I remember playing Metal Gear Solid on the original PlayStation. I thought I was discovering a stealth game; instead, I encountered a way of storytelling I had never experienced with a controller in my hands. The silences, framing, codec conversations, music and sense that every character carried a hidden history made me feel as though I were taking part in a film. Much later, Death Stranding and Death Stranding 2 awakened the same fascination. Yet Kojima had hardly stood still between those two memories. He had crossed several console generations, pushed interactive storytelling in new directions, explored horror and rebuilt his own studio. Looking back at that journey also means discovering the artists who gave his visions their shapes, faces and atmosphere.
From Shadow Moses to the Jungle: Storytelling Takes Risks
In 1998, Metal Gear Solid already possessed an astonishing cinematic identity. Yet Kojima's boldness was not simply a matter of extended cutscenes: it lay in his ability to use the rules of a game to tell a story. The tension of infiltration, a radio call at the wrong moment, an unexpected encounter with an enemy: players did not merely watch a narrative, they experienced its mechanisms. With Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty in 2001, Kojima pushed that uncertainty further. Replacing Solid Snake with Raiden challenged expectations. Questions about control, disinformation and the selection of truth now feel especially relevant in an age of social networks and algorithms. The game sometimes bewildered its audience; that is precisely what makes it so compelling today.
Then came Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater in 2004. The setting changed completely: jungle survival, the Cold War and a story set before the earlier games. But the change of scenery allowed Kojima to reach something more intimate. Beneath the missions, conspiracies and confrontations lies the relationship between Naked Snake and The Boss, a story of loyalty and inheritance whose conclusion leaves a genuine emotional mark. Environments are no longer merely tactical corridors: vegetation, mud, light and camouflage become part of the storytelling. I can already see an idea that would fully emerge in Death Stranding: crossing a landscape can itself become a dramatic experience.
A Growing Saga, and a Break with the Past
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots in 2008 feels like an enormous conclusion, with an aging Solid Snake, a world saturated with military technology and long cinematic sequences that fully embrace Kojima's love of directing. Peace Walker in 2010 continues Big Boss's story, connecting its narrative to building an army and missions designed for portable play. Finally, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, released in 2015, opens the gameplay space dramatically. Players can improvise, observe, work around obstacles and invent their own solutions. It is a fascinating shift: Kojima tells stories not only through scenes he directs but through situations he allows to unfold. This period also marks his separation from Konami. Meanwhile, Kojima had explored an entirely different kind of direction with P.T. (Playable Teaser), released on PS4 in 2014. Behind this mysterious demo was Silent Hills, a planned revival of the horror series developed with filmmaker Guillermo del Toro and announced with Norman Reedus. P.T. needed neither vast landscapes nor battles: just a domestic corridor walked over and over, sounds whose sources remain unclear, shifting light and the fear of an unseen presence. Each loop unsettles our sense of place. What strikes me is the precision of its pacing: Kojima makes the player both the audience and the performer of their own fear. Silent Hills was cancelled in 2015, as his relationship with Konami came to an end. He never released a complete Silent Hill game, yet this fragment remains a remarkable demonstration of suspense. After establishing his independent studio, he would reunite with Norman Reedus and Guillermo del Toro for Death Stranding, in different roles. One door had closed, but some of the creative ideas kept moving.
Yoji Shinkawa and the Artists Who Shape a Vision
It is impossible to follow this journey without pausing over Yoji Shinkawa. His restless brushwork, elongated silhouettes, deep blacks and almost organic mechanical designs helped make Metal Gear instantly recognizable. Solid Snake, Raiden, armor and machines: before they became 3D models, these presences emerged through drawing. In interviews about Metal Gear Solid 2, Shinkawa explained how the transition from PS1 to PS2 changed his work: characters needed subtler emotional expression, and his illustrations had to guide increasingly detailed models. I love imagining that passage from paper to screen, the delicate translation of an artist's gesture into a character who seems alive.
This collaboration does not diminish the work of the wider teams; quite the opposite. Art direction speaks to level design, animation, environmental art, sound engineering and composition. Harry Gregson-Williams's music accompanied Metal Gear's cinematic evolution; editing, voices, camera movement and even the sound of a machine contribute to the sensation of film. Kojima proposes situations and recurring concerns; artists interpret and sometimes transform them. Shinkawa has explained that his images often begin with Kojima's texts and ideas, but visual concepts can also help shape the world in return. That conversation between writing and drawing is, to me, one of the secrets of their strength.
Death Stranding: Finding New Ways to Connect
After the establishment of a new Kojima Productions, Death Stranding arrived in 2019 with a proposition almost against the grain: walk, carry, balance, cross immense landscapes, then discover traces left by other players. Solitude becomes a gameplay material, and connection becomes a concrete gesture. The cast, captured performances, environmental photography, creatures designed with Shinkawa and songs emerging as we enter a valley combine into a work we watch as much as we inhabit. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, released in 2025, extends that universe while more directly questioning the value of the connections we build. It retains the mixture of spectacle, strangeness and melancholy that moves me in Kojima's work. When I think back to Metal Gear Solid on my PS1, I better understand what joins these eras: a stubborn desire to make us feel a story through cinema, drawing and music, but also through something unique to video games — the chance to act inside the artwork itself.
