37 Years After Metal Gear, Kojima Is Making a New Action Espionage Game With PlayStation
The project will “blur the lines” between games and film.
PlayStation’s first State of Play showed off a massive new trailer for Death Stranding 2, but surprisingly that wasn’t the biggest Hideo Kojima news of the day. The legendary creator is teaming up with PlayStation yet again to return to his roots by making a brand new action espionage title, a genre invented by Metal Gear.
The project, titled Physint, was announced by Herman Hulst, head of PlayStation Studios, along with a brief message from Kojima himself.
“I cannot tell you much right now, but we plan to bring together cutting-edge technology and talent from around the world to create it,” Kojima says, “Of course, it is an interactive game, but it is also a movie at the same time in terms of look, story, theme, cast, acting, fashion, and sound.”
Kojima has long talked about wanting to blur the lines between games and film. That was the key point of the December announcement of the Death Stranding film being made with A24, as well as the Kojima Production’s other upcoming game, the Xbox exclusive OD. On the studio’s website, a press release for OD reads: “OD explores the concept of testing your fear threshold, and what it means to OD on fear — while blurring the boundaries of gaming and film.”
Of course, it’s not exactly clear what “blurring the boundaries” even means, but interestingly the announcement during State of Play ended with a shot of the camera zooming out on Columbia Picture’s massive studio in California.
Kojima has long talked about his love of film, and even makes weekly posts on X about the films he’s currently watching. A documentary released last year dives into that love, so seeing the creator dive deeper into trying to create “film” projects isn’t entirely surprising.
As for this new action espionage game, it’ll likely be quite a few years before we see it. During the announcement Kojima clarified that the project is still in the early stages, and won’t even start production until Death Stranding 2 has been wrapped up.
Death Stranding 2 is scheduled to release in 2025, but doesn’t have a more specific date. With that in mind, don’t expect to see this project until roughly 2027, at the earliest. He certainly seems confident about it, though, stating, "Two years from now, I will celebrate the 40th year anniversary of being a game developer. I'm sure this game will be the culmination of my career.”
It’s an interesting choice on PlayStation’s part to announced this kind of project years before we’ll likely learn more details. Then again, the company’s first-party release schedule for 2024 is looking a bit light, so it’s easy to assume PlayStation wants to drum up some excitement.
