The common refrain is that Hideo Kojima needs an editor. The famed designer, creator of the action-adventure stealth series Metal Gear, is renowned for his keen instincts as a game developer, and his tone-deaf approach to story. His games play like Michael Bay directing a Charlie Kaufman script: one is never sure what’s a knowing wink to the camera and what’s unironic bombast (Exhibit A: his next game will be called Revengeance, a title that would feel at home in a Blockbuster “3 DVDs for $5” bin)  

With the re-release of his seminal Metal Gear Solid 2, perhaps you might want to give a look at the original design document for the game. The document itself is a mission statement to guide the project, even naming features which never made it into the full project like guards with a sense of smell.

While a lot of it is marketing talk — there’s an entire uncomfortable section labled “Aquiring female players (only a sub-target)” — there’s a wonderfully weird section about the themes the game is trying to embody. These include “the digitalization of everyday life”, “can one tell the truth even while inside a virtual reality?” (which somehow relates to the blurring of fact and fiction, and the movie L.A. Confidential), and, my personal favourite, “ironies aimed at the digital society and gaming culture.”

You can read the rest here.

– Filipe Salgado