Kojima made a GBA game about a vampire hunter who was stronger in the daylight. The cartridge featured a light sensor that could detect if you were playing it out in the sun.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boktai:_The_Sun_Is_in_Your_Han...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boktai:_The_Sun_Is_in_Your_Han...
Dean Hall, the creator of the viral survival sandbox mod DayZ, was obsessed with realism-based immersion, and also tried something similar in his game in 2012. One of the updates tied the in-game time to the real time at the location of the server you were connected to. It also made the moonless and/or cloudy nights impenetrably dark, even GPU gamma correction wasn't able to help you see anything. Considering that the majority of players played the game in the evening, that the game was set in the fictional Balkan country (they only had an hour or so of twilight at best), and that the night vision device was a top-tier item hard to obtain in a survival sandbox, the majority of players just played on servers in distant timezones, preferring huge latencies to playing in the dark.
The update was reverted shortly after that, as it was obvious that it degraded the gameplay quality immensely.
For instance, an RPG where your time of day combined with in game locations could change what enemies spawn, or characters that get sleepy and less capable after so long, but it should also be able to cause unique time events to happen, and not just spooky Halloween season or Xmas spectacular, either.
Moving on a night with a full moon was even more terrifying - trying to build up the courage to cross a moonlit field that someone might be watching.
If anyone else is a fan of the original Deus Ex, one of the writers for it, Sheldon Pacotti, has been writing science fiction for years:
Haven't had the chance to read anything by Chris Todd yet (the writer/curator of all the snippets you come across within the game, as opposed to the plot itself), but I remember enjoying his in-game style a lot too at the time.
Kojima's final game at Konami was Metal Gear Solid V. After he left, Konami shrugged and made Metal Gear Survive. Suffice to say, the non-Kojima metal gear was a flop. Itagaki is another example. He's the creator of Ninja Gaiden, and also ended up leaving Team Ninja after a dispute. His final game was Ninja Gaiden 2, their first game was Ninja Gaiden 3. And again, the reception went from positive, to flop.
And to be clear it's not like these series waxed and waned. Every single Metal Gear game with Kojima received exceptional praise. Similarly for every single Ninja Gaiden game, to a lesser degree. Then they leave, and the series collapse. Obviously far more people work on these games than just the singular name, but if most of these people were replaced with somebody of a similar skillset, the final product would be largely unchanged.
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Reception for Metal Gear Solid V: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Gear_Solid_V:_The_Phanto...
Reception for Metal Gear Survive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Gear_Survive#Reception
Ninja Gaiden 2 Reception: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninja_Gaiden_II#Reception
Ninja Gaiden 3 Reception: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninja_Gaiden_3#Reception
Of course you can say "well if this is true it only shows that Kojima can attract the best talent to work for him" and sure, that's probably true. But then we can't claim it's all completely Kojima doing the work.
Go back to the original 1987 Metal Gear on the NES and you'll find 0 overlap except for Kojima. Kojima was a new hire at the time and thrust onto a completely new team on a project already in development. He dramatically shifted the direction of what was being built, and what was born was Metal Gear. And, as would become a recurring pattern for every single title he's been involved in, it was met with phenomenal reception.
I think the truth is somewhere in between. Kojima benefits from relying on a highly skilled team that deserves more credit than they get. At the same time he probably doesn't get enough credit for attracting that talent and creating an environment they can flourish in. If that were easy then anyone would do it.
Hidetaka Miyazaki,for example, is one such “auteur game designer” and it’s very clear when he has had his influence on a game.
Just compare Dark Souls 1 or 3 (which he worked on) to Dark Souls 2 (which he didn’t work on) and Bloodborne (which was created by Miyazaki in parallel with DS2) and you’ll see that his influence on games that he has a direct hand in is massive.
Or for something more relevant, the first and only Metal Gear game released after Kojima was fired by Konami - Meta Gear: Survive - was an unmitigated disaster. Metal Gear Solid 5 was unfinished and flawed, but there’s no denying that it had Kojima’s flourish on it.
It's almost as if the peripheral port was made for it.
None of mine ever did. The best lighting seemed to be sitting with a lamp behind you but with actual sun overhead everything was too dark to make out.