Kojima says he decided to make Physint for Metal Gear fans after illness in 2020

10.02.2024 - 15:49 / rockpapershotgun.com / Says He

A couple of weeks ago, Hideo Kojima announced that he was returning to the action espionage genre with a new game, codenamed Physint.

In the latest episode of his YouTube series, HideoTube, Kojima says that returning to the same genre as Metal Gear was inspired by players asking for it "every day on social media", and by a brush with death he experienced in 2020.

After going independent, Kojima said he wanted to create his own IP, and then his own franchise, which led to Death Stranding and its upcoming sequel. He also has lots of other new ideas, he says, which led to the creation of his upcoming experimental horror game OD.

Players wouldn't stop asking him about Metal Gear, however.

"In the last eight years, every day on social media, from users all around the world, people have been asking me to create another Metal Gear and stuff like that," says Kojima.

"Then, I fell ill in 2020. It was also during the pandemic, so I was sick and isolated during all of it. I even had surgery. And I thought, 'I can't anymore.' I was at my lowest and felt like I couldn't go back to making games. I wrote a will, too. And in that moment, I realised that people die. But, I turned 60 last year. I'll turn 70 in ten years. I hope to never retire. Having said that, if the users desire it so much, I thought I should change my priorities a bit. I still want to do new things, but I decided to make an action-espionage game."

Not a lot is known about Physint at this point, although during its announcement Kojima described it as both a game and a movie.

"I get many requests from Hollywood to make films, but I've refused them. Because I have my own company now, I can't leave for one or two years to go make a movie. The company would collapse. I was in a tough spot," he says in the HideoTube episode. "And I talked to Guillermo del Toro about it. And he said, 'Hideo, what you're making is already a movie. Keep going as you are.' His words saved me. And since we'll be working with many creators in the business, though the output is a game, it won't be too different from movies."

It's unlikely we'll learn much more about what any of this means for a while given Kojima Productions already have two games in development and work on Physint isn't due to start in earnest until after Death Stranding 2 is out. In the meantime, you can find the Physint chat with English subtitles around the 46m 37s mark in the video.