Akio Sakamoto, Chief Technology Officer for Kojima Productions, has revealed why the company opted for the Decima Engine when making Death Stranding and its sequel.
Speaking with Automaton, Sakamoto-san highlighted a number of key capabilities with Decima, which is the engine designed by Guerrilla Games, the studio behind Killzone and Horizon Zero Dawn.
It offered many of the capabilities needed to build an open-world game, and while some aspects are less immediately approachable than commercial engines, its runtime rendering analysis tools stood out. Being able to access such a rich set of data without relying on external tools is incredibly valuable. The development environment – built for large-scale, multi-disciplinary teams – also included features I had long hoped to implement in the engine I worked on previously. With all of that in mind, we decided to adopt Decima.
He added that “no engine is the best choice in every scenario,” but noted that Decima “enables us to accomplish many things that would be difficult to achieve elsewhere.” Sakamoto then addressed some of the technical achievements that Kojima Productions reached with Death Stranding 2:
The final polygon count [of the opening landscape] reached approximately 25 million, yet the scene still maintained a stable frame rate. This was something made possible in large part by Decima’s rendering capabilities.
Death Stranding 2 is the most recent offering from Kojima Productions, having launched in June 2025 for PS5. The studio has a number of projects in the works, including OD and Physint.
[Source – Automaton via PushSquare]