Hideo Kojima shares photos from Death Stranding 2 "experiment," promising "techniques not used in the previous game"

Hideo Kojima has shared photos from an "experiment" currently taking place at his studio, which aims to make future games, like Death Stranding 2, look even more photorealistic. 

As featured in a series of tweets on Kojima's Twitter account, the artists at Kojima Productions have attended a lecture that will hopefully improve the cutscenes in future games and make them appear even closer to life. In one of the tweets, Kojima explains: "In order to make photorealistic CG more realistic, we invited Mr. Nishiyama, a lighting director, to give a lecture and demonstration to KJP artist team. This experience will be reflected in the creation of future games."

In the photos, we can see Deadpool actor Shioli Kutsuna - who's set to appear in the Death Stranding sequel - modeling for the artists. "Since our staff have only experienced lighting within a CG environment," Kojima explains, "we had a lighting director demonstrate the basics of live-action lighting in order to familiarize them with this technique." Kojima also reveals in the tweets that the studio will be using "new techniques" that weren't present in previous games. 

The reason why Shioli Kutsuna was used for this demonstration, over the likes of fellow Death Stranding stars Norman Reedus or Elle Fanning, is because, as Kojima says: "It is difficult to properly express the skin tone, dark hair, and eyes of Asian people. The look of Shioli in 'DS2' is a challenge for us." By using the shots of Kutsuna as a reference, the artists at Kojima Productions will be able to "reproduce the same picture on a real-time game engine," meaning Death Stranding 2, and any other games the studio is working on, should look pretty lifelike. 

Speaking of future Kojima Productions games, we do know for sure that the Death Stranding 2 sequel is in development, but there are however a few other games that are said to be in the works - including Margaret Qualley-led horror Overdose and the previously announced Xbox partnership game - but are yet to be confirmed by Kojima or anyone else working on the projects. 

It's always interesting getting to peek behind the scenes at Kojima's studio, recently the developer and his team moved offices in Tokyo and it made us realize that Hideo Kojima has never made a game as wild as his own office. We also now know that despite having supervillain lair vibes, the Kojima Productions office has excellent toilets. 

Curious about what else we've got to look forward to this year? Take a look at our new games 2023 list.