Kojima: Your Mother Won't Be Able to Tell the Difference Between PHYSINT and a Movie 1

PHYSINT, the new Metal Gear Solid-style action espionage from Hideo Kojima, is being branded as a game and a movie all at the same time. At this point, it’s unclear whether the auteur is making two connected pieces of media or one product which merges the two mediums, but we know both Sony Interactive Entertainment and Columbia Pictures are involved.

And in an interview on HideoTube, the veteran developer has divulged a few more details about the product. “It will be both a game and a movie at the same time,” he confusingly declared. “That’s why we were at Sony Pictures. Of course, it will be a game. However, if your mother walks in and sees you playing this game, she’ll think you’re watching a movie. I’m not sure how far we can take it yet.”

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Kojima continued that, while he originally established his own studio to explore new ideas like Death Stranding, he paid attention to all the feedback from fans – and when he got ill during the pandemic, it changed his perspective on returning to the spy thriller genre he helped define.

“I was at my lowest and felt like I couldn’t go back to making games,” he said of the period he was unwell. “I wrote a will, too. And in that moment, I realised that people die. But I turned 60 last year. I’ll turn 70 in ten years. I hope to never retire. Having said that, if the users desire it so much, I thought I should change my priorities a bit. I still want to do new things, but I decided to make an action espionage game.”

The industry veteran added that he’s received a lot of requests to make movies, but it’s his friend and director Guillermo del Toro who put him on the right path. “I get many requests from Hollywood to make films, but I’ve refused them,” he explained. “Because I have my own company now, I can’t leave for one or two years to go make a movie. The company would collapse. I was in a tough spot. And I talked to del Toro about it. And he said, ‘Hideo, what you’re making is already a movie. Keep going as you are.’ His words saved me. And since we’ll be working with many creators in the business, though the output is a game, it won’t be too different from movies.”

[source youtube.com, via gematsu.com]