Which Hideo Kojima game has more cutscenes: Death Stranding 2 or Metal Gear?

Hideo Kojima’s Cinematic Masterpieces: Breakdown of Cutscene Duration in Metal Gear Solid Series and Beyond

An IGN report by Simon Cardy analyzes the duration of cutscenes and unplayable animations in Hideo Kojima’s games, calculating their total execution time based on data from the HowLongToBeat website. This analysis specifically focuses on non-interactive cinematics, excluding elements like Codec calls or other in-game conversations that require player interaction to progress. The first three Metal Gear Solid games generally dedicate about 20% of their total playtime to cinematics, with each subsequent entry showing a very slight upward trend. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, however, dramatically alters this pattern, devoting approximately 40% of its playtime to cinematics—nearly half the game. This includes a record-breaking 71-minute cutscene, the longest on record, which is only 10 minutes shorter than the 1995 Toy Story animation film. Metal Gear Solid 4’s cinematic length surpasses that of the original Metal Gear Solid trilogy, as well as later titles like Death Stranding 2 and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.

Hideo Kojima’s Divergent Approaches to Cinematic Content: Comparing Cutscene Proportions in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and Other Games, Including Death Stranding and Death Stranding 2.

In stark contrast, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain suffers from the opposite problem of MGS4: a shallow and incomplete story, partly due to its problematic development. While mechanically one of the best stealth games ever made, MGSV notably lacks narrative depth and a conclusive ending, preventing it from feeling like a complete Kojima package. With approximately four hours of cutscenes within 45 hours of gameplay, it features an extremely low cinematic proportion compared to its predecessors. Death Stranding and Death Stranding 2 feature cutscene percentages similar to those found in the Metal Gear Solid series. This analysis underscores the varied approaches Hideo Kojima’s games take to cinematic content, ranging from the narrative abundance of Metal Gear Solid 4 to the streamlined experience of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.