Did Hideo Kojima Actually Have the Idea for Death Stranding More Than Seven Years Ago?

Much has been made of how quickly Death Stranding has come together. Announced at E3 2016, it wasn't until December of that same year that the game was even running on a PlayStation 4 engine - Horizon: Zero Dawn's Decima engine. Clearly, a lot of work has gone into the project over the past three years, but it looks like director Hideo Kojima might have had the idea for the title stuck in the back of his brain for more than seven

[PhoenixUp]

I’d assume that Kojima had ideas for a separate series while he was working on Metal Gear for so long

[rainslacker]

He's probably had a lot of ideas over the years.

[isarai]

He's been wanting to do something other than MGS for a LOOOOOOONG time now, im sure he's been making design docs on those ideas while he was making MGS.

[phoenixwing]

of course he did. You don't put together a game so quickly on the scale kojima has without having had the idea beforehand. He probably even pitched the idea to konami who abruptbly told him to make more metal gear.

[Kubark]

What a surprise, someone has an idea for something long before implementing it. I'm not even clicking on this desperate for clicks story.

[Good-Smurf]

I think just before he release MGS2 he said in an interview that he wanted it to be the last game in the series.
So he was ready to move on to big new IP since 2001 he did some smaller stuff like Zone of Enders and Boktai only as a producer but that was it.

[Chocoburger]

This is true, Kojima was originally the type of developer that made one game then moved on and only return after a long break, if ever. Metal Gear wasn't supposed to have gone on as long as it did, at least, not with him being lead writer and director. He wanted other team members to take the lead, but problems came with that.

Other team members were working on a prequel story staring The Boss during World Word II, but it never came together quite right, so they shifted to another idea with Raiden rescuing Sunny from the Patriots, then being turned into the Cyborg Samurai, this was the original Metal Gear Solid: Rising game, but it didn't come together quite right as well.

Kojima was basically stuck leading the series even when he didn't want to. I'm not sure why people are down voting you when you're right.

[zodiac909]

Would it really be surprising to know that he had multiple ideas for many different things "more than 7 years ago?"

[shabz666]

Anyone listened to the last giant bomb East’s podcast, the Beastcast , Dan Ryckert didn’t say it but he was praising red dead 2 (which he hated) when mentioning death stranding. Something tells me this won’t review well.

[AK91]

Probably.