Metal Gear Solid is the worst thing to happen to Hideo Kojima – Reader’s Feature

A reader feels that Hideo Kojima is too obsessed with Metal Gear and that Physint and the cameos in Death Stranding 2 are a sign that he can’t move on from the series.

Hideo Kojima will be 62 this August and given how long modern games take to make I worry how many games he has left in him. I don’t mean to be morbid but looking at this list of games over the last 39 years it is disappointing how few different franchises he has worked on, despite having been in the business for nearly four decades.

The original Metal Gear was his second game and since that the only other things he’s worked on have been minor stuff like Snatcher, Policenauts, Zone Of The Enders, and Boktai. Everything else has been Metal Gear, right up until he left Konami and he made Death Stranding, which he followed up with… another Death Stranding.

And now we find out that Death Stranding 2 has a knock-off Solid Snake and Metal Gear REX in it. Plus, the other two games he’s making at the moment are a horror game called OD (no doubt inspired by his cancelled Silent Hills game) and Physint, which is… a homage to Metal Gear.

Kojima is his own man, with his own game studio, so he’s free to make whatever he wants, but I know I’m not the only one that views his gameography as a bit of a missed opportunity. There’s no doubting his unique talent and yet imagine if Steven Spielberg made nothing but Jaws sequels for almost his entire career. Even if they were all great, wouldn’t that be a bit of a waste?

Long before now, people have been saying that Kojima needs a producer and/or someone telling him no and I’m sure in this instance that person would’ve said, ‘Quit it with the Metal Gear obsession. Your whole life has been Metal Gear and saying you’re finished with the series and then coming back to it anyway.’

It’s a similar situation with developers like Naughty Dog, who are stuck doing the same thing because it’s popular. They don’t seem to want to make another The Last Of Us at all, but who really thinks they won’t anyway? Just because Sony will see it as something that has to happen, given its prestige and popularity.

But Kojima isn’t in that position and yet he keeps coming back to Metal Gear anyway, even though it’s nowhere near as big a seller as some of today’s games. I’m not even sure if younger gamers even know what it is, given the last one was 10 years ago now.

I feel a bit bad about complaining about this, because if he’s making the games he wants then it’s no business of mine. But as with everything it feels like if he had someone advising him, they probably would’ve encouraged him to try new things.

I love the Metal Gear Solid mainline games but there’s no pretending that he probably could’ve explored the same gameplay and story themes with different characters, that would’ve felt more fresh.

I can see why he didn’t, back in the Konami days, but to now make a spiritual sequel and add it into the sequel to Death Stranding (which didn’t need a sequel anyway), it just seems a bit of a waste.

I’m sure the Death Stranding 2 stuff will be some sort of meta commentary on his career and I’m sure it’ll either comes across as really profound or really silly. There’s never any middle ground with Kojima and that’s what I like about him. He’s someone that isn’t afraid to shoot for the stars and even if he doesn’t hit it’s always interesting. I’m just not sure it always has to be Metal Gear as well.

By reader Benson

The reader’s features do not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.

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