The veteran game director discussed a variety of topics relating to his creative development process during the Game Creators panel at the RTX Sydney 2017 event, and when the topic of meeting deadlines and release dates came up, Kojima revealed that he has already set a release date for Death Stranding - though he stopped short of revealing when the game will be launched.
While he understandably kept quiet in regards to details relating to the release of his latest game, Kojima did state that in contrast to the perfectionist auteur image that some people have of him, he is quite adept at keeping to deadlines and delays are generally not an issue for him. Despite the long and tumultuous development of Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain still fresh in the minds of many fans, Kojima revealed that long development times of his games were all by design and he works towards a completion date set by himself as opposed to meeting a date set by a publisher or company.
In addition to already setting Death Stranding’s release date in stone, Kojima revealed a number of interesting details about his latest game during his time at the RTX Sydney 2017 event. While re-confirming that Death Stranding will be an open-world game, Kojima also stated that his new game won’t be a VR-capable title, though he has kept open the possibility of a VR component being added in post-launch.
As for what stage of development Death Stranding is at, Kojima revealed that work is underway and the Kojima Productions team have been tweaking the Horizon: Zero Dawn graphics engine to suit the game’s photo-realistic graphical needs, as well as working in tandem with Guerilla Games on developing the engine.
It’s still early days yet for Death Stranding and fans shouldn’t hold their breath for Kojima to reveal the game’s release date any time soon. But given the how ambitious and beautiful the recent gameplay trailer featuring Guillermo del Toro and Mads Mikkelsen was, fans can certainly expect something special when the director reveals some more details on his latest project.
Death Stranding is currently in development for PlayStation 4.
