Those who know well Solid metal gear Trivia will know that the original ending for Metal Gear Solid 2 has been changed before release. Scenes of a giant ship crashing into Manhattan Island were a bit too much in a very young post-9/11 world, with images and video of planes hitting the World Trade Center being a constant in the media. In a recent interview, director Hideo Kojima spoke about the complicated nature of releasing a game like this after a world-changing event and how it almost drove him to quit konami
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty Released with great anticipation in November 2001. As a series focused on “tactical espionage action,” the games have never shied away from political themes, be they part of the fictional story or commentary on world events and history. It has been known for some time that elements of the game were changed at the last minute due to 9/11 Attacks show recent comments that the stress and challenge of dealing with such a release was enough to make Hideo Kojima leave Konami back then. A conversation with Konami Chairman Kagemasa Kozuki was what convinced Kojima to stay back then.
Continue reading: Review of Metal Gear Solid 2: Be careful with your desires
Talking to Shuka Yamada for IGNHideo Kojima described an uncomfortable and difficult situation afterwards Metal Gear Solid 2scheduled for release in fall 2001, included images of the World Trade Center and other sites attacked on 9/11.
9/11 happened in 2001 just before the release of Metal Gear Solid 2. We had just sent off the master, but the game included both the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It seemed impossible to release the game. I was called to the board and everyone paled when I explained the situation. No one would tell me what to do, except for Kozuki-san, who took care of it.
While thinking about what to do, I spoke to Mr. Kozuki about the possibility of leaving the company. That’s when he told me, “When this game comes out and society gets a chance to speak, they’re going to talk about you, its creator, and me, the person who sold it. I doubt they will say anything about anyone else. What are you going to do? I am ready for whatever happens.”
When I heard how far he was willing to go, I made a firm decision that we would release it together. The rest is history.
MGS2 would continue to receive critical acclaim. The game’s tactical stealth gameplay was a dramatic evolution of what came before it, and its meta-narrative is filled with postmodern themes about digital information, virtual realities, and many others still relevant and much discussed.
After this MGS2 shipped, Kojima urgently needed to recover. “I got completely exhausted and I always end up in a terrible state when I’m done developing a game,” he said. “After the first Solid metal geareven after I finished, I didn’t recover at all and ended up being passed from one hospital to the next.”
9/11 and the issues of Metal Gear Solid 2 weren’t the only time Kojima faced the need to change his work. As we found out during the Game Awards This year, Kojima rewrote the original story for the narrative post-apocalyptic delivery service simulator sequel. death stranding; the games Issues like loneliness, isolation, and world-changing events were too close to what we’ve all been through (and are still struggling with). The Covid-19 pandemic followed death stranding‘s 2019 release by just a few months.
“The fiction changes when something this big happens,” Kojima said IGN. He continued:
So I completely rewrote it [Death Stranding 2]. You can’t pretend something this big never happened. While the games themselves are based on characters not tied to our reality, the players themselves have been through the pandemic, and a story written before that experience just wouldn’t resonate with them in the same way, no matter what it was is a fantasy story or a sci-fi one.
Kojima Productions is currently working on it Death Stranding 2. The company is also working on an untitled game with Microsoft, a Project Kojima says other publishers have declined; Although he pitched the idea in a few places, he describes the game as having “an infrastructure that’s never been needed before.” Other companies didn’t seem too keen on the idea, “they really seemed to think I was crazy.”
Whatever this new game is, let’s hope it doesn’t bode well for us yet again.
