‘You won’t understand unless you chew on it’: Hideo Kojima wants you to remember his games for decades

Delivering cargo across a sparse post-apocalyptic landscape, often on foot, was an unlikely premise for a blockbuster video game. In the hands of celebrated Japanese designer Hideo Kojima, however, a glorified postal simulator — albeit one with a Hollywood cast starring Norman Reedus, Léa Seydoux and Elle Fanning — has become one of this year’s most critically acclaimed console games.

Heralded as a slow-paced but therapeutic masterpiece, “Death Stranding 2: On the Beach” sees freelance porter Sam Bridges delivering equipment, rations and medical supplies to isolated communities in the aftermath of a cataclysmic supernatural event. Along the way, he fights human foes and escapes the clutches of monstrous “Beached Things,” but action is the exception, not the rule. Significant gametime is