The long-running joke about Hideo Kojima is that he’d secretly rather be making movies than video games. Kojima somehow nearly got into double figures on Metal Gear games without any of them receiving the adaptation treatment (though not for the lack of on his part), but it’s looking like a very different story for the Death Stranding series on which he’s been working since departing Konami.
A live-action adaptation of the post-apocalyptic walking simulator landed a back in the spring, and it was a few months later that an animated Death Stranding movie was also on the way, with Aaron Guzikowski (Raised by Wolves) penning the screenplay. We now know what will be called, and there’s a trailer.
Death Stranding Mosquito is directed by ABC Animation’s Hiroshi Miyamoto, with Kojima himself serving as a producer, and will apparently tell an original story within the “surreal and emotionally resonant” Death Stranding universe. If you’ve played the original game or its 2025 sequel, the teaser will look very familiar, with the film seemingly focusing on a character who definitely isn’t Norman Reedus’ Sam Porter Bridges, but is sporting very similar get-up.
The hooded figure comes face to face with what appears to be a BT-ified doglike creature, and then has a brutal fist fight with another character. We don’t get any more context than that, nor any whiff of a release date, but visually Death Stranding Mosquito looks absolutely stunning.
It’s been a busy few days for Kojima-related announcements. We got the first for Kojima Productions’ upcoming horror game, OD, and found out that Kojima is also releasing his own credit card in Japan. Yes,
Were you bummed Final Fantasy VII Rebirth didn’t make an appearance? Well you’re not alone. Good news, though! On February 6, 2024, we’ll be treated to yet another State of Play showing, this time with a closer look at the upcoming second chapter of the Final Fantasy VII remake project.
And that wraps everything we saw at tonight’s State of Play. Which games are you most excited about?
A Death Stranding player just discovered that if you don’t put up enough of a fight in its climactic boss battle, antagonist Higgs will pull a Mike Tyson and bite your character’s ear off. It’s not just an attack animation, either. Once bitten, a good chunk of Sam’s ear is gone for good.
The Week In Games: What’s Releasing Beyond Pikmin 4
On Sunday, Twitter user naven0m uploaded a Death Stranding clip of themself uncovering the hidden gameplay detail in its final climatic boss fight. In the clip, protagonist Sam Porter Bridges (Norman Reedus) is facing villain Higgs Monaghan (Troy Baker) in a knock-down, drag-out battle of fisticuffs. The sequence even has Tekken-like health bars that appear above the characters, making the walking simulator’s climactic face-off feel like something out of a genuine fighting game. It’s kinda wild, but then, it is a Kojima game, after all.
However, if you refuse to jab Higgs in his very punchable face while blocking his attacks, he’ll eventually guard-break Bridges and chomp the tip of his right ear clean off. The presentation and horrifying energy of it all is weirdly reminiscent of what clickers often do to Joel, also played by Troy Baker, when you get killed in The Last Of Us.
In a follow-up post, naven0m posted screenshots of Bridges’ ear post-boss fight, revealing that a sizable chunk of it remains missing. You can check out the gnarly clip below.
According to GamesRadar, the event will only be triggered by players blocking every one of Higgs’ blows and never countering him when prompted. Most players would never stumble upon this, since the game clearly expects you to fight back, and since Higgs is such a dastardly scamp who can’t keep getting away with more demonic acts of terrorism.
Last December, director Hideo Kojima revealed his next project was a direct sequel to Death Stranding titled Death Stranding 2, and he showcased a typically bizarre trailer featuring a noticeably older Bridges, with Léa Seydoux also reprising her role as Fragile. While the game doesn’t have a release date, it’ll be neat to discover if there’s a unique Bridges character model reflecting the possible outcome that players got Sam’s ear noshed off by Higgs.
Those well-versed in their Metal Gear Solid trivia will know that the original ending for Metal Gear Solid 2 was changed before release. Scenes involving a massive ship crashing into Manhattan island were a bit too much in a very young post-9/11 world, with images and videos of planes striking the World Trade Center a constant in the media. In a recent interview, director Hideo Kojima talked about the complicated nature of releasing such a game after a world changing event and how it nearly drove him to quit Konami.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty released in November of 2001 to much anticipation. As a series focused on “Tactical Espionage Action,” the games have never shied away from political themes, be they a part of the fictional story or commentaries on world events and history. While it’s been known for some time now that elements of the game were changed at the last minute due to the September 11 attacks, recent comments reveal that the stress and challenge of handling such a release were enough to push Hideo Kojima to quit Konami at the time. A conversation with Konami’s chairman, Kagemasa Kozuki was what convinced Kojima to stay back then.
Speaking with Shuka Yamada for IGN, Hideo Kojima described an awkward and tough situation after Metal Gear Solid 2, due to release in the Fall of 2001, contained images of the World Trade Center and other sites that were attacked on 9/11.
9/11 took place in 2001 right before the release of Metal Gear Solid 2. We’d just sent off the master, but the game featured both the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It seemed impossible to release the game. I was called to the board of directors and they all turned pale when I explained the situation. Nobody would tell me what to do, with the exception of Mr. Kozuki, who tackled the issue.
As I thought about what to do, I went to speak with Mr. Kozuki about possibly quitting the company. That’s when he told me: ‘When this game comes out and society has their say about it, they’ll be talking about you, its creator, and me, the person who sold it. I doubt they’ll say anything about anyone else. What will you do? I’m ready for whatever happens.’
When I heard how far he was willing to go, I made the firm decision that we’d release it together. The rest is history.
MGS2 would go on to receive critical acclaim. The game’s tactical stealth gameplay was a dramatic evolution of what came before it and its meta-narrative filled with postmodern themes about digital information, virtual realities, among many others, is still relevant and widely discussed.
After MGS2 shipped, Kojima found himself in dire need of recovery. “I became completely exhausted, and I always end up in an awful state when I finish making a game,” he said. “After the first Metal Gear Solid, even after it was done I wasn’t recovering at all and ended up being passed from one hospital to the next.”
9/11 and the themes of Metal Gear Solid 2 weren’t the only time Kojima would face the need to alter his work. As we found out during The Game Awards this year, Kojima rewrote the original story for the sequel to the narrative-driven, post-apocalyptic delivery-service simulator, Death Stranding; the game’s themes of loneliness, isolation, and world-altering events were too close to what we all went through (and are still struggling with). The Covid-19 pandemic followed Death Stranding’s 2019 release by only a few months.
“Fiction changes when something that big happens,” Kojima told IGN. He continued:
That’s why I completely rewrote [Death Stranding 2]. You can’t pretend that something this big never happened. While the games themselves are based on characters who are not bound by our reality, the players themselves have gone through the pandemic, and a story written before that experience just wouldn’t resonate with them in the same way, whether it was a fantasy story or a sci-fi one.
Kojima Productions is currently working on Death Stranding 2. The company is also working on an unnamed game with Microsoft, a project Kojima says other publishers turned down; though he pitched the idea to a few places, he describes the game as requiring “infrastructure that was never needed before.” Other companies seemed to not be as into the idea, “they really seemed to think I was mad.”
Whatever that new game is, let’s hope he’s not predicting an awful future for us yet again.
