Death Stranding Built On Same Game Engine As Horizon Zero Dawn, Mads Mikkelsen Confirmed As Villain

You may recall back in January when Hideo Kojima, having just parted ways with Konami after close to 30 years, embarked on a world tour of Sony’s first-party studios with Mark Cerny, sampling development tools and other resources from Sony Santa Monica to Media Molecule, and everywhere in between.

The purpose of that trip was, of course, to locate a game engine on which to build Death Stranding, the first title to come out of the Kojima Productions that once again dazzled the industry with a new, and frankly bonkers trailer at The Game Awards late last week. In it, we seen both Guillermo del Toro and Mads Mikkelsen feature, and Kojima has now confirmed that the latter will indeed take point as the game’s antagonist.

Word comes by way of a Death Stranding panel that was held at the ongoing PlayStation Experience event in Anaheim (see above), where Kojima fielded questions from both Geoff Keighley and the audience. Warning fans that the game is still a long way out, the esteemed developer – and newly-crowned Industry Icon – then teased that both Death Stranding trailers are peppered with story clues.

What’s more, following that aforementioned two-week tour, Kojima Productions has now settled on the Decima engine, an upgraded version of the one used across both Killzone: Shadow Fall and Horizon Zero Dawn, Guerrilla’s upcoming apocalyptic RPG. Hermen Hulst, Managing Director for Guerrilla, claimed that Decima has continued to evolve over the years, and will surely provide an exciting platform for Kojima and Co. to realize their vision.

Still nothing to report when it comes to Death Stranding‘s release date, but those mysterious two trailers have lent us plenty to pour over in the meantime.