Kojima Productions may be looking for a new composer soon, as its composer, Ludvig Forssell, has announced his departure after 10 years with the company.
Any fan of recent Kojima Productions titles will be familiar with his work as Forssell got a start at Konami where he worked as a composer on Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes, P.T., and Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain. From there the Swedish composer went to contribute some music to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate as well as Netflix's Ultraman series and the film Free Fire. Most recently, he worked on Death Stranding as Kojima Productions' in-house lead composer and audio director. Last October Forssell also shared a picture showing that Kojima Productions had started recording music for an unannounced title, although his continued involvement with that production has not been confirmed.
Forssell's announcement is a bit surprising, especially coming so recently after he shared the picture of working on the company's next project, and with how publicly close he is with Kojima Productions' head, Hideo Kojima. In the tweet announcing his departure, Forssell says that from here he will be pursuing a future as a freelance composer and aims to work on projects in a variety of different types of media.
Forssell's career has seen a lot of success. His score for Death Stranding alone garnered two nominations in the 2020 BAFTAs as well as nine other nominations across the industry. The announcement does come after Forssell teased some "big news" for today, which led many fans to speculate that he was going to reveal some news about Kojima Productions' unannounced project. Many of the excited fans theorized that the information would provide confirmation of Death Stranding 2. Obviously, the announcement has those fans a bit disappointed, but such a large title being announced through a composer's tweet was always a bit of a long shot.
Forssell's move to freelance does leave the door open for him to return for Kojima Productions' future projects, so the news should not disappoint fans. The company even responded to Forssell's announcement with a tweet congratulating him and saying that the company looks forward to continuing to work with him. Hopefully, Forsell's new freelancer status simply means that he will be able to bring his unique musical talent to more projects, possibly branching out even further into industries other than gaming. It should be worth keeping an eye on where his career goes from here, especially with rumors circulating around just what Kojima Productions might have in the works.