After being teased for streaming services at the 2023 Game Awards show, the hour-long documentary on Hideo Kojima was released on Disney+ and Hulu on Friday, Feb. 23. The documentary looks behind-the-scenes for the first project Kojima Productions released since their establishment, interviewing the founder, Kojima, and others involved in the making of Death Stranding.
“Hideo Kojima: Connecting Worlds” was directed by Glen Milner, who has also worked on other previous behind-the-scenes documentaries. Milner himself said that he wanted to do this documentary to, “… capture Kojima-san’s thought process and philosophy behind the game…” To understand his passion through multiple perspectives, the documentary also includes interviews with many musicians, actors, directors and game designers to give their stories on what it was like working on this project and how they personally view Kojima.
Observing the studio’s growth from its start to now, the documentary does a good job chronologically showing their progress on Death Stranding and the moments that made it what it is. However, an unfortunate side to this is that Kojima didn’t get to talk about his past with Konami Studios where he had been originally working since 1986. Due to his nondisclosure agreement, he also did not speak about the many exceptional games he released while working with them, such as Metal Gear. Even though the documentary doesn’t go into Kojima’s past as a game designer, it does talk about the many important moments in his childhood that led him to be who he is now, all done through an anime medium where his early life is recreated. From the impact of the death of his restrictive father to venturing around the Japan World Exposition in 1970, he got the chance to harbor many different cultures in his mind. This helped him with work in the game industry, which most of the people who knew him had no faith in.
The studio’s first project, Death Stranding, takes on a unique approach to video game design in the current era of gaming, where most people expect person-to-person competition or a sort of leaderboard race. However, Kojima wanted to go against this, because he believed in creating a world where the many players work together by expanding and building upon the world the developers gave them.
The documentary also goes over how Kojima was influenced by his parents growing up in Japan during World War II and reading many books about war. He felt unhappy showing those who commit violent acts as a hero, giving them a sense of valiance. Instead, he wanted the players to be motivated by doing the given tasks by delivering packages to those in need and helping this fictional community of a post-apocalyptic America improve. Many people even now joke about Death Stranding as being an “Amazon Simulator” due to the simple package delivery aspect of the gameplay. However, the game is much more than that due to its convoluted story and impressive world-building. Death Stranding may not be for everyone, but I do think it has parts that everyone would enjoy due to the many gaming genres it reaches out to, showing that Kojima did reach his goal.
Helping Kojima’s mission, Death Stranding coincidentally released four months before lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In a game where people can feel the presence of one another without seeing them, those who played felt comforted and less isolated than they might have felt otherwise.
To finish off, the cinematography and editing of the documentary were well done, which was a step up from the average documentary. The animated shots weren’t over the top but did add an enjoyable flair. There was also a use of older footage of Japan which was well utilized. It was interesting to learn about the process a director and game studio might experience when working on a game of this magnitude.
Rating: 4/5