OUTER HEAVEN

My first exposure to the work of Hideo Kojima was not experiencing his famed Metal Gear Solid video game series. It was not an article discussing the impact he had on video games or a review of one of his works. My first experience with Hideo Kojima was when I was six years old playing a Nintendo game. Super Smash Bros. Brawl released for the Nintendo Wii in 2008 as the third game in the famed Smash Bros. crossover series that sees Nintendo all-stars going head to head in battle. The first non-Nintendo character to make their way onto a Smash Bros. roster was Solid Snake, protagonist of Metal Gear Solid and brainchild of Kojima himself, in Brawl. Snake fights with grenades, C4, rocket launchers, and his fists. This appearance in Smash Bros. is likely people’s only exposure to Metal Gear Solid, and Solid Snake has thus been characterized as a gruff military man from a gritty military series to reflect his playstyle in Brawl. Engaging with the Metal Gear series, and Kojima’s work at large, reveals that this projected image is an intentional front, and deep inspection of the games reveals a subversion of its own militaristic image.

Hideo Kojima was born in Tokyo in 1963. Hardly a generation removed from the carnage of World War II, Kojima grew up seeing firsthand the effects war could have on a nation on its people. What he also saw, however, was the massive influx of American pop culture into Japan in those postwar decades. Kojima’s entryway to American culture was his father – he “hated the Americans for the war,” but, with time, “accepted and finally fell in love with American culture” (Noon and Dyer-Witheford 3). Kojima describes this dichotomy as a tightrope, and says that he walks the same fine line. From there, he fell madly in love with American cinema. From Blade Runner to Mad Max to 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kojima absorbed all corners of American film.

He knew he wanted to take his love for film and create films of his own. But now, decades into his professional career, he has never directed or worked on any films, but is credited as working on dozens of video games. The interactivity of the medium unlocked whole new potentials of storytelling for him and allowed him to tell narratives that would be impossible through film.

To analyze Kojima’s works, a framework for analyzing video games must be established. Since the inception of the video game industry with Pong in the 1970s, scholars have debated the proper way to frame game analysis. Are games traditional narratives that include elements of interactivity? Or is one’s experience with the gameplay foremost, and the story is just there to prop up the fun? Video game scholar Cody Mejeur proposes a hybrid model of analyzing interactive media that looks at gameplay, cutscenes, overall narrative, and player’s experience. What makes video games so unique is how interactivity often hinges on “the flowing emergence of possibilities that often buck against the limitations of narrative’s structure” (Mejeur 2) while still containing structured narratives. Ludonarrative theory is “a ‘hybrid hermeneutic’ that looks at the shared structures of games and narratives” and looks to “understand the "whole" of a game by viewing gameplay, story, and the player in their many relationships with each other, rather than viewing narrative and play as inherently opposed, conflicting elements as previous scholarship often did” (Mejeur 2). It was this complexity and incredibly personal nature of interactivity that drove Kojima to the games industry rather than the movie industry. Thus, we will analyze all these aspects of video games, from gameplay, player experience, linear narrative, and the context in which the games were released. With all these components working together, we can truly understand the intent and story of Hideo Kojima’s works.

Kojima began his work in the video game industry with a job at Konami. There, he worked on a few video novels, like Snatcher, before working on Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2.

His big break, however, would not come until he directed and wrote Metal Gear Solid. Metal Gear Solid, the first 3D entry in the already established Metal Gear series, served as a soft reboot and easy entrypoint for new fans. It was released on the Playstation 1 in 1998 and became an instant smash success, selling over seven million copies and being lauded with rave reviews. To this day, Metal Gear Solid is considered one of the most influential, important, and groundbreaking video games of all time. You play as international super spy, Solid Snake, as he is tasked with infiltrating military base Shadow Moses Island that has been taken over by rogue militant group FOXHOUND. The game plays primarily from a top-down perspective as you are put in a variety of sandbox environments featuring heavily armed enemies. The player is given the choice to tackle these encounters as they see fit, whether with stealth or guns-blazing violence. The game has a cold color palette consisting of blues, whites, greys, and blacks, and features a fuzzy, pixelated look due to the 32-bit limitations of the Playstation 1. What really set Metal Gear Solid apart from other games on the market at the time was its use of cutscenes. Kojima translated his love of film into the game by directing and writing digital movie scenes that help tell the story of the game. While this had been done before, no game before Metal Gear Solid had the same cinematic feel.

As Solid Snake, the player is tasked with destroying the Metal Gear unit that FOXHOUND has taken for themselves at Shadow Moses. Metal Gears, the namesake of the series, are bipedal, pilotable weapons with nuclear capabilities. Metal Gears are not the only outlandish part of the narrative, however. The game features cyborg ninjas, gun-slinging cowboys, clones of characters, and twists revealing characters to be secretly related. Kojima relishes in the camp of it all and indulges classic science fiction, spy and western movie tropes. While the plot of Metal Gear Solid is incredibly complex and referential to classic Hollywood,

the central idea of it is very clear denouncement of nuclear arms and war and critique of America. What elevates this simple concept is the way Kojima utilizes the interactive nature of the medium to get this point across. From the very beginning of the game, “the player is explicitly (verbally) or implicitly (non-verbally, and mostly visually) instructed not to kill an enemy unless it is completely necessary” (Stamenković et al. 16) through Snake’s low healthpool and the red alert that is triggered when spotted. Even later in the game, when “the player gets access to more and more powerful weapons” and “it becomes easier to fight one's way through the waves of enemies even while in alert mode” the player will find that, due to “limited health and ammo at their disposal, the player who chooses to fight as opposed to hiding will eventually be outgunned” (Stamenković et al. 16) by never-ending waves of enemies. Therefore, through gameplay, the game preaches a pacifist message. Kojima is not just a pacifist on the scale of individual encounters, however. This theme carries over to the macro level when the full scope of the narrative is considered. Metal Gear Solid is about the danger nuclear weapons pose to all of humanity – and Snake is no patriot either. Snake “feels he does not owe ‘anything to this army or this country’” (Stamenković et al. 20). America itself is criticized for the development of these weapons, but such themes won’t be explored much deeper until the sequel. For now, Solid is content with its “references to real-world conflicts, scientific projects, and political organizations and institutions” that “represent vital elements for the communication of the game's core pacifist tenets” (Stamenković et al. 21).

After the critical and commercial triumph that was Solid, all eyes were on Kojima for what he would make next. Finally, at gaming expo E3 2000, publisher Konami revealed Metal Gear Solid 2. The trailer featured Solid Snake gearing up for another adventure. Finally, in November of 2001, gamers got their hands on the hotly anticipated sequel. Players would soon

find it was not the blockbuster they were promised, however. After the introduction character, the player assumes the role of Raiden, a new, blonde-haired protagonist who stands in stark contrast to the stoic, solemn, and badass Snake. Raiden is whiny, confused, and unprepared as he is sent onto oil rig Big Shell to rescue a kidnapped president from a rogue squadron of mercenaries. While Metal Gear Solid featured some fantastical elements, MGS2 pushes the boundary between grounded spy thriller and kooky comedy even further – one of the terrorists Raiden faces is a bomb-obsesesed roller skater named FATMAN; another, an invincible vampire named Vamp. The game follows the same structure as Solid as Raiden takes out the terror cell one by one, working his way through Big Shell as the plot reveals twists and turns. That is, until the very end where a shocking revelation is made: the whole game has been a simulation. See, the whole world is secretly run by a shadow organization called the Patriots. Who are the Patriots? The Patriots are an AI composed of America’s “core ideals” and they have orchestrated the whole Big Shell incident to replicate the events that transpired at Shadow Moses so they can track Raiden and use the information to create another Solid Snake – another perfect soldier. That’s not all – the Patriots want to use a new AI system to, as they say, “save humanity.” They believe that, before the internet, there was a natural filtering of information – only what was important was passed down. Now, however, with the advent of the internet, infinite information can be spread and the Patriots believe humanity will stagnate as they will be unable to distinguish what is important from what is drivel. This serves as a commentary of government internet censorship as well, though,

From the moment MGS2 was announced, Kojima was determined to make sure players were misled. By marketing the game as a Solid Snake follow-up adventure and making him absent for the majority of the game, he defied player expectation as both a commentary on sequel

culture but also so players felt lied to and betrayed. This deception is crucial – it is the same deception Raiden feels when he realizes his mission was fake. The fantastical elements in the game play a similar role. With a similar campy tone and winks to movie tropes, Kojima continues paying homage to American pop culture which makes the anti-American message even more complicated and poignant. These elements do more than just this, though, as Kojima is not content regurgitating the same ideas as his last game. Now, in a game concerned with the flow and restriction of information that has purposefully deceived its players, Kojima uses these fantastical elements to make Raiden, and the player, question the reality around them. There are multitudes of intentional mistakes – people appear in locations without any explanation and powers, such as Fortune’s bullet deflection, appear and disappear in seemingly random ways. All of this is to continue to blur the line between reality and delusion, which feeds into the increased role technology plays in our lives. With so much information at our fingertips, and so much fake news spreading on the internet, it can be hard to decipher what is real and what is not. A random lie can generate as much buzz as real news. With the internet, what is real and what is not? Kojima uses the medium of video games to make us feel the confusion he is trying to explain, whereas, if he made a film, we would just be seeing this confusion in someone else. By making the player an active agent being misled and lied to, he creates a powerful statement on information and truth in the internet age at the intersection of gameplay, video game hype cycles, and the narrative of the game.

Kojima accomplishes more than just this in MGS2. He manages to peel back another layer of the game and questions MGS2’s existence as a game and the role of the player. In the early 2000’s, the video game industry was in the midst of a shift – the market was now dominated by violent shooter games and the colorful, animal-filled platformers of the 90s were

being phased out. Not only were more military games being produced, but the American military themselves had a hand in production. In MGS2, Kojima looks at the violent video game as a tool of real-life war and forces the player to think critically about their role as the player. Kojima scratched the surface of these ideas in MGS when “Snake chastises [another character] Meryl for thinking that combat simulations are the same as real war” (Stamenković et al. 18), but he digs deeper in MGS2. Over the course of the game, it is revealed this is Raiden’s first mission in the field and all of his training has occurred in virtual reality. Because “the virtual simulation in which Raiden has been involved in is a subtly altered replay of the first Metal Gear Solid game,” “Raiden, the VR trained soldier, is just the equivalent of a Metal Gear fan” (Noon and Dyer-Witherford 12). Therefore, Kojima is looking at the ways violence in video games removes the player from the horror, and the whole of MGS and MGS2 “becomes a metaphor for the player’s own potential conditioning for war by virtual play” (Noon and Dyer-Witherford 12). In 2022, this feels prophetic. Today, “the beset directors of remote-controlled armed aerial drones” are “not air force pilots, but hardcore videogamers” who, “controller in hand and monitoring multiple screens, virtually deliver actual attacks on villages” (Noon and Dyer-Witherford 13). Kojima uses the medium of video games to analyze the role technology and video games play in war by forcing the player right in the middle of the conversation.

A decade and a half after Metal Gear Solid 2, the video game industry was preparing for something huge. After a slew of Metal Gear sequels, Kojima and Konami had a historic falling out, and Kojima went on to establish his own studio and announce a new game. At first, the only information made public was that it would feature famous figures from the film industry, such as Mads Mikkelson, Guillermo del Toro and Norman Reedus, and cinematic trailers were released teasing black, inky specters, and strange babies. Hype was through the roof – a game combining

all these film legends and the first independent Kojima game? But then... Death Stranding released in 2019 with a dull thud. You play as Sam Porter Bridges, who shares Norman Reedus’ likeness, as you venture to reconnect a dystopian America by... delivering packages. Most of Death Stranding consists of managing the weight distribution of packages and then traversing mountainous terrains and rivers to deliver the packages from settlement to settlement. The game still has Kojima’s flair for wackiness, from strange Monster Energy product placements to a strange, nearly impossible to grasp plot filled with twists and turns, but the gameplay is incredibly, uncharacteristically slow. There are a few third-person shooting segments and boss fights, but nearly the whole game is spent traversing and delivering packages.

What really sets Death Stranding apart is the way it forces the player to slow down and reflect. Sam is equipped with a BB, a little baby that helps guide him, but sometimes the BB cries and Sam has to rock him in his arms. For the player to input this command, they have to actually cradle the controller and sway it back and forth, forcing the player to slow down, mindfully connect with Sam, and reflect on the journey. Even the controls force the player to be mindful of their actions – the analog triggers of the controller are used to balance Sam in one direction or another if he loses his footing. Where Kojima pushes the boundary is his usage of online play. By the PS4/Xbox One generation of consoles, multiplayer shooters dominate the market. Every online game is competitive and violent. We’ve already seen how Death Stranding flips the violent video game on its head by producing a peaceful, mindful package delivery simulator, but what of its multiplayer functionality? Well, Kojima actually created the first cooperative multiplayer game of its scale. On your quest to deliver packages, you can build bridges, ladders, zip lines and more to make your journey easier. These items will actually appear in the game worlds of other players, and vice versa. By connecting independent American

settlements, players connect with other players in a really subversive but effective way of cooperation. Players were looking forward to violent competition typical of multiplayer games, but Kojima delivered a peaceful, cooperative experience to express a point about connection and technology only possible through the interactive medium of video games.

Like the Metal Gear games before it, Kojima puts lots of references to American pop culture in Death Stranding – Guillermo del Toro’s character is named DIEHARDMAN after the classic film. The game serves as a critique, though, of the way technology has isolated us into small communities, and is all about reconnecting lost people. Despite the difference in gameplay and themes, Death Stranding builds upon everything Kojima worked upon before. While Metal Gear Solid highlighted the tension between American pop culture and American imperialism and Metal Gear Solid 2 questioned the role of technology and the internet in war and the flow of information, they both took advantage of the unique storytelling capabilities offered by video games to insert players into his conversations, forcing them to reconcile with themselves and the themes of the game. Kojima is a real pioneer, a master of subversion, and a visionary director with an incredibly nuanced take on storytelling. In one of his many essays, Kojima reflects on when he heard filmmaker Ryu Murakami say that all stories have the same structure: “the protagonist falls into a hole and either crawls out or dies within” (Kojima 32). To Kojima, this made sense and he “could see nearly all stories fitting into that pattern” (Kojima 32). That is, at least, until Kojima heard the words of Kobo Abe who said that, as a third option, “the man finds a life inside the pit” (Kojima 32). Instead of trying to undo bad circumstances or ignore them, Kojima looks for ways to exist with problems and move forward with them. He doesn’t try to bring humanity back to a time when we were connected or before technology – instead, he looks for ways we can co-exist with and move forward with these technologies. Many video game

directors and designers have delivered impactful experiences. Neil Druckmann with his narrative work in The Last of Us or Shigeru Miyamoto with his gameplay innovations in Mario, Zelda, and Metroid, but no one besides Hideo Kojima has taken full advantage of the medium. When you play a Kojima game, you are not just watching a story unfold or interacting with fun game mechanics and smart design. You are thrust into a story that extends beyond the game, one that questions the role of the player in the wider world while still examining the characters that exist within its digital boundaries. Kojima pushes not just the video game industry forward, but extends the very boundaries of storytelling by delivering experiences impossible without interactivity and not replicated by an industry often fearful of the risk that comes with his unconventional style.

Kojima, Hideo, et al. The Creative Gene: How Books, Movies, and Music Inspired the Creator of Death Stranding and Metal Gear Solid. Viz Media, LLC, 2021.

Mejeur, Cody. "Playing with Playthroughs: Distance Visualization and Narrative Form in Video Games." Digital Humanities Quarterly, vol. 14, no. 3, 2020. ProQuest, http://proxy.library.nyu.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Fscholarly -journals%2Fplaying-with-playthroughs-distance-visualization%2Fdocview%2F255355664 4%2Fse-2.

Noon, Derek, and Nick Dyer-Witheford. “Chapter 5: Sneaking Mission: Late Imperial America and Metal Gear Solid.” Utopic Dreams and Apocalyptic Fantasies: Critical Approaches to Researching Video Game Play, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Lanham, MD, 2010.

Stamenković, Dušan, et al. “The Persuasive Aims of Metal Gear Solid: A Discourse Theoretical Approach to the Study of Argumentation in Video Games.” Discourse, Context & Media, vol. 15, 2017, pp. 11–23., https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2016.12.002.