Hideo Kojima dropped a bombshell at the end of January, announcing that - alongside development of Death Stranding 2 - he would also be returning to the action-espionage genre that put him on the map with the Metal Gear series, in the form of Physint for PlayStation 5. And now, in a new episode of his HideoTube web series, the designer has explained how a period of sickness and surgery - and thoughts of his own mortality - convinced him to 'change his priorities' and do something fans had been asking him to do for years.
During the hour-long episode (thanks GameSpot), Kojima explained how, after departing Konami and establishing his independent Kojima Productions studio, he "wanted to do something new with my own IP" and "challenge myself", leading to Death Stranding. "Then, to create a franchise," he continued, "I made Death Stranding 2. And I wanted to do something even newer, so I started working on OD. And since then, there have been a lot of new ideas."
However, Kojima revealed that during those 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." But it wasn't until he became ill in 2020, in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, that those requests began to take on a more significant meaning.