Last night’sState of Playshowcased plenty of exciting upcoming games, but one predictable face dominated the show, Hideo Kojima, one of gaming’s few auteurs.
As announced last night,Death Stranding 2will be subtitled On The Beach and is set for release in 2025 for PlayStation 5, with an undefined future release date for PC. The extensive trailer is quintessential Kojima, a bemusing mix of eccentricity and consequence. Sam has a new area to explore outside the United Cities of America, and his old enemy Higgs is back, with Troy Baker putting in a Joker-esque performance judging by the trailer.
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There’s an uncanny-looking little dragon, a giant baby and a talking puppet sidekick. The underpinning gameplay appears to be much the same, open-worlds, base-building and of course, walking from place to place.
That wasn’t the only announcement that Kojima had for us, though. He’s also returning to his Metal Gear roots and creating an action espionage game in collaboration with Sony, codenamed PHYSINT. The game will be “interactive but also a movie” according to Kojima, and will be produced “earnestly” after the release of Death Stranding 2.
As we know from the announcement at the Xbox Game Showcase in 2022, Kojima Productions is also collaborating with Xbox Game Studios on OD. An “immersive new style of media”, we don’t know anything practical about the game except a couple of the actors involved and that it’s being written by Kojima and Jordan Peele.
Between how much time was allocated to OD during The Game Awards and Kojima closing the show during this State of Play, it’s clear the development veteran is a hot commodity. This isn’t a surprise, but it is worthy of note. There are very few people in gaming who could command the undivided attention of both Sony and Xbox. Even hotshot writers like Ken Levine (whose game Judas receivedanother trailerlast night) would struggle to attract this cult of personality.
It’s an interesting development and one of the first undisputed cases of the name recognition of a developer exciting both a consumer audience and a corporate one. It’s something we might see more of in the coming years.
Other highlights of the State of Play included an overview of Stellar Blade, an upcoming Korean action-adventure, a trailer for Bloober Team’s Silent Hill 2 Remake, a gameplay trailer for Rise of the Ronin and the surprise launch of Silent Hill: The Message, a free-to-play first-person shorter Silent Hill experience.
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
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Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is the upcoming sequel from Hideo Kojima for Death Stranding. As mysterious and inscrutable as the first game was leading up to launch, details are sparse on this bizarre open-world exploration game.
