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ABC News
16 hours ago
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Why Death Stranding 2 is set in Australia and other things we learned speaking with Hideo Kojima
It's not every day you get to meet one of the most visionary storytellers in gaming — let alone sit across from him in a Sydney boardroom. But that's exactly what happened when I joined a small group of journalists to speak with Hideo Kojima, the legendary creator of Metal Gear Solid and Death Stranding . A genre-defying, post-apocalyptic epic about connection and isolation, Death Stranding cemented Kojima's reputation as gaming's great auteur. He was in town for the Sydney Film Festival, where he shared the stage with filmmaker George Miller ( Mad Max ) in a dream pairing of cinematic minds. With Death Stranding 2: On the Beach on the horizon, Kojima opened up about sequels, storytelling, and why Australia is the perfect place to end the world. Sam Bridges (Norman Reedus) treks across Australia in Death Stranding 2: On The Beach ( Supplies ) On why Death Stranding 2 is set in Australia Hideo Kojima: Death Stranding was based in North America, and we kind of recreated it from east to west — like going after gold back in those days. So I was thinking for DS2 , "What's a good continent that's similar to DS1 ?" Eurasia is too big. Africa might be too long. So I thought Australia would be a perfect fit. This is a game where Sam walks — he traverses. So you need a lot of things: great environments, desert, mountains. Animals as well. It's almost like a very specific area in the world that has its own animals, plants, species. That's another reason. But the real reason I selected Australia is this: usually when I decide on a location, I go location scouting. I go there to scan, or to do interviews-things like that. Last time, it was Iceland. It was great-but it was a little cold. So this time I thought, let's make it a little warmer-Australia. But then, no. The pandemic happened. On what inspired Death Stranding 2 Kojima: Sometimes I see movies and get ideas. But usually, it's just talking to people. Eating, walking, or maybe when I'm in the bath-I kind of come up with these ideas. It's almost like a disease, I call it, you know? "I'm imagining things all the time. Even when I'm talking with my family, in my head I'm in a totally different world." So even when I travel, I'm not working-but in my head, I'm always thinking about this stuff. When I talk to George Miller, he understands, because he has the same disease. He says, "I've been like this since I was a child — I've been imagining." A teacher once told George, "If you didn't imagine so much, your grades would go up." He told me that story. And I think for me, it's the same. I'm imagining things. I'm happy to be in this job because I'm free to imagine whatever I want. On the biggest difference between Death Stranding 1 and 2 Kojima: DS1 was a delivery game. It was the very first game of its kind. So I wanted players to understand it. Now people know this is a game about delivery, so I thought for DS2 , I would add more rhythm. More weapons and things you can use — and with that combination, you can now decide: do you battle, go stealth, or avoid? It's more like you have this rhythm, this beat, where you have the choice to change and decide. It's still a delivery game, but you can fight if you want. "So the recommendation is: don't go back to DS1 after you play DS2. You should play DS1, then go straight into DS2." On the hazards of over-connectivity and digital overload Kojima: During the pandemic, everyone got so isolated in real life. It was almost like Death Stranding . The world of Death Stranding came out three months before the pandemic. But we had the internet. It wasn't like the Spanish Flu — they didn't have that. During our pandemic, we could order things online. We could work online. We could connect via Zoom. Even concerts — they did live concerts on the internet. Society kind of shifted to being very digital. Even Kojima Productions had to do that-everyone was working remotely. But I felt that during the pandemic, the direction of the world was heading further and further into digital. And I thought-is that really good? When we were animals, we were born in the ocean. In the water. But we came out, moved to land, and became human. So I think everything on the internet — too much of it-is not healthy. Especially in the digital society we have today. George Miller provides a motion capture performance for Death Stranding 2's Tarman On casting famous filmmakers in his games Kojima: Okay, I'll tell you the truth. It's all people I like. "I want to work with people I like-people I respect, and who respect me back." Like, for instance, George-he's my god. And if I work with him, I'm really happy. But if I put my god in the game, I can't escape. I have to really make him perfect in the game. I can't forfeit that once I commit. On what idea lies at the heart of Death Stranding 2 Kojima: The apes created the stick. You see it in 2001: A Space Odyssey — they become human, but the first tool was a stick. The second was a rope, to pull something you like closer to you. That stick and rope led us to civilisation. With Death Stranding , I thought: if you look at all games, they're stick games. Even though you're connected online, like a big rope, you're still fighting over everything-with a stick. So in DS1 , I wanted to make a rope game. But looking at the world, you can't really connect everything with just the rope. That's one of the themes in DS2 . In the gameplay, you have a lot of weapons-and that has meaning too, in terms of the theme. On what you should feel playing Death Stranding 2 Kojima: I want you to use what you experienced in the game in your real life. Connecting people. Rope and stick. Isolation. Not just in Death Stranding , but when you go outside, I want you to feel something in your real world. And then when you turn the game off, go outside-you realise something different. You see a road, electricity, a bridge. Like the bridge here in Sydney. Someone made that. Someone who created that bridge might have passed away years ago, but you're connected to them. On what makes a great sequel Kojima: You know Ridley Scott's Alien ? It was so scary because you don't see the alien until the very end. Everyone wanted to buy that figure. But then, once you have that figure, it's not scary anymore. Same in Death Stranding . You had the handprints, the BTs come out-that was scary because you didn't know what was happening. But now you do know. So when you do a sequel, it's not scary anymore. "But with Aliens — James Cameron was so smart. He turned the movie from horror into action." DS2 is not 100% action, but it's more like that. You already know what Death Stranding is. So topping that — creating surprise in a world people already know — that was the biggest challenge in making the sequel. Death Stranding 2: On The Beach asks whetner connection is really worth it in a psot-pandemic world. On how the pandemic influenced development Kojima: DS2 is quite special because we had the pandemic-everyone experienced it. We couldn't meet face to face. I've been creating games my whole career, but DS2 was the most difficult challenge I've ever had. I know everyone went through similar things. We all experienced that — and we overcame it. So I think we're a little stronger now. I wanted to go one level higher because of that shared experience. So I created a game about connections. It got to a point where I almost gave up. But I came back. I reconnected-with myself, with this project. And that's another reason I'm doing this world tour now. I couldn't travel or meet people for the past five years. So I thought — it's about time. Angus Truskett presents Culture King, a weekly dive on all things pop culture on triple j Drive each Thursday afternoon.
The Verge
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Verge
Hideo Kojima sees Death Stranding 2 as a cautionary tale
For once, the unflappable Hideo Kojima was overwhelmed. Even close to four decades of game-making experience didn't prepare him for his biggest tribulation so far: developing Death Stranding 2: On the Beach during the covid-19 pandemic. 'I thought I can't pull this off. [I can't] meet people or scan people, or shoot with people. I almost gave up. And also the staff were all remote, and I became sick as well. I thought it was just the end of the world,' he says through an interpreter as part of a group interview in Sydney. 'I've been creating games throughout my career, but Death Stranding 2 was the most difficult challenge.' Even his initial scouting of Australia, where Death Stranding 2 is predominantly set, had to be carried out remotely via Zoom, with Kojima painstakingly directing a local contact to document the landscape on his behalf. 'Looking at it from a camera and to be there is totally different, so that's disappointing.' For Kojima, those experiences led to a different approach for the sequel. His own sense of isolation that arose from having to develop Death Stranding 2 with a remote team saw him reconsidering its tale — yet it's also this isolation that led to Kojima realizing the perils of digital connectivity. Kojima's curiosity around Australia was eventually sated. As part of a promotional world tour for Death Stranding 2, he has made his way to Australia to chat about the game with film director and his personal hero, George Miller, at the Sydney Film Festival. So drawn is Kojima to the local sights that the noted cinephile says he hasn't caught any movies at the festival. Instead, he spent the day at the zoo. Kojima's legacy as a game designer is anything but typical, from his earliest days as the creative force behind the much-acclaimed Metal Gear series to his less-than-amicable departure from Konami. And like Metal Gear's anti-war narrative, tumultuous world events have shaped the Death Stranding series, the first game being conceptualized in the midst of a politically charged climate back in 2016. He points to key events such as Brexit and the first Donald Trump administration, with thoughts of creating a game that focused on bringing people together. '[Back then] there was no theme in games about connections,' he explains. And a few months after Death Stranding was launched, the outbreak of covid soon upended everyday life, including Kojima's. The isolation he felt almost mirrored the sense of solitude that's so prevalent in the first Death Stranding. But at the same time, he seemed wary about the digital overload that came with having to stay online — to connect with one another — during the pandemic. 'I've been creating games throughout my career, but Death Stranding 2 was the most difficult challenge.' 'We had internet when we had this pandemic. It wasn't like during the Spanish flu,' he says. 'We could order things online, we could work online, we could connect via Zoom, or you could go to concerts; they do live concerts on the internet. So the society kind of changed to being very digital.' This digital dependence struck him as 'not always very healthy,' which is compounded by the prevalence of surveillance technology, such as facial recognition, during the pandemic. The sum of these experiences inspired him to rewrite Death Stranding 2 as a cautionary tale. The contrast between the two titles' messages lies in their logos. Kojima remarks that there's a marked difference between the original Death Stranding's logo and the sequel's. Unlike in the original, the tendrils — or the 'strands,' as he refers to these lines — are no longer emerging from the title, but are instead holding the name up in the sequel's logo. 'You see the strands coming to the logo. It's almost like [The] Godfather,' he says, referring to the seminal 1972 crime film. Seated at the front of a small conference room in the PlayStation office in Sydney, the 61-year-old Kojima appears more reticent since the previous Death Stranding world tour — perhaps a sign of weariness and prudence in the pandemic's aftermath. When I attended the Singapore leg of the tour in 2020, Kojima shook hands with journalists and conducted individual interviews, while fans who attended the event were invited to take pictures with him. 'It was an indirect connection to the game,' he said in an interview. The promotional event was, in a way, an extension of Death Stranding's themes of connectivity. But for the second world tour, at least in Sydney, journalists were invited to a group interview, and there was no fan interaction beyond his appearance at the Sydney Film Festival when he waved to eager fans who were hoping to catch a glimpse of the game designer before the event. I was informed by the PlayStation PR team that Kojima didn't want to risk getting ill again for the rest of the Death Stranding 2 world tour. This feels understandable; Sydney is, after all, only the second stop, and perhaps his bout of illness during the pandemic was alarming enough that he prefers putting some physical distance between himself and the public. Nonetheless, he is still in good spirits during the group interview, at one point even exclaiming that he is probably talking too much. 'This is another reason why I'm doing this world tour. I couldn't go out, travel, and meet people the past five years, so I thought it's about time.' Yet, at the heart of Kojima's introspection is still a desire to connect with people, particularly his fans. Part of the reason he's working on Physint is due to their desire to see another action-espionage game in the vein of Metal Gear. Death Stranding 2, meanwhile, has a greater focus on combat than the first, a feature that Kojima also partly attributed to Metal Gear's popularity. With more players familiar with Death Stranding's idiosyncrasies as a 'delivery game,' he's ready to make the sequel a tad more approachable. In a way, it's his way of bringing more people together through the Death Stranding series, which he refers to as 'a game of connections.' 'I think we're a little stronger,' Kojima says of the world after pandemic lockdowns. 'If you could use that experience [of connecting with one another] from the game, I want you to maybe use that experience in real life. Not just in your Death Stranding world, but after you go outside, you feel something in your real world every day, and I want you to link what you felt playing the game as well.'
The Guardian
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘We're all connected – but it's not the connection I imagined': Hideo Kojima on Death Stranding 2
Hideo Kojima – the acclaimed video game director who helmed the stealth-action Metal Gear series for decades before founding his own company to make Death Stranding, a supernatural post-apocalyptic delivery game this publication described as '2019's most interesting blockbuster' – is still starstruck, or perhaps awestruck. 'George [Miller] is my sensei, my God,' he proclaims gleefully. Kojima is visiting Australia for a sold-out chat with Miller, the creator of the Mad Max film franchise, at the Sydney film festival. The two struck up an unlikely but fierce friendship nearly a decade ago, and Kojima says that, as a teenager, the first two Mad Max films inspired him to become a movie director and thus, eventually, a video game maker. At the panel later, Miller is equally effusive, calling Kojima 'almost my brother'; the Australian even lent his appearance to a major character in Kojima's latest game, Death Stranding 2. It's actually because of Miller that much of this latest game is set in a heavily fictionalised version of Australia, Kojima jokes. Death Stranding, a game about slogging through vast, treacherous yet gorgeous environments to deliver parcels between isolated bunkers, is particularly suited to Australia's diverse and varied biosphere; the game's geography may be condensed and fantastical, but the beauty and the terror remains. In addition to sweeping, moody outback landscapes, DS2 also has some of the most vividly detailed (or at least expensive) depictions of Australian wildlife in all of gaming. Spotting the distinctive hopping gait of a kangaroo on a sun-drenched horizon was, for this decidedly urban Australian, an oddly moving sight. 'I love animals, and they're unique here,' says Kojima, who passed on catching some early morning festival screenings to go to the zoo instead. 'A lot of people [on the team] love animals … They might say no to designing a new mech, but they wanted to make more animals.' Film buff Kojima drops a few Australian cinematic references too – he likes the 1971 flick Walkabout, and admits DS2's subtitle, On the Beach, is a reference to the classic Melbourne-based post-apocalyptic movie of the same name ('I love the original novel') – but his real reasoning behind the location choice was simple: 'I wanted to go to Australia.' Though he's visited before, he wanted to go deeper in, 'to the middle of the land, the desert'. But because of the pandemic, Kojima's team was forced to use remote location scouts to gather data; being unable to be there in person was very disappointing, he says. 'It's totally different from looking at a picture, when you're feeling it, on location.' Remote work, during the pandemic and beyond, has been a sticking point for the game. 'The hardest thing was the performance capture,' he says. Directing cast members such as Norman Reedus or Léa Seydoux remotely from Japan was the 'worst experience', his direction 'almost impossible to relay' from the other side of a Zoom call. With restrictions in place during the early parts of development, the team tried to focus on scenes that didn't utilise the main actors early on, but it wasn't always possible. 'And for the new cast especially, it was quite difficult,' he says, 'Because I wanted to explain: this is the character, this is how I want you to act – but it was all remote!' The situation eased by 2022, he says, allowing him to fly to LA and direct in person – to build a better rapport with his cast and get them more used to the nuances of acting for games. 'People who have done Marvel movies, they've experienced performance capture, with the green backgrounds,' he says. (In most cinematic games, real-world acting is translated to the digital realm through motion capture technology – which can be jarring to actors used to sets and costumes.) 'We actually have a tool: if you look at the monitor, you can see the [in-game] world displayed in real time.' Kojima says he tries to keep actors performing together as much as possible, though there are always exceptions where they had to record separately, especially during Covid. And then there were problems specific to games, such as the need for multiple takes on a character's grunts of pain or repeatable in-game actions like eating an apple. 'Sometimes we'd get questions from Norman, and I'd say, 'Eat the apple and it's good', or 'Eat the apple and it's not good' – we want those differences! Over and over, we had to ask for those kinds of things.' Death Stranding made 'connections' its thesis statement; players never see one another in-game, yet can pool resources and build structures to benefit themselves and others, creating intricate networks of services to make the long drudgery of delivery easier for everyone. So why is the sequel's tagline the ominous question: 'Should we have connected?' 'I became sick during the pandemic, and I was totally isolated,' Kojima says. Compounding that, optical muscle damage from a recent eye surgery meant that he couldn't even watch movies or TV. The world shifted around him: everyone was bunkering down, working online, communicating through video calls as delivery people kept the world running. His game, his vision, had come true. 'It seemed like, yes, we're all connected. But it's not really the connection that I imagined,' he says. His company, Kojima Productions, was staffing up; he would meet new hires in person on their first day and then, due to pandemic restrictions, not see them again for the next three years. Having spoken recently about legacy (news of a USB drive 'full of ideas' he had supposedly prepared to leave behind took on a life of its own, he laughs), Kojima believes in-person collaboration remains the best way to foster new talent. 'The reason why [new hires] want to work with us is they want to learn from mentors, or become better by working with other people,' he says. 'But if you're purely online … it's almost like outsourcing. You want to talk and see what other people are doing, so you can expand yourself, you can grow.' Remote work is 'almost like a fast food chain; you're just concentrating on one thing instead of the whole project,' he says: in a collaborative industry like game-making, it introduces inefficiencies. With people siloed off, there's no back-and-forth, he says; people discover their mistakes later and there's less room for happy coincidences, spur-of-the-moment suggestions or alternate viewpoints. Aside from that, he adds, you don't get to know your team members, see how people are feeling or ask them about their hobbies. 'Only 1% of yourself is on show during [online] meetings,' he says. 'This is not like building a team. Think about football. You hire someone, he comes to your squad – but you can't play together remotely. So that person doesn't change the way they played before; they won't fit in,' he says. Still, 'you can't force people back to the office, you can only persuade them,' he says. 'So not everyone came back. But the main members did, so we could work together.' Despite this slightly dour tone, Kojima seemingly remains hopeful. Death Stranding is a deeply lonely game, he says animatedly during a later group presentation. 'But … you find other players all over the world. You're indirectly connected … And once you turn that [game] off and go outside … you see structures in real life, like the bridge here in Sydney. Someone made that! They might have passed away years ago, but you're connected to them. Even if you haven't met the person. You are not alone in this world.' And there's always new horizons. Kojima has a long-held dream of visiting outer space – not a mere billionaire's suborbital hop, but something more. 'That's not space,' he says, firmly. 'I want to train properly, learn how to do the docking, go to the International Space Station and stay there for a few months … I'm not a scientist, but I could probably make games in space. I want to be the first. There are a lot of astronauts over 60, so I guess it's possible.' There's no gravity in space to irritate his bad back, after all, he jokes. As we wrap up, he pauses for a moment, thinking, and adds one last ambition: he wants to be put in a situation, he says, where he risks his life something that would give him a feeling of really being alive. 'It's 'Tom Cruise disease',' Kojima elaborates. 'Tom Cruise finds out his worth when living with his life on the line.' Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is out on 26 June on PlayStation 5.
CBS News
18-06-2025
- CBS News
Former CEO of Chicago's Loretto Hospital accused of nearly $300 million via COVID testing scheme
A former executive at Chicago's Loretto Hospital is charged with stealing $290 million through a COVID testing scheme. Prosecutors said Anosh Ahmed, the former chief executive officer and chief financial officer of the West Side hospital, was among a group that submitted nearly $900 million of false claims for COVID testing — and collected payments totaling $290 million. In November 2024, Ahmed was also among three people indicted on charges of scheming to embezzle more than $15 million from Loretto Hospital. A federal grand jury has been investigating Loretto's COVID-19 vaccination program, after the hospital admitted to giving hundreds of COVID shots to people who were not yet eligible to get them. Ahmed resigned from Loretto in March 2021, after the hospital had arranged COVID-19 vaccinations for hundreds of well-connected people who were not yet eligible for the shots at a time when vaccinations were in short supply. Then-CEO George Miller was suspended for two weeks shortly after Ahmed resigned, after he admitted to arranging for vaccines for people who weren't eligible to get them, including workers at Trump Tower, and members of an Oak Forest church. Miller later left Loretto in April 2022. The Chicago Department of Public Health cut off Loretto's supply of COVID-9 vaccines in March 2021, after learning about the scandal. The city later restored vaccinations at the hospital about a month later, after stepping in to run a new clinic to make sure shots went to those who were eligible. contributed to this report.
Sydney Morning Herald
15-06-2025
- Business
- Sydney Morning Herald
These vacant railway yards at Redfern could be our next mega film studios
Market soundings for potential screen studio locations were concluded last month to identify suitable sites and viable options for screen infrastructure and production spaces. The government's $100 million investment will be subject to business case approval and probably focus on a second studio proposal for Redfern, Oran Park in south-west Sydney and potentially another slated for Silverwater. Celebrated Australian director George Miller said the key was finding the right location for the new studios – close to existing infrastructure such as transport, post-production facilities, a back lot and even places to eat. The commitment to a second film studio comes after US President Donald Trump last month announced a 100 per cent tariff on all movies produced outside the United States. NSW Arts Minister John Graham said on Sunday that such a move would be 'self-defeating'. 'If the US is going to go down this path, it would not only damage activity here in NSW, it'd damage it in Hollywood,' he said. 'But it's a matter for them. We're monitoring developments closely, [but] standing up for the industry here in NSW.' The budget commitment was welcomed by Business Sydney's executive director Paul Nicolaou, who said it was a timely response to a pressing need to bolster the state's infrastructure and maintain its competitive edge in the international film and screen industry. The proposed sites near Eveleigh rail yards in Redfern and another at Silverwater presented strategic opportunities for expansion. 'Eveleigh's rich industrial heritage offers a unique backdrop that could be revitalised to blend historical significance with modern cinematic infrastructure,' he said. 'Silverwater's strategic location and existing infrastructure make it an ideal candidate for such development. 'These locations could significantly enhance Sydney's capacity to host large-scale productions, attracting international projects and stimulating local economic growth.' Matt Levinson, culture policy lead at Committee for Sydney, said the lack of an adequate sound stage and base for film production had hobbled Sydney's potential. Loading 'We strongly support the government's move to invest in this area and the work they're doing to get the policy settings right,' Levinson said. 'On the face of it, North Eveleigh is the perfect location – close to transport links for workers and logistics, plenty of space and deeply embedded among the many hundreds of tech, media and creative production businesses around Central. 'Wherever it lands, what's needed is a space that can unlock the tremendous potential across our city's film, screen and gaming sectors and those local producers need to be leading the charge.
