Death Stranding 2’s Photo Mode Must Be Seen To Be Believed

There’s a running joke that if you visit Hideo Kojima’s studio and you’re an actor or actress, you’re going to get your face and body scanned. And now we are seeing the fruits of that labor from new footage of Death Stranding 2.

There were a few reveals here including first looks at Elle Fanning as Tomorrow and Shioli Kutsana as Rainy, featuring both of them in the game’s new highly unusual, hyper-realistic photo mode:

Rather than being a traditional photo mode where you place and post static characters, this has the girls dancing and goofing off and you snap a picture as this is happening. The end “polaroid” shots of that footage feel like they might as well just be actual photos of the actresses in question.

Some have pointed out that this is a flashback of sorts to Kojima’s previous Laughing Beauty photo mode in Metal Gear Solid 4. As a refresher, here’s what that looked like:

So I mean, not uh quite the same, but a similarly wacky idea and a precursor to this in some form from 12 years ago.

As for Death Stranding 2, it seems that Hideo Kojima may have originally planned to announce it for the DS2 event, but could not due to “unforeseen circumstances.” It’s not clear what those are, but he says the release date will be announced in 2025. I mean, I would hope so given that release is also supposed to be in 2025. One theory is that a number of 2025 games are waiting to announce their release dates to steer clear of GTA 6’s supposed fall 2025 release date, though the common theory is that it may end up slipping to 2026 since it’s, you know, the biggest release in gaming history so some measure of a delay would make sense.

Kojima fans are eagerly awaiting his return to the world of Death Stranding where he’s recruited even more great actors and even special guests like director George Miller. Kojima games are rarely for everyone but he is an industry legend for a reason, and no doubt Death Stranding 2 will be something to witness, just like the first one was.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.