Hideo Kojima embraces self-parody with Death Stranding mode for those who just want to watch a movie

The Metal Gear Solid series was fairly infamous for its many extremely long cutscenes that—at least in the case of Metal Gear Solid 4—sometimes involved players taking their hands off of the controller for hours at a time. To be fair, series creator Hideo Kojima was trying to wrap up the most unexpectedly profound and prophetic saga in video game history, and there were a lot of clones, a cyborg ninja, a vampire, a cowboy terrorist with a haunted arm, and some nuclear-equipped walking tanks that had to be addressed before rolling the credits. Still, to put it in extremely reductive terms that are a disservice to how fucking great Metal Gear was, the series did, on occasion, resemble more of a very long movie than an actual interactive video game.

Now, with Kojima’s next game—Death Stranding—coming in just a couple months, it seems like he has embraced the idea that some people just want to see his games rather than play them. As reported by Game Informer, Kojima recently tweeted that he’s introducing a “Very Easy Mode” for “movie fans” who just want to see what happens in Death Stranding but might not have video game experience, partially because the game features a bunch of famous actors like Norman Reedus, Mads Mikkelsen, and Léa Seydoux (not to mention cameos from filmmakers Guillermo del Toro and Nicholas Winding Refn).

This isn’t a totally new concept to video games, as a lot of titles in the last few years have billed their “Easy Mode” as just being for people who want to experience the story, but this is the first time a Hideo Kojima game has taken on that approach. We don’t know just how easy Death Stranding’s “Very Easy Mode” will be, but Kojima says that even “Yano-san,” who can’t beat the first board in Pac-Man, was able to finish Death Stranding with it. (Polygon assumes Yano-san is writer Kenji Yano, who is presumably now undergoing treatment for a severe burn.)

Also, before anyone in the comments beats us to it: The Onion did it first! Our friends on the other side of the office posted a story last year about Hideo Kojima developing a new video game that is just one “two-hour-long cutscene.” It’s pretty funny. Go click on it instead of just reading about it.