Kojima saw the Kenzie & Gennaro novels as more than a detective series: in a setting of violence, poverty, pain, and an apparent lack of a future, he cared that the characters kept struggling to live, and he considered that combination an expression of storytelling at its core.
Kojima recommended Darkness, Take My Hand as his choice among the six Kenzie & Gennaro novels and regarded it as a work of exceptional caliber. He said that after reading it for the first time he investigated buying the rights to adapt it into a film himself, and that in his view none of the subsequent installments surpassed Darkness.
Kojima finished reading Eric Heisserer’s “Simultaneous” during the flight. He explained that the novel begins with reincarnation and past-life regression before becoming intertwined with a series of murders, and identified its distinctive concept of “simultaneous lives,” in which multiple people in the same generation share a single soul. He said the novel is driven less by its lore or world-building than by its cinematic, Nolan-esque narrative momentum, and also feels cinematic because the threat of an unknown serial killer is confronted by an investigator, a counselor, and an ordinary patient rather than by a vast government conspiracy or institution.
“I think that's part of my role, part of my duty, to put in my games what I experience through movies, to explore this philosophy that movies gave me. I want to provide something similar to people through the games I create.”
Kojima argued that stories about impossible journeys can circulate through culture and help turn them into reality. In response to accusations of escapism, he maintained that fiction contains truth and can serve as a frontline tool to correct real-world problems; for that reason he wants to continue telling stories and creating connections between people, worlds, and times.
For Kojima, Jennie simultaneously occupies the roles of lover, teacher, rival, partner, and confidante. He read the novel as more than a moral tale about a bittersweet first love and loss: a story about living, told from a feminine point of view, and about how to pass the baton (his "memes") to the next generation.