Coming close to death and Metal Gear Solid fans bugging him on Twitter: Kojima shares why he’s making Physint

Following the announcement that Hideo Kojima is returning to the world of action espionage with Physint, the game developer has shared why he decided to do so.

During Sony’s most recent State of Play, after we had a lengthy look at Death Stranding 2, Kojima revealed that on top of both that and OD, he has another game in the works currently titled Physint, an action espionage game that essentially sounds like it’ll be a new take on Metal Gear Solid. Barely anything is known about the game right now, but Kojima recently launched his new YouTube series, HideoTube, where he took the time to explain what led him to return to the genre that put him on the map. Unsurprisingly, persistent Metal Gear Solid fans is one of the big things that convinced him to.

“In the last eight years, every day on social media, from users all around the world, people have been asking me to create another Metal Gear and stuff like that,” Kojima said. “Then, I fell ill in 2020. It was also during the pandemic, so I was sick and isolated during all of it. I even had surgery. And I thought, ‘I can’t anymore.’ I was at my lowest and felt like I couldn’t go back to making games. 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.”

Kojima also spoke of the fact that he apparently gets a lot of requests from Hollywood to make movies, though he’s turned them down “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.” He also spoke with Hellboy director Guillermo del Toro about it, who apparently told him, “‘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.”

We currently know next to nothing about Physint, and it’ll likely be quite a while until we do, given Kojima Productions has two other games to get out first, so for now you’ll just have to speculate.