Copyright Wccftech
Hideo Kojima attended Lucca Comics 2025 this past weekend and was featured in a special panel with two actors from Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, Luca Marinelli (who played Neil Vana) and Alissa Jung (who played Lucy). A lot of the panel focused on the experience of working on the game, including having to shoot remotely during the pandemic. However, Kojima also shared that he makes games partly with the hope of giving people the energy to live on and be happy. I grew up watching movies or reading books. When you're a child, you feel so dark about the world sometimes, but for me, there weren't really good role models around me, so what helped me was movies. The characters, or the dialogues, or the theme of the movie really cheered me up. I thought that gave me energy to live on. So I want to return that and that's one of the reasons I create games. If someone plays my game and, after a few years, feels like, I want to live on because I played this game and it cheered me up. That would be the happiest thing that I would feel because I've put that thought when creating the game. There's so many things in entertainment, but games are so immersive, and you play like hundreds of hours on games. So if I ask the person to spend hundreds of hours of their life and they are relieved of stress or whatever, that's fine too, but I also want to give them something through my game. Like, through Luca and Alyssa's relationship and the characters of the game, you feel something. You could use that in your real life and become happy. That's my goal. And of course, I haven't reached that point, but that's how I think when I create my games. The sentiment isn't shocking for those who have come to know Kojima and his unique mentality throughout the years, and without a doubt, at least some of his games have definitely touched a few players. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach launched on June 26 for PlayStation 5 to widespread critical acclaim. Given that rights of the franchise have returned to Kojima Productions, we can expect to see the game on PC and probably even on Xbox Series S and X at some point in 2026, just like the previous installment.
