Video game mastermind Hideo Kojima is no stranger to unusual celebrity cameos, and his next game, OD: Knock, appears to be no exception. Kojima is notorious for collecting celebrities like Pokémon, scanning them into the virtual world with advanced facial photography. He’s already worked with the likes of Norman Reedus, Léa Seydoux, Margaret Qualley, Guillermo del Toro, Elle Fanning, and George Miller in Death Stranding 2, and even scanned Timotheé Chalamet for mysterious purposes when the two linked up in 2023.
OD’s cast is no less stacked, with Hunter Schaefer, Sophia Lillis, and Udo Kier appearing in the first trailer, and a fresh batch of newly-scanned celebrities announced earlier this week. But OD may also include the weirdest and most unexpected Hideo Kojima cameo ever: a real-life ghost.
Kojima Wants To Scan An Actual Ghost Into OD
The Scariest Horror Game Ever
During the “Beyond the Strand” livestream to commemorate Kojima Productions’ tenth anniversary, Kojima discussed his approach to making OD as scary as possible. He expressed a desire to visit and scan supposedly haunted locations throughout the world, where, he said, “I want to scan a ghost for the first time and I want to get an award for that.” (Spotted by Games Radar.)
Kojima has consistently pushed the boundaries of game development throughout his career; frankly, if any studio were to successfully capture an actual ghost, I’d expect it to be Kojima Productions. However, this is an unprecedented development even from the Metal Gear creator — as far as I know, this would be the first time a video game has crossed the boundary between life and death.
Although Kojima’s yet to find a way to make his facial scanning technology work on the supernatural, he says he’s already taken some inspiration from a real-life haunting. Back in February, Kojima suggested his recording studio might be haunted, reporting mysterious clanging and/or cracking noises in a room that his team scanned for use in-game.
Those noises eventually followed him back to Kojima Productions’ recording studio, where Kojima took field recordings of them and used them for actual sound effects in OD’s trailers.
Concerned about his own safety (and the safety of his players), Kojima also revealed during “Beyond the Strand” that he visited a shrine with Microsoft employees to ensure that OD wasn’t cursed. The ghost, he says, has since been exorcised: “Maybe the ghost was there, but she’s no longer there anymore.”
A Real-Life Ghost Can Only Be Good For OD
Believe It Or Not
When it comes to ghosts, I’m a skeptic at best, and until Kojima shows us proof, I’m unlikely to believe they exist. If you do believe in ghosts, though, then OD’s inclusion of an actual spirit could quite possibly make it the scariest game ever made. But even if you don’t, you have to admit that Kojima getting haunted could be the best thing for OD.
The best writing always borrows from its author’s experiences in some way, shape, or form. Even if the story’s about members of an alien species on an uncanny world a million miles away, if it incorporates even a modicum of genuine human emotion as felt by the writer, it automatically reads as more authentic, closer to the heart. It’s bound to resonate with anyone who’s gone through the same, and it’s something you can’t imitate, no matter how much research you do.
If the horror in OD is based on Kojima’s actual fear of a ghost in his studio, then it’ll have that same authentic, human quality. It could be the resurrection of the long-dead Silent Hills, the canceled Kojima-headed entry in a series that’s always been praised for blending real emotion with grotesquely sublime horror.