On Aug. 19, Hideo Kojima dropped a weird bombshell on gamers expecting substantive news about Death Stranding during Gamescomās Opening Night Live. The gameplay infamously teased mechanics allowing you to relieve yourself at virtually any time. You can aim your stream of urine in an arc and shift it from left to right. Your barrage is measured in milliliters, and when you fully empty your bladder, Norman Reedus announces that thereās “nothing left in the tank.”
After the showcase, Kojima further elaborated the following:
- You wonāt explicitly see Normanās junk mid-flow.
- You canāt urinate near people.
- The pee is not only a weapon but a ākey.ā
- If multiple players shower the same spot, a mushroom will grow in its place and you will get āsomething good later on.ā
At a time when Death Strandingās core gameplay loop was ill-defined, Kojima painstakingly outlined the mechanics of urination, leaving us to wonder why it mattered and if perhaps he had finally jumped the shark. Such is the contradiction of Kojima as an auteur. He vacillates from sincere to pretentious, self-aware to tone-deaf. It can be difficult to engage with his more mature themes when you have to sift through seemingly juvenile quirks that appear to serve no key function in the gameplay or storytelling.
Kojima previously showed an obsession with bowel movements in the Metal Gear Solid series. Normanās urination is just the natural evolution of Kojimaās obsession with detail and use of mundane biological functions to uniquely sell the believability of a gameās world.
Kojimaās depictions of bowel movements began as a way to provide comic relief in the frequently self-serious Metal Gear Solid, alleviating tension during dramatic moments. This facet of humor is primarily illustrated through the incompetent and incontinent Johnny Sasaki, a guard whose sole gimmick is his debilitating IBS. Heās first introduced when the soldier Meryl knocks him unconscious and steals his uniform, leaving him sprawled out on the ground half naked with his ass sticking out in the air. From then on, Johnny exists only to be foiled by the player or his own digestive tract.
When the player is captured and thrown into a prison cell, they might initially be distressed. They have no way out and are periodically removed from confinement to be tortured. Things look grim. However, the player character has the opportunity to escape when Johnny, now their prison guard, has to run for the bathroom to avoid soiling himself. From there, you can stage your death by smearing yourself in ketchup or fake your escape by hiding under your bed. When Johnny returns, heāll run into your cell alarmed, only for you to knock him out again.
Johnnyās incompetence provides levity and empowers the player to feel confident about their abilities. Both Solid Snake and the genome soldiers he fights are the product of genetic experimentation. While the player is depicted as noble and stoic, their rank and file enemies are depicted without dignity. The trope of weak and hapless characters relieving themselves is used again with the anime-obsessed engineer Otacon, who pisses himself when confronted by a cyborg ninja. It all serves to highlight Snakeās bravery in the face of the absurd and make him even more endearing to the player.
![Hideo Kojima Johnny Sasaki IBS poop diarrhea Metal Gear Solid](https://www.escapistmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/johnnysasaki.jpg?resize=1200%2C675)
Johnny Sasaki in all his half-naked, low-polygon glory.
Metal Gear Solid players can also weaponize and experiment with filth to their delight and benefit. In a somewhat obscure Easter egg in the first game, you can mask the scent of your cardboard box with wolf urine to sneak past a pack in their den. Kojima marries his lowbrow humor with more highbrow concepts to immerse the player in the gameplay and environment.
Through the simple use of the universal truth that everybody poops, Kojima can ground a fantastical setting with familiar details. The majority of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty takes place on an offshore cleanup facility, a large hexagonal structure that runs the risk of appearing sterile or lifeless. However, the omnipresence of seagulls gives the environment personality. If youāre outside, looking up in an area full of seagulls in first-person may lead to them pooping on your screen. You must also take care to avoid the ground near the hand railings where seagulls lounge, lest you trip on their droppings. If you do, youāre treated to the squeaking sound of your boots on a wet surface before you fall flat on your back, foiled by these annoying pests.
This is one of many tricks the game uses to convince the player theyāre in a living, breathing, reactive world. You can catch a guard on his bathroom break, relieving himself over a railing above you and potentially drenching you as you try your best not to attract attention. You can use a directional microphone to listen in on not one but two of Johnnyās bowel misadventures. (Yeah, heās back.) But the most memorable examples of immersive toilet humor in this title come from the playerās own forays into restrooms — and the shocked reactions of the support team as they watch everything you do.
Every time youāre in the āfacilitiesā you can radio your superiors, who will comment on their invasion of your privacy. Staring at a toilet or standing at a urinal during a call will prompt embarrassment from your commanding officer and girlfriend. Staring at a lewd poster in one of the stalls will elicit jealousy and disapproval. Call from the womenās restroom once and youāll be mocked. Call a second time and youāll be branded a pervert.
The myriad of responses you can get encourages you to experiment, testing the limits of the worldās awareness of your actions. The gameplay is not divorced from the story. Break too many taboos and your girlfriend will think youāre a bad person and refuse to save your game. Itās a tribute to the ways in which the game acknowledges creative thinking and consequences, and itās all completely optional.
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater continued the legacy of mixing profane subject matter into the thoughtful mechanics of the stealth genre. You can find soiled camouflage in a toilet stall with a stench so powerful it attracts a cloud of flies and overwhelms nearby guards. You can escape a prison cell by feeding your jailer rotten food, giving him some nasty indigestion and leaving you unattended. (Heās a relative of poor Johnny.)
But while bowel movements in MGS3 can be funny, immersive, or awkward, their true innovation is how they can highlight the vulnerability and frailty of its characters. During an interrogation in which Snake is violently beaten by Colonel Volgin, he involuntarily relieves himself. For once, this depiction of human waste isnāt a lighthearted moment, but an illustration of our heroās defeat. Itās the only video game where IāveĀ seen the stoic, masculine protagonist wet his own pants during a moment of weakness.
And yet Snake isnāt meant to be a coward, a loser, or a punchline here because the intent isn’t to be juvenile but to use biological function as an extension of emotional storytelling. By subverting his own trope of the incontinent coward, Kojima demonstrates tonal control heās often purported to lack. While Kojimaās fixation on poo and pee can certainly be childish, heās not simply vulgar.
Even in the wild tonal extremes of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, thereās a clear rhetorical function for the toilet humor. By upgrading Johnny from running gag to supporting character, Kojima uses his legacy of incontinence to speak to larger themes of nostalgia. In a story repeatedly concerned with callbacks to the beginning of the series, itās fitting that Johnny gets some dimension to his IBS (even if it is very strange). We learn that his condition is exacerbated by pretty girls, and eventually he overcomes it by confessing his love to Snakeās former love interest Meryl, the very woman who made an ass of Johnny in the first game. They wind up getting married.
If we learn anything from Metal Gear going into Death Stranding, itās that that there can be beauty and purpose in the mundane. This needs to be even more true in Kojimaās version of a walking simulator. You have to be able to use your smaller moments to punctuate the big set pieces. While piss is a small tool in Samās arsenal, it contrasts nicely with your bola guns and ghost sensors because it reminds you that Sam is human. His shoes degrade, his body gets worn out, and sometimes heās gotta take a massive leak.
Kojimaās depictions of digestion reflect an iconoclastic attention to detail. He isn’t afraid to risk ridicule in his expression of natural human experiences. In that light, thereās nothing weird about Death Strandingās piss mechanics. They allow for a greater range of expression than is typical in a AAA title. At last, thereās a game that truly captures what it means to be alive and free. What a relief.
Published: Nov 17, 2019 12:00 pm