Hideo Kojima Doesn't Even Like His Own Game's Name

With the reveal of "Ghost of Tsushima: Director's Cut" and "Death Stranding: Director's Cut," it seems like PlayStation has decided on a particular naming convention for its paid PS5 upgrades moving forward. While some people aren't happy about paying for a game that've already bought (bonus content or no), others simply feel that the "Director's Cut" subtitle doesn't make much sense. To drive home that point, Hideo Kojima, the director of "Death Stranding" also doesn't like the naming convention.

On his English language Twitter account, he wrote, "A director's cut in a movie is an additional edit to a shortened version that was either released reluctantly because the director did not have the right to edit it, or because the running time had to be shortened. In the game, it is not what was cut, but what was additionally produced that was included...  So, in my opinion, I don't like to call 'director's cut."

Kojima's point here is that director's cuts of film usually come to be when the released version of a movie wasn't the director's original vision, and was instead changed by studio interference. While critical opinions have been split regarding "Death Stranding," anyone who has played the game will know that it is very much Kojima's full, unrestricted vision for the game.

While the thought process for the marketing department at PlayStation may have been as simple as "people call our games cinematic, let's use a movie term," it just isn't working for everyone. It's also worth noting that Kojima is well-known for being a lover of film. His English Twitter account's bio even reads: "70% of my body is made of movies." Basically, if any game director has the authority to say that calling a next-gen upgrade with extra content "director's cut" is inaccurate, its Kojima.

Kojima even confirms in his tweet that all of the new content for "Death Stranding: Director's Cut" was developed for this new package (and not cut from the original game), so it's straight up inaccurate to call it that. 

"Ghost of Tsushima: Director's Cut," meanwhile, includes a new expansion to the map, and the new titling would seem to imply that the game's director wanted those features in the game the first time around. That doesn't appear to be the case, which is why folks like Kojima are confused by the decision to go with the "Director's Cut" branding, rather than the usual "Game of the Year" and "Ultimate Edition" naming conventions.