Regarding Hideo Kojima, you never know what to expect from the man. Whether it was during his tenure at Konami or making it on his own via Kojima Productions, the man has a gift for doing whatever he wants and somehow making it work. Just as important, he could make whatever project he worked on sell well. Enter Death Stranding 2, the game confirmed at The Game Awards to be in development, and Kojima is very hyped for his title. He’s been dropping plenty of teases about the title, and he’s not alone. One of the main actresses in the game, Elle Fanning, had some things to say about the title too.
Her thoughts came from Hideo Kojima’s podcast, and the topic of the game’s technology came up. According to Elle, Kojima is pushing motion capture technology to new heights to make the game look even better than the original.
She noted that Kojima “always say ‘this isn’t done, this is not what it’s gonna look like at all’. But then I look at it and I’m like ‘it looks pretty amazing.’ But in his mind it ‘oh my god it’s going to be so much better don’t even look at this.'”
Kojima is known to be a perfectionist, but it seems he’s trying to go beyond that here. In the reveal trailer, we saw how good the game looked and how crazy it looked. But if it can look better than that? That would be impressive.
Elle Fanning is already impressed, as she said in the podcast, that the game “already looks so outstanding, it looks so real, but I know it’s going to get so much better.”
“I can’t reveal too much right now,” added Kojima during the podcast. “But we’ve been using a new technology this time around, so I think the scanning process was a bit difficult, but Elle had fun with it.”
So if we take this at face value, pun intended, Kojima is trying to make the scans and motion captures of the actors even more realistic so that it plays even better in the game. He recently revealed that the game will feature “new technologies,” so Kojima isn’t just “using what works.” Instead, he wants to keep pushing things forward.
In other words, A very Kojima thing to do.
Based on this, it’s hard to know what Death Stranding 2 will be like in its “final form.” But then again, the bigger question will likely be, “will we understand what’s going on in the game when it’s done?”