Death Stranding 2 features a cameo from vtuber Usada Pekora, who happens to be Hideo Kojima's all-time fave, and the moment Pekora finds her in-game character is characteristically cute and all too relatable.
In case you're hearing about this for the first time, yes, it's true, Kojima had to start turning down celebrities who wanted to appear in Death Stranding 2 because it was too time consuming to scan them into the game, but he made an exception for his girl Pekora. You can find the massively popular vtuber as one of the game's many Preppers, and that's exactly what Pekora herself did during a recent stream.
Pekora's reaction to her Death Stranding 2 appearance is wholly on-brand. The vtuber approaches the bunny-eared Prepper in the game's Australia region and starts up a conversation before shying into nervous embarrassment.
"This is too embarrassing," Pekora says (translated from Japanese by YouTube channel Pekora Clips). Then, as a number of dialogue options open on the screen, she adds, "I'm so embarrassed. She's still yapping."
Honestly, that's probably exactly how I'd react to hearing my voice in a video game, or really any piece of recorded media.
Thankfully, it's not all self-cringe Pekora was feeling in this weirdly surreal moment. "I'm happy and embarrassed," she says.
My favorite part of this interaction is when Pekora makes the connection that she's from Australia, at least in Death Stranding 2's world. "Pekoland is actually in Australia," she jokes, referring to the fictional nation she often claims to have hailed from.
As if the entire experience of playing Death Stranding 2 wasn't already enough of a fever dream, now I have to live with the fact that there's an enormously popular vtuber somewhere talking to herself in it.
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