Hideo Kojima has a surprise announcement to make in 2018, with the Death Stranding developer reportedly having something up his sleeve for the New Year.
In an interview with Dengeki PlayStation (via SiliconEra), the Metal Gear creator shared his thoughts on Death Stranding‘s progress. Here’s the full quote:
“Things are going smoothly enough to the point Sony Interactive Entertainment said “We’ve never seen a game be made at such as fast pace” about Death Stranding’s development. We plan to announce something that will surprise everyone in 2018.”
Considering that the trailers for Death Stranding have thus far seen a pregnant Norman Reedus running away from an invisible apparition while on a beach coated in black sludge, that Kojima would classify his upcoming announcement as a “surprise” has significantly piqued my interest. So what could this announcement be? Let’s take a look at some possibilities.
Death Stranding‘s release date is much closer than we think
This is the most likely option. There are a number of clues which suggest that Death Stranding is much further along in development than we’ve been led to believe, with Mark Cerny having recently informed PSX attendees that “after four or five hours” the game’s obtuse plot “starts to make sense.”
Also: Death Stranding: 5 Details You Might Not Have Noticed in the Trailer
Considering that we haven’t even seen gameplay footage from Death Stranding yet, that there’s a five-hour playable build floating around behind the scenes would indicate that the game is quite far along in the development process. It doesn’t even have a concrete release year yet, let alone a confirmed release date, but Cerny and Kojima’s comments seem to indicate that it could be much closer to going gold than any of us would have anticipated. It’s perhaps too bold to suggest that Death Stranding will have a Q1 2018 release, but Q2 2018 is definitely a possibility at this point.
There will be a Death Stranding show or short film
This one’s a little more off the wall, but one Reddit user believes that Death Stranding could be the subject of a short film or an online show released to elaborate upon the events leading up to the game. “The only issues with this theory is that Mads and Norman Reedus are both incredibly busy people, same thing with Del Toro,” user SG-1_20YEARS continued. “So they’ll probably have to make it all animated using the Decima Engine, which i personally wouldn’t mind. So think of the stuff we’re seeing out of Oats Studios on youtube.”
Kojima has always had cinematic aspirations, so him creating a short film or an episodic series is certainly within the realms of possibility. Norman Reedus and Mads Mikkelsen are both excellent actors, so seeing more of them is never a bad thing, even if we probably won’t have a clue what’s going on. We know that Guillermo Del Toro is attached to the game (though we aren’t sure of his exact relationship to it), so maybe he is helping Kojima work on something? Only time will tell.
Death Stranding is coming to PC sooner rather than later
We know that Kojima is working closely with Sony to bring Death Stranding to life, but the game is also slated to launch on PC. Its initial announcement revealed that Kojima Productions would bring the game to PC following a window of exclusivity on PS4, though the developer didn’t disclose when this exclusivity period would conclude. Although it seems unlikely that this exclusivity window would have been brought forward, we haven’t heard much about Death Stranding‘s PC version, so any announcement pertaining to it could be considered a surprise.
