Hideo Kojima has confirmed that full development of the upcoming Death Stranding is kicking off in 2017.
Speaking with IGN, Kojima-san confirmed that production on the hotly anticipated PlayStation 4-exclusive action title, which was announced at E3 2016, will ‘enter full swing’ next year, indicating the game is still some ways off. Still, this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise; only last week did we find out that the game will be powered by Guerrilla Games’ DECIMA engine, which is the same tech behind Horizon: Zero Dawn.
Related – Death Stranding trailer (E3 2016)
Death Stranding was recently featured at Sony’s PlayStation Experience back in early December, where a new trailer confirmed the appearance of actor Mads Mikkelson as well as a chap that looks remarkably similar to Hollywood director, Guillermo Del Toro. The Walking Dead’s Norman Reedus will be starring as the lead character in the game, although not much is known about him at present.
Few details are known about Death Stranding at present, although Kojima-san has confirmed that the project will be an action game (no doubt peppered with a few of the Metal Gear creator’s idiosyncrasies) and will feature an open-world setting complete with multiplayer elements. Furthermore, PS4 gamers will receive early access to specific content, although it hasn’t been specified exactly what content this is.
Death Stranding PS4 release date has been narrowed down
Death Stranding is Kojima-san’s first project since establishing his own, independent branch of Kojima Productions following his departure from Konami last year. Prior to that, he had been involved with both Del Toro and Reedus in a reboot of Konami’s psychological horror series Silent Hill, which sadly got the chop.
According to Kojima-san, Death Stranding will be released in the year prior to the setting of the film Akira, which presumably means we’ll see it at some point in 2018. At the very least, the game designer said we’ll see it before the 2020 Olympics.