Kojima Partnering With Killzone, Horizon Dev Guerrilla for Death Stranding

Kojima Productions is collaborating with Guerrilla Games on the development of Death Stranding and will use Guerilla's Decima engine, it was announced today.

The news was shared during a Death Stranding panel at PlayStation Experience. After discussing the latest trailer (below), Kojima was joined on stage by Guerrilla's Hermen Hulst and Sony's Mark Cerny. Cerny discussed the trip he and Kojima took in meeting various developers when trying to find the right technology for Death Stranding.

"Unfortunately, Kojima-san needed to leave his technology with his former employee," Cerny said, referencing Konami, which elicited boos from the crowd. "So we went on a quest to find an engine for his game."

Kojima ultimately settled on Decima, which is the engine used to power all of Guerrilla's games, including the upcoming Horizon: Zero Dawn. Hulst noted it's taken a "quantum leap" forward in the past few years to get it ready for this project. Kojima added that he "had a very good feeling" about Guerrilla after meeting with the team.

There was a reference to the engine's ability to handle an open-world game, though that doesn't necessarily indicate Death Stranding will be open-world. Kojima also confirmed the second trailer was running in real-time on a PS4 Pro.

Other details of note include the fact that there will be female characters in the game, though Kojima isn't prepared to reveal them yet. He also shared that the character played by Mads Mikkelsen in the second trailer is Death Stranding's antagonist. Additionally, a limited-edition vinyl will be released featuring the music from the E3 trailer, as well as the track featured in a special version of the second trailer shown during today's panel.

The panel is ongoing; we'll update this story with any other information Kojima and company share. For a roundup of everything else announced at PSX, check out our roundup of all the news and trailers.