Kojima discusses Metal Gear Solid camera and "psychic photos"

News by Cian Maher Contributor

Published on March 4, 2020

Death Stranding and Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima recently opened up about something to do with the Metal Gear Solid camera he calls "psychic photos."

After the recent announcement that the Death Stranding PC edition will come with a photo mode, Kojima took to Twitter in order to discuss the use of cameras in his previous games. You can check out the first tweet below.

I came up the idea called “camera” in MGS1(1998). I thought it’d be effective having the items like “sniper rifle”, “remote control missile” and “camera” if we could switch the camera POV ⇄3rd person view if the game world can exists all in 3D.
— HIDEO_KOJIMA (@HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN) March 4, 2020

"I came up [with] the idea called 'camera' in MGS1," the tweet begins, although I'm almost certain cameras were around for quite some time before 1998. However, it's interesting to consider where his train of thought here ends up. At first, it seems as if he's discussing an ordinary third-person camera in a video game. But then...

Photo can be taken by POV, color change is possible, save it after compressing into JPEG. I also added psychic photo. lol
— HIDEO_KOJIMA (@HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN) March 4, 2020

"Photo can be taken by POV, color change is possible, save it after compressing into JPEG," he continues. All pretty standard, most of us know how to save a good old JPEG. But that next bit: "I also added psychic photo. lol." What?

Fortunately, he elaborated, or at least attempted to (obviously, because how on earth would we know what a "psychic photo" was if he didn't):

If you take photo with camera in MGS1(1998), depending on the area you take, non-existence thing comes up. In fact I t was the faces of my staff back then. This psychic photo will disappear from the file by exorcising. Some media took it seriously & became hot topic unexpectedly.
— HIDEO_KOJIMA (@HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN) March 4, 2020

I'm not quite sure what a non-existence thing is either - perhaps a real-life BT, I mused, but nope. It seems that it was possible to take photos in Metal Gear Solid 1 in such a way that the faces of staff members who worked on the game would crop up - thus "psychic photos," which could apparently be exorcised, like some sort of demon. Nice one.

Anyway, from these tweets we can see that Kojima's been interested in the idea of in-game photos since the Metal Gear Solid camera from 1998. As a result, it will be intriguing, at the very least, to see how the photo mode in Death Stranding pans out - especially given that we noted its incredible prettiness in our Death Stranding review.

If you think psychic photos are weird, get a load of our Death Stranding plot summary. And if you want to see these psychic photos for yourself, check out our list of the best Metal Gear Solid games.