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Hideo Kojima has commentated on his reputation as a developer that’s responsible for games that “go against the current of the times”, while also doing the equivalent of pointing to the weird game Wrestlemania sign by stating that OD will be about as out-there as Boktai: The Sun Is In Your Hand. That, if you don’t know, is a Gameboy game he made in which you use real-world sunlight to fight off vampires.
You read that right. Boktai used a light censor on the game cartridge to charge up an in-game weapon called the Gun Del Sol. Using this, you could take the battle to the monstrous undead. If you ran out of solar power, you’d have to avoid action until you were able to head out and touch grass in the sunlight again – over 15 years before Pokemon Go was leading kids in front of traffic. Truly, Kojima is ahead of his time.
According to Kojima’s tweet, Boktai didn’t exactly go down great internally. “For me, the most experimental game was ‘defeating vampires outside your house’ using actual sunlight around you. It was met with fierce opposition from the staff and even within the company. In that sense, ‘OD’ is just as different.” Boktai would go on to earn good reviews for the most part – it even got several sequels.
On the bright side, Kojima now is at the head of his own studio, where he can pursuit all manner of weird and wonderful ideas without people telling him he’s going too hard, that he smokes too tough, or that his swag is too different. In the past, this has resulted in some truly unique gameplay and narrative moments. But one wonders – is an unchained Kojima tempting fate?
Joking aside, this all adds on to an already speedy hype train for OD, which is looking stranger and stranger by the month. At The Game Awards we got not only a bizzare teaser (that seemingly references the long-dead PT), but Kojima and director Jordan Peele massaged each other’s creative intellects on stage in front of untold thousands in what can only be described as an avantgarde display of video game auteur exhibitionism. Goeff Keighley standing mere yards away, the video game industry’s first ever Kojima praise cuckold.
For a fun aside, the tweet in which he commented on OD’s particular level of counter-culture appeal is of course swamped by folks with no idea that the vampire game he’s talking about is something he already made years ago. Fake fans, I tell you.
All in all it’s looking very interesting. OD is one of those curveball future games that is just hovering on the horizon. A lot like Death Stranding was – this cool concept that we couldn’t wait to try out ourselves. All we need now is some OD gameplay footage without the reflection of a half naked guy staring back at us. If you know, you know.