Hideo Kojima’s current world tour involves plenty of Death Stranding trailers and gameplay demos, but prior to that, the man behind Metal Gear was visiting film and game studios around the world. While Kojima’s stop at Valve provided the best photo op, his visit with Remedy provided the most exciting results, since he’s now immortalised within the Federal Bureau of Control.
“Obviously, we love the man and his work,” Remedy communications director Thomas Puha tells us. Kojima “always really liked Remedy and what Sam [Lake, Remedy creative director] and the team does. He came to visit us back in January this year. We spent the day in a really honest, open conversation” about the game industry.
So how does that translate into Kojima becoming part of Control? Puha says “Sam was like, ‘we have the man here, let’s ask him.’” The Dr. Yoshimi Tokui quest had already been written, so “we had this one mission that was going to have a Japanese character.” Kojima stepped into the recording booth along with Kojima Productions head of marketing Aki Saito for translation, and that’s how an easter egg is hatched.
Puha says “most devs are cool with each other,” and that the best part of bringing this all together is how it wasn’t actually a big deal at all. They asked, Kojima said yes, and now we can make ‘biggest crossover in history’ jokes.
Maybe Kojima’s picked up the same spirit himself, since it seems this is basically how Geoff Keighley ended up in Death Stranding. Maybe the Social Strand System has been an Altered World Event all along?