Director(s) Hideo Kojima Composer(s) Ludvig Forssell Genre Action game Developer Kojima Productions | Artist(s) Yoji Shinkawa Engine Decima Designer Hideo Kojima Platform PlayStation 4 | |
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Producer(s) Hideo Kojima
Kenichiro Imaizumi Writer(s) Hideo Kojima
Hitori Nojima Publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment Modes Single-player video game, Multiplayer video game Similar Kojima Productions games, Other games | ||
The game awards 2016 death stranding world premiere
Death Stranding is an upcoming open world action video game developed by Kojima Productions and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment for the PlayStation 4. It is the first game by game director Hideo Kojima and his company following the 2015 disbandment of Kojima Productions as a subsidiary of Konami and subsequent reformation as an independent studio, and was officially announced at Sony's E3 2016 conference. The game will be released sometime prior to 2019.
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The game features actors Norman Reedus and Mads Mikkelsen, as well as director Guillermo del Toro, who are portrayed in-game via motion capture. The game's title is a reference to the cetacean stranding phenomenon.
Gameplay
Death Stranding is an action game set in an open world environment, which also includes multiplayer functions.
Development
After a lengthy corporate conflict with Konami as a restricted subsidiary, Kojima Productions subsequently closed in July 2015, and reformed as an independent video game developer and studio in December. Game director and producer Hideo Kojima announced the game at Sony's conference during the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2016 with a trailer. The trailer was made possible with the technology of photogrammetry and performance capture. It featured American actor Norman Reedus, who will serve as the basis for the main protagonist. This marks the second collaboration between Kojima and Reedus since the cancelled Silent Hills.
According to Kojima, one of the key aspects of the announcement trailer was the idea of a connection between life and death. Kojima explained one of the game's main themes through a short story by Kōbō Abe, in which Abe says that the first tool created by humans was a stick, meant as protection by putting a distance between oneself and "bad things", and that the second tool was a rope, which is used to secure things one finds important. Kojima compared the main "tools" in action games – punching, shooting and kicking – to sticks, and said that in Death Stranding he wants people to communicate through the game equivalent of ropes. Kojima described its genre as a quasi-action game, but with new and different elements. He compared this to how his earlier game Metal Gear – now considered a stealth game – was called an action game during its release because the stealth genre was not considered to exist at the time. The title refers to the phenomenon of cetacean stranding, whereby whales and other cetaceans are washed up on shore; "strand" also stands for strings and connections. The Schwarzschild radius and Dirac equation – relating to the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics – appeared on dog tags worn by Reedus's character in the teaser.
Kojima and Mark Cerny, lead system architect of the PlayStation 4, spent two weeks in January 2016 traveling in search for a game engine on which to develop Death Stranding. One of the two remaining candidates had been used to create the teaser trailer. Guerrilla Games would later be announced as a collaborator on the development of the game as it was providing its proprietary game engine, Decima. Kojima Productions' meeting room was recreated in the engine as a reference of accuracy, for the purpose of testing physically-based lighting.
A second teaser unveiled that Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen would be joining the cast as the game's antagonist. It also featured a character bearing the likeness of film director Guillermo del Toro, who had previously collaborated with Kojima and Reedus on Silent Hills. A female protagonist is planned to be revealed. Ludvig Forssell, who previously worked with Kojima on Metal Gear Solid V, will be writing the music. An alternate cut of the second teaser, as with the first one, included a song from the band Low Roar; Kojima Productions and Mondo Records partnered to release a 12-inch vinyl single of the two songs under the Death Stranding brand, released in February 2017. The game entered full development in 2017.