Long-time awards host and video game insider Geoff Keighley continues to bring ample excitement to the industry despite there being no physical stage to present upon. Instead, Keighley now brings these awesome gaming manifestations to everyone through his ongoing streaming event, called Summer Game Fest (which can be found on his YouTube channel ). The event thus far has invited new looks into forthcoming titles, like , as well as documenting behind the scenes events, such as the final hours of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Valve's development on Half-Life: Alyx.
The most recent episode, which aired early Monday morning, brought on a very special guest and friend of Keighley's, the one and only Hideo Kojima alongside his trusted illustrator Yoji Shinkawa. Their conversations brimmed on everything from dealing with the ongoing pandemic to the design background of Kojima's 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Death Stranding.
Kojima's Coping Mechanisms
Hideo Kojima is no stranger to loneliness, plainly evidenced by the overriding theme of connection put forth in Death Stranding. This very concept of the "Strand Game," as he calls it, is emblematic of his most important goal with the game: to draw players from across the world into one place where they can literally co🦋nnect an♍d help one another. An immense amount of art and cinema have been imbued into the game along with this very concept of connection. This circles back to how Kojima himself has been dealing with the current state of the world: by consuming as much film, music, and writing as is possible.
His most profound viewing session included Giuseppe Tornatore's , an Italian music drama from 1998 starring Tim Roth and Clarence Williams III. Kojima also discussed the difficulties that many are facing right now in working from home. Although, the game director flips it in a whole new direction by terming himself a "workaholic" and likening himself to a writer in that he is staying busy from the moment he wakes up to when he hits the sheets. Kojima likewise expressed a certain amount of concern for the ever-rising cases of COVID-19 in Japan, though it's clear he's as excited as he is immersed in the launch of Death Stranding on PC.
PC Ultra-Wide Support
One of the biggest draws for Death Stranding on PC is its ultra-wide viewing support, allowing players with extended monitors to experience the game as if it were a Christopher Nolan film. This isn't even a h🎃yperbole, as Yoji Shinkawa himself compares the PS4 versio🦂n to a lowly television show when pitted against their ultra-wide PC offering, which he relates to the movie theater experience. In his own words (translated from Japanese):
"So compared to the previous one, it was I could kind of say that you were watching a TV drama in the previous game, but this time in the PC version it's more you get the impression that you're watching📖 a movie𒈔 at the cinemas."
Kojima adds to this:
"We kind of really opened up horizontally and, to tell you the truth, we weren't creating all of the details of the sides on the left and right, so we had to really recreate in order to expand it. So, when you play the game you see more details that we haven't really made in the previous game in the PS4 versꦇion, but we added all this part just to make it work in the full ultra-wide. So, I think it will kind of rediscover new things in the PC version."
Main among talking points was immersion, more viewing clarity, and even an adjusted UI system, making DS on PC even moꦯre accessible and visually pleasurable.
Interesting Real-World Parallels
When asked about how he views his game and the messages put forth in it now in a time that strikingly mirrors the events of Death Stranding, Kojima simply 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:discards himself as a prophet. Instead, he points to the fact that his game would probably have sold more otherwise, though it is clear that Kojima's narratives seem to have an extreme level of real-world expression, which is obviously what makes them so beloved and unique. He goes on to discuss Death Stranding's early beginnings:
"So, when I was kind of designing Death Standing at the concept stage, you know, in the real world America or Europe the world was kind of into - I see signs of things like dividꦓe in the world and even though we are all connected via the internet, there was kind of a lot of thinking of individualism..."
As mentioned previously, Kojima had all intentions of making a game that brings together players from across the world and allows them a variety of ways for helping each other. It, then, isn't all that surprising when the bulk of negative reviews for the game came mostly 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:out of the West, wherein this very state of individualism and politicizﷺed mindsets reign supreme. More than most missed the entire point of the game, yet the pandemic has seemingly reinvigorated these very discussions in a rather interesting way.
Valve Collaboration & Half-Life Content
To close out the segment, Kojima lightly touched upon newly added content in the form of their Half-Life collaboration. He discusses, with a big smile on his face, the relationship he shares with Valve and the nature of their long-term friendliness, going over their very first introducti༺on half a decade prior. Kojima even touched lightly upon his desire to visit SpaceX and meet Elon Musk, for which Valve co-founder Gabe Newell p𒁃romised to deliver. Later in the day, in reply to Summer Game Fest that his doors are always open to the gaming director.
Although Kojima couldn't get into too many details, due largely to the extreme secrecy of Half-Life, he did discওuss his involvement in the game's ﷽early development, going so far as to say he played it in its infancy and has loved the series ever since. In regards to their collaboration, he adds that it all felt natural and simply just coalesced like puzzle pieces thanks to their lengthy relationship, stating how Kojima Productions and Valve are still and will always remain "connected."
With the Death Standing PC po𒁏rt now available everywhe🦄re, it's high time to fire up those Nvidia RTX graphics cards and 21:9 monitors as tomorrow is in your hands.
Full exclusive interview: