The year is 1984 and you are Big Boss, the leader of a private military contractor, primarily working in Afghanistan and Zaire, taking on freelance assignments to, for example, rescue prisoners of war from the Russians, or blow up strategic military assets. This is sumptuous, deluxe, groundbreaking game making, and proof positive that Hideo Kojima is a master of the medium. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain puts an end to all that talk. These expansive games of khaki-coloured hide-and-seek are routinely interrupted by an overabundance of exposition-laden cutscenes, something that has led some to suggest that their creator is just a frustrated film director. This childhood ritual seeded in Kojima a deep love of cinema, which can be seen running throughout the Metal Gear series of military-themed video games that he’s directed over the last three decades. Those kids had to finish their cauliflower.

His experience was, he has said, the “opposite” of how it is for most children. Kojima wasn’t allowed to go to bed till the film had finished, even if it contained sex scenes.

Each evening, the family would sit down to watch a movie together. W hen Hideo Kojima was a young boy, his parents introduced a daily ritual.

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