Opinion | That's why a Kojima horror is what we need

The current horror legacy of Hideo Kojima is represented only by the teaser trailer of a game, alas, never released, the legendary Silent Hills, which it is better not to talk about so as not to reopen a wound. This "legacy" (Kojima will make the appropriate Japanese conjurations) is of fundamental importance because it has succeeded where others have failed or have not even tried: to create a path trodden by countless proselytes, who have generated apocryphal games of very fluctuating quality, but that make us understand how Kojima's work, in a genre that has never seen him fully protagonist, has been perceived by the "system" as essential to carry out a creative discourse.

Not only that, PT was also a source of inspiration for a giant of horror video games, having given birth to the series that today is synonymous with it, Capcom. In Resident Evil: Village, in fact, the Beneviento home section is clearly a tribute, an answer, a takeover, consider it as you prefer.

It is not a question of being "Kojima's children", one does not intend to make children spoiled or to want to attribute greater merit than they actually are, the facts are there for all to see. The videogame medium has evolved over time also thanks to him who knew it innovate and enhance, making video games proudly stand shoulder to shoulder with other arts, such as cinematography.

One may disagree, but it remains a fact that Metal Gear Solid has radically changed the history of video games for its completely different, and in some cases subversive, way of telling a story and putting the player at the center of the game. experience without leaving him alone, making him feel sensations on the skin that seemed not typical of a video game. Perhaps it would not be enough to remember the boss fights against Sniper wolf e Psycho Mantis of the first, it legendary clash between Big Boss and The Boss of Snake Eater, the appearance of Jack as the main protagonist of Sons of Liberty in spite of all the trailers shown before the release of the title, the meeting between Solid and Big Boss at the graveyard in Guns of the Patriots, to have even just one tenth of the general picture.

With Death Stranding, on the other hand, Hideo has literally displaced anyone by proposing a game defined by many as experimental, an experience "not for everyone" because it is in his style to do this, to reverse the situation, upset the rules to create new ones. In both cases, we are not dealing with horror games, but then where does this irrepressible desire to see him at work on a genre that is "new" for him come from? Now we get there, but to explain this collective desire even better we need to take as a reference model a game that has made a lot of talk about itself in recent months, a title that does not exist: Abandoned.

How is it possible? Well, now let's forget that it is mass hysteria, let's forget that a director to the most unknown at the head of an elusive indie development studio has marched on this popular neurosis, let's forget that Abandoned is a base full of ideas for themed memes video games, there must be a deeper reason for this madness. We can't think that one day hundreds, thousands, maybe millions, of players woke up with a wheel out of place ready to believe the imponderable. If people have believed and still believe in Abandoned as Kojima's horror game (Silent Hill or not), if they are ready to spend the evenings in front of a live that does not work, it means that there is a very strong hope in them, that of being able to play. one day to a horror of Kojima.

To go even deeper into the argument, it is necessary to briefly outline the current situation of the horror genre. Let's premise: horror is having a good time, it won't be in its golden age, but it's alive and well. The aforementioned Capcom has awakened from the torpor, Shinji Mikami is back to producing, titles like Alien Isolation, The Evil Within e Outlast have become almost classics, the indies offer experiences of very good workmanship and in quite generous quantities, in the future we will face the threats of Scorn, we will return to the Ishimura in the Dead Space remake and we already have our mouth watering for The Callisto Protocol.

That said, it must be recognized that horror games are in a stalemate that leads them to propose mechanics more or less similar to each other, we haven't seen real innovations capable of rejuvenate formulas, even happy, who have already said almost everything. This redundancy risks flattening the experience and, more importantly, can result in one sort of anesthesia in players who, shrewd and accustomed to certain dynamics, gradually lose sensitivity. Put simply, the modern player can no longer be afraid, in the true sense of the word, not the jolt caused by a jumpscare, but that feeling of perennial anxiety and discomfort in seeing certain scenes and hearing certain sounds.

Here, in our opinion, Hideo Kojima could come into play. Apart from PT, is the author completely unrelated to the videogame horror scene? The answer is no, Kojima has a horror potential that has also been expressed in the past. Here we come to the gist of the matter, because one must be recognized to the game designer natural and innate predisposition to the horror genre that the most attentive eye has surely recognized in his previous works. In the first Metal Gear Solid, there is a scene that disturbed us as a child, this is called the "corridor scene", in reality it is more commonly remembered for meeting one of the most iconic characters of the game and of the saga, Gray Fox.

This sequence has two elements attributable to the horror genre, the splatter and the paranormal. The soldiers are thrown from the ground and smashed into the walls by an unknown and immaterial force, all accompanied by music that raises the tension.

Of the same tenor is a scene present in MGS 2: Sons of Liberty (in the video below it begins at minute 3:15), in which we faced a thrilling spectacle with slaughtered soldiers and blood to paint the walls of the structure. This is the first meeting with Vamp, a mysterious figure who in a horror would have played the part of him very well.

A nice dose of tension was offered to us by Kojima also in MGS V: The Phantom Pain, more precisely in the mission of the epidemic erupted on Mother Base. The parasite Kikongo takes possession of the inhabitants of the Diamond Dogs headquarters leaving a trail of blood and death. The whole sequence looks like something out of a Resident Evil, a Romero movie or one of the more recent infected-themed works like 28 days after e Train to Busan.

The flashlight placed on Venom Snake's rifle cuts through the darkness, there are bodies piled up, others are still alive, but we can not help but fire a shot in the head to not give the parasite the green light, the few survivors groan, pant, one stealth / action all of a sudden turned into horror. A single mission of about twenty minutes takes to slap entire productions for writing and aesthetics.

In Death Stranding, however, the threat is brought by the CA, the stranded creatures ready to drag us at the slightest sound emitted. The first real face to face, following the one in the cave where Sam meets Fragile, takes place in a thrilling scenario, the same scenario that previously seemed only desolate, impervious, but not scary. Kojima, with few details, makes that scene so anxious to do hold the player's breath too.

In short, what do we want to prove? Kojima has a talent perhaps himself obscure in creating scary situations in games of a completely different nature, he inserts them naturally, these are never out of context. Now, take this natural talent of him and add it to his incredible ability to overturn the rules of the game, to innovate by throwing the player away. The result could be a horror never seen before.

It is not just a conjecture because Kojima, a couple of months ago, declared that he aspired to create a video game capable of change in real time based on the person who benefits from it.

What I would like to do are games that change in real time. Even though there are people of all ages and occupations from all over the world playing video games, they all have the same experience. Instead of that, I would like something that changes based on where a person lives or what they think - (Kotaku)

These words are coupled with the revelations made by Alanah pearce, former editor of IGN, now in force at Santa Monica Studios, about two years ago, thanks to which we had information on how Kojima would have wanted to carry out the Silent Hills project (in this article, you can read everything in detail plus some speculation ). Kojima's intention, all to be put into practice, was to create one connection between game and user very strong, almost intimate.

The game would ask us for some sort of log-in to get hold of some our personal data like e-mail address and cellphone number to interact with us by sending us messages with these contact methods. It seems that these messages could have come even with the game not active, so that we could live in the world of Silent Hills at any time of the day.

Kojimate, that is, ideas out of the ordinary. It is precisely these that make us confidently affirm that a Kojima horror game is what we need, because the new and the unexpected serve to surprise the player who otherwise gets used to the usual. It is necessary for horror to bring about a revolution, the only way is to rely on new concepts, even unpopular ones.

We do not want to say that the only one capable of carrying out this revolution is Kojima, on the contrary, this "appeal" can also be addressed to Mikami himself, to Keiichiro Toyama (original creator of Silent Hill) who will return to scare us with a new project recently revealed, but about which very little is still known; however, it is to Kojima that he is now constantly referring to because if a teaser trailer, a mission and some sequences are enough to consider him an exponent of the horror genre, it means that either we are all crazy or the best of Hideo in the role of "director of the" horror ”we haven't seen it yet. And we sincerely would like to see it.

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