Hideo Kojima always knew he wanted a naked Norman Reedus in Death Stranding.
Kojima was a keynote speaker at the inaugural TriBeCa Games Festival. It didn’t take long until the moderator Geoff Keighley, producer of The Game Awards, asked Kojima about his upcoming game Death Stranding.
Then things got a little weird.
Kojima carefully picked his words when discussing most of Death Stranding, but not when it came to his desire to include a naked Reedus in his project.
“I was definitely thinking about Norman when creating the character,” Kojima said through his interpreter. “I’m specifically thinking about Norman with him in mind. For the teaser, when you see Norman naked, that’s something I specifically had in mind. I wanted people to see first a naked Norman and from there you’ll see him in different costumes, hairstyles and equipment.”
Thank you, Kojima. We appreciate the butt shots.
Kojima confirmed Death Stranding is moving along in development just fine. His team has a plot and Kojima’s constantly rewriting the script. At this point in the production, the development team is looking to fine tune details in the Decima engine. Kojima explained he’s taking steps to make the environment feel authentic.
“Let’s say that Norman’s character is walking in New York- and the game is not set in New York, this is just an example- we’re trying to see if what we can depict with Decima Engine actually looks like New York, if it scales correctly and feels good there,” Kojima said. “Let’s say the character goes in an Italian restaurant, who the character meets going into the restaurant, what he will be eating, all those details are decided, are set.”
Basically, everything players encounter must have a purpose and no small detail will go untouched (at least that’s what we think Kojima meant.) Though Kojima stressed Death Stranding isn’t set in New York, it would be interesting to see how he sees the city. He admits he’s known to obsess over vision and has been know to be demanding when it come to his projects. Kojima also cited his obsessive nature as the reason he can’t go into filmmaking.
Kojima also talked about his influences at the Tribeca Games Festival. Kojima explained movies, specifically anything with Tribeca Film Festival co-founder Robert De Niro, helped shape his imagination as a kid. He would go to multiple viewings of a movie and sit in a different seat each time to experience seeing a film at a new angle. Kojima’s fear is if he start his blockbuster or indie project, he’d never see his vision come to fruition. He added Death Stranding is the only project he’s working on and his schedule wouldn’t allow him to develop a movie. Kojima used Super Mario as an example of how his thought process works.
“I wanted to know why Bowser was taking away the Princess, and why was this complete stranger Mario trying to rescue her,” Kojima said. “And why are you stepping on those mushrooms.”
Can’t say we’ve ever asked ourselves these questions while playing Mario as a kid. Then again we haven’t created a multi-million dollar game franchise that changed the way games were developed forever. Psycho Mantis still gives us nightmares. Death Stranding is in development exclusively for the PlayStation 4.
