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When Hideo Kojima dropped by The Game Awards to accept his Industry Icon award, he came bearing a new trailer for his upcoming game Death Stranding. The trailer was said to be running in real-time and in 4K on the PlayStation 4 Pro. A couple days later at Sony’s PlayStation Experience event, Kojima revealed the tech powering the game: Horizon Zero Dawn developer Guerrilla Games’ Decima Engine. He’s enthusiastic about the engine and took to Twitter this weekend with some glowing words.
“The space development competition has been stagnated after the Cold War,” Kojima wrote. “Due to the steep rise in price of space development cost, the investment for the earth has been strengthened and they gave up on the space shuttle program.”
With this space metaphor, it seems Kojima is suggesting that game developers have stopped reaching for the stars as game development became more expensive and riskier. He continues:
“Meanwhile, I who wants to proceed myself to the moon, met the guerrilla whose plan was to go to the mars. We decided to make the rocket by reforming their engine. And by doing so, it enables us to go to the mars but even to the Jupiter.”
Old habits die hard
Kojima parted ways with Konami back in 2015 and his FOX Engine, which he’d developed with his team, did not come with him. With not even a year having passed since, the team hasn’t had the time or man-power to rebuild from scratch. Instead, Kojima went on a whirlwind tour of game studios to find his next game engine. The Decima engine is currently only powering the gorgeous-but-unreleased Horizon Zero Dawn, so we won’t know its capabilities for a couple more months, but if the demo shots Kojima posted are any indication, then we’re in for something impressive.
Just as he did with the FOX Engine back before Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, Kojima posted some shots of the Decima Engine simulating one of his meeting rooms with models from the trailer dropped in to demonstrate how his characters look in a realistic lighting situation.
Kojima Production's meeting room reproduced by DECIMA engine that was introduced at PSX on 12/3. pic.twitter.com/vd3QxqzUr9
— HIDEO_KOJIMA (@HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN) December 12, 2016
Kojima has always made tech a priority in his stories and games, and it seems that despite the new studio, new game, and new friends, that at least is not changing. Comparing the engine to a ship to Jupiter is a lofty statement, but we’re used to that kind of thing from Kojima. We don’t know when Death Stranding hits shelves, but we can guess that when it does, it’ll probably be a gorgeous, fun game with lofty ambitions that it falls short of and immature moments that we cringe at. It is, after all, a Kojima game.