the original vision described during its initial unveiling, but the TV show element still played an important role in the finished title. Indeed, live-action segments focusing on the villainous company Monarch were shipped with the game and were slotted in between major story chapters. However, rather than be truly interactive experiences, the TV shows were both entirely passive and optional to watch, even if they did end up reflecting some of the choices players have made in-game.
With Microsoft unable to pull off Remedy’s original vision, it seems unlikely that Kojima will be able to achieve the same thing as an independent. Still, one thing Kojima definitely hopes to rectify (sort of) with his next game is the portrayal of his female characters.
"I’m going to have a different approach for the next game," he told BBC Newsbeat. "What I really want to avoid is, like you see in some games, characters with big breasts with no back story. If I make characters that at first glance might look like this then they’ll have a deep background story to give a specific reason why."
Whatever Death Stranding ends up like, though, the likelihood of it becoming a franchise seems unlikely. "We don’t want to be a studio that re-uses assets, ideas or just makes sequels all the time," he said. "We want it so [that] every time someone plays one of our games they’re getting a new experience."
