These well-versed of their Steel Gear Strong trivia will know that the unique ending for Steel Gear Strong 2 was modified earlier than launch. Scenes involving a large ship crashing into Manhattan island had been a bit an excessive amount of in a really younger post-9/11 world, with pictures and movies of planes hanging the World Commerce Heart a relentless within the media. In a current interview, director Hideo Kojima talked concerning the difficult nature of releasing such a recreation after a world altering occasion and the way it practically drove him to stop Konami.
Steel Gear Strong 2: Sons of Liberty launched in November of 2001 to a lot anticipation. As a collection centered on “Tactical Espionage Motion,” the video games have by no means shied away from political themes, be they part of the fictional story or commentaries on world occasions and historical past. Whereas it’s been recognized for a while now that parts of the sport had been modified on the final minute as a result of September 11 assaults, current feedback reveal that the stress and problem of dealing with such a launch had been sufficient to push Hideo Kojima to stop Konami on the time. A dialog with Konami’s chairman, Kagemasa Kozuki was what satisfied Kojima to remain again then.
Learn Extra: Steel Gear Strong 2 Retrospective: Be Cautious What You Want For
Talking with Shuka Yamada for IGN, Hideo Kojima described an ungainly and difficult state of affairs after Steel Gear Strong 2, on account of launch within the Fall of 2001, contained pictures of the World Commerce Heart and different websites that had been attacked on 9/11.
9/11 passed off in 2001 proper earlier than the discharge of Steel Gear Strong 2. We’d simply despatched off the grasp, however the recreation featured each the World Commerce Heart and the Pentagon. It appeared inconceivable to launch the sport. I used to be referred to as to the board of administrators and so they all turned pale after I defined the state of affairs. No person would inform me what to do, aside from Mr. Kozuki, who tackled the difficulty.
As I thought of what to do, I went to talk with Mr. Kozuki about probably quitting the corporate. That’s when he informed me: ‘When this recreation comes out and society has their say about it, they’ll be speaking about you, its creator, and me, the one who offered it. I doubt they’ll say something about anybody else. What’s going to you do? I’m prepared for no matter occurs.’
Once I heard how far he was keen to go, I made the agency resolution that we’d launch it collectively. The remainder is historical past.
MGS2 would go on to obtain vital acclaim. The sport’s tactical stealth gameplay was a dramatic evolution of what got here earlier than it and its meta-narrative stuffed with postmodern themes about digital data, digital realities, amongst many others, is nonetheless related and extensively mentioned.
After MGS2 shipped, Kojima discovered himself in dire want of restoration. “I turned utterly exhausted, and I all the time find yourself in an terrible state after I end making a recreation,” he mentioned. “After the primary Steel Gear Strong, even after it was completed I wasn’t recovering in any respect and ended up being handed from one hospital to the following.”
9/11 and the themes of Steel Gear Strong 2 weren’t the one time Kojima would face the necessity to alter his work. As we discovered throughout The Recreation Awards this yr, Kojima rewrote the unique story for the sequel to the narrative-driven, post-apocalyptic delivery-service simulator, Dying Stranding; the sport’s themes of loneliness, isolation, and world-altering occasions had been too near what all of us went by (and are nonetheless battling). The Covid-19 pandemic adopted Dying Stranding’s 2019 launch by only some months.
“Fiction adjustments when one thing that large occurs,” Kojima informed IGN. He continued:
That’s why I utterly rewrote [Death Stranding 2]. You’ll be able to’t fake that one thing this large by no means occurred. Whereas the video games themselves are primarily based on characters who aren’t sure by our actuality, the gamers themselves have gone by the pandemic, and a narrative written earlier than that have simply wouldn’t resonate with them in the identical means, whether or not it was a fantasy story or a sci-fi one.
Kojima Productions is presently engaged on Dying Stranding 2. The corporate can be engaged on an unnamed recreation with Microsoft, a challenge Kojima says different publishers turned down; although he pitched the thought to some locations, he describes the sport as requiring “infrastructure that was by no means wanted earlier than.” Different corporations appeared to not be as into the thought, “they actually appeared to assume I used to be mad.”
No matter that new recreation is, let’s hope he’s not predicting an terrible future for us but once more.