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 Middle a continuing within the media. In a current interview, director Hideo Kojima talked concerning the difficult nature of releasing such a sport 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 because of the 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 a clumsy and difficult scenario after Steel Gear Strong 2, as a consequence of launch within the Fall of 2001, contained pictures of the World Commerce Middle and different websites that had been attacked on 9/11.
9/11 occurred in 2001 proper earlier than the discharge of Steel Gear Strong 2. We’d simply despatched off the grasp, however the sport featured each the World Commerce Middle and the Pentagon. It appeared unimaginable to launch the sport. I used to be known as to the board of administrators and so they all turned pale once I defined the scenario. No one would inform me what to do, apart from Mr. Kozuki, who tackled the difficulty.
As I considered what to do, I went to talk with Mr. Kozuki about presumably quitting the corporate. That’s when he instructed me: ‘When this sport comes out and society has their say about it, they’ll be speaking about you, its creator, and me, the one that offered it. I doubt they’ll say something about anybody else. What is going to you do? I’m prepared for no matter occurs.’
After I heard how far he was keen to go, I made the agency determination that we’d launch it collectively. The remainder is historical past.
MGS2 would go on to obtain essential 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 broadly 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 once I end making a sport,” he stated. “After the primary Steel Gear Strong, even after it was achieved 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 came upon throughout The Recreation Awards this yr, Kojima rewrote the unique story for the sequel to the narrative-driven, post-apocalyptic delivery-service simulator, Loss of life Stranding; the sport’s themes of loneliness, isolation, and world-altering occasions had been too near what all of us went by means of (and are nonetheless combating). The Covid-19 pandemic adopted Loss of life Stranding’s 2019 launch by only some months.
“Fiction modifications when one thing that massive occurs,” Kojima instructed IGN. He continued:
That’s why I utterly rewrote [Death Stranding 2]. You’ll be able to’t fake that one thing this massive by no means occurred. Whereas the video games themselves are based mostly on characters who aren’t certain by our actuality, the gamers themselves have gone by means of the pandemic, and a narrative written earlier than that have simply wouldn’t resonate with them in the identical approach, whether or not it was a fantasy story or a sci-fi one.
Kojima Productions is at present engaged on Loss of life Stranding 2. The corporate can be engaged on an unnamed sport with Microsoft, a challenge Kojima says different publishers turned down; although he pitched the concept to some locations, he describes the sport as requiring “infrastructure that was by no means wanted earlier than.” Different firms appeared to not be as into the concept, “they actually appeared to assume I used to be mad.”
No matter that new sport is, let’s hope he’s not predicting an terrible future for us but once more.
