“Death Stranding is also based on the idea that we are not alone. Even if you think you're alone, you find other people out there, and from there you have a connection.”
Kojima placed The Velvet Queen (The Velvet Queen) in his top three films of the year and said it might even be number one. He described it as classified as a documentary but in reality simply a very beautiful film, far from pet videos, which he called family photos. He read the film through the We Are Not Alone theme of Nick Cave: the we is not only humanity as predator but includes wild animals; at first the viewer only sees Tibetan landscape, then the shadows turn out to be animals, and when their faces appear and their eyes meet you truly understand that we are not alone. The two men go to observe and discover they have been observed all along, and that reversal is the essence. He connected that idea to Death Stranding, saying Death Stranding is also based on the idea that even if you think you are alone you find others out there and from there a connection is formed; he added that the Tibetan landscape does not seem so different from Death Stranding. He said he cried at the end and that not seeing them does not mean they do not exist.
“I will place it in the top three films I've seen this year. […] When I look at the vast lands of Tibet, it doesn't seem that different from Death Stranding. […] these two guys go searching for these animals and they realize that these animals have been watching them too, observing them. And that's the essence of we are not alone. […] I cried there at the end.”