Writing about games is hard, I find myself having a difficult time collecting my thoughts in a cohesive way about a 10 hour experience. To condense a 100+ hour, complicated, multi-chapter experience into a few paragraphs is hard. To keep that cohesive, and not talk about every little thing is even harder. There are several attributes I’d like to talk about with this game, because I feel that it was successful in almost everything it set out to do. I also feel like it’s exceptionally misunderstood.
The thing I find myself wanting to address with Death Stranding is actually about Kojima, I do not believe he is an auteur director like many say he is or at least in the traditional use of the word. It may appear that way, but upon closer inspection it doesn’t stick at least in the way auteur is used to describe directors in film. Kubrick is an auteur, there is a very singular sense of ownership over his body work. A wholistic vision, that isn't just separated from monetary influence, but in the sense that the crew of the film are being used as extensions of Kubrick’s vision, not contributors towards it.
Now I've watched, a countless amount of interviews about this game and I rewatched the opening cinematic just to be sure. It is very obvious that Kojima has a very strong directorial voice but I was immensely surprised by the amount of credit and creative control he gives to the people that worked with him. You just need to listen to how the people who work with him, talk about working with him.
Kojima’s name comes up 5 times in the opening credits, Yoji Shinkawa’s name comes up 3, Norman Mads and Lea come up 3, Troy and Margaret twice, Del Toro and Refn once. One thing that I also commend Kojima a lot for, is that all of the side characters, art directors, and major production artists get intro credit billing. Almost the entirety of the main cast and crew are named in the first 50m of gameplay.
Norman in his interviews, talks about two things. The first is how much of him is Sam, how many of his “Normanisms” are integral to Sam. There is one interview where he said Kojima told him that its not going to be people playing as you, but experiencing you, making a connection with you. Kojima gave as much artistic control you could give to their performers, the character of Sam was in Normans hands not Kojimas.
Yoji Shinkawa getting second billing shouldn’t have surprised me, especially as someone who is familiar with him and his work, and how much history and collaboration him and Kojima have. I read the art book after playing the game and it all made sense. The snippets of design work and/or feedback that Shinkawa got was less of searching for Kojima’s vision of this game, but giving Shinkawa the pedestal to make something even greater than Kojima could envision, and adopt it and incorporate it.
I made a joke about the email you get about Mama's wing to a friend. I said "Wow this email is right from Kojima he must really be proud of himself" and I was half right, it wasn't that Kojima was proud of himself for the idea. When you read through the artbook you can see Yoji’s design notes working through that specific wing design, the idea was all his and that email was written to gush about Yoji Shinkawa.
I have seen in a lot of reviews saying that Death Strandings team needed to tell Kojima "no" more, but from everything I've seen from the people that worked on this game, Kojima was creating a space for everyone to contribute creatively at the thing they were best at, and that criticism to me now almost reads as the Death Stranding team needed to tell themselves to basically not make the game. I think Kojima’s name is top billing mostly because he knew that they had made something truly different than any game of this scope that has been made, and his name could be used as a platform to give the team the space to create what they wanted to create.
The thing I find myself wanting to address with Death Stranding is actually about Kojima, I do not believe he is an auteur director like many say he is or at least in the traditional use of the word. It may appear that way, but upon closer inspection it doesn’t stick at least in the way auteur is used to describe directors in film. Kubrick is an auteur, there is a very singular sense of ownership over his body work. A wholistic vision, that isn't just separated from monetary influence, but in the sense that the crew of the film are being used as extensions of Kubrick’s vision, not contributors towards it.
Now I've watched, a countless amount of interviews about this game and I rewatched the opening cinematic just to be sure. It is very obvious that Kojima has a very strong directorial voice but I was immensely surprised by the amount of credit and creative control he gives to the people that worked with him. You just need to listen to how the people who work with him, talk about working with him.
Kojima’s name comes up 5 times in the opening credits, Yoji Shinkawa’s name comes up 3, Norman Mads and Lea come up 3, Troy and Margaret twice, Del Toro and Refn once. One thing that I also commend Kojima a lot for, is that all of the side characters, art directors, and major production artists get intro credit billing. Almost the entirety of the main cast and crew are named in the first 50m of gameplay.
Norman in his interviews, talks about two things. The first is how much of him is Sam, how many of his “Normanisms” are integral to Sam. There is one interview where he said Kojima told him that its not going to be people playing as you, but experiencing you, making a connection with you. Kojima gave as much artistic control you could give to their performers, the character of Sam was in Normans hands not Kojimas.
Yoji Shinkawa getting second billing shouldn’t have surprised me, especially as someone who is familiar with him and his work, and how much history and collaboration him and Kojima have. I read the art book after playing the game and it all made sense. The snippets of design work and/or feedback that Shinkawa got was less of searching for Kojima’s vision of this game, but giving Shinkawa the pedestal to make something even greater than Kojima could envision, and adopt it and incorporate it.
I made a joke about the email you get about Mama's wing to a friend. I said "Wow this email is right from Kojima he must really be proud of himself" and I was half right, it wasn't that Kojima was proud of himself for the idea. When you read through the artbook you can see Yoji’s design notes working through that specific wing design, the idea was all his and that email was written to gush about Yoji Shinkawa.
I have seen in a lot of reviews saying that Death Strandings team needed to tell Kojima "no" more, but from everything I've seen from the people that worked on this game, Kojima was creating a space for everyone to contribute creatively at the thing they were best at, and that criticism to me now almost reads as the Death Stranding team needed to tell themselves to basically not make the game. I think Kojima’s name is top billing mostly because he knew that they had made something truly different than any game of this scope that has been made, and his name could be used as a platform to give the team the space to create what they wanted to create.