“If aliens exist, everyone would be like, we don't need Death Stranding anymore. And I was really scared.”
Kojima said that when the U.S. military announced it would declassify its UFO files he thought it was the end: if they declared that aliens exist, the entertainment world would be over because creators of fiction could not compete — people would say they no longer needed Death Stranding — and he became genuinely frightened. In the end the military did not release much (sensitive material was blacked out, as had happened with the Kennedy papers), and Kojima felt relieved; the episode had been very distressing and he had briefly thought the world was going to end.
“If they announce that aliens exist, the world of entertainment will be over. […] The people who make fiction, we can't beat something like that. […] But then they didn't really release anything, did they? All the sensitive information was blacked out. […] And I was relieved. It was really nerve-wracking. I thought the world was going to end.”