In his A.V Club review, Sam Barsanti noted how unusual the 2019 game is, writing, “It’s a game with flaws that are clear and hard to ignore, and yet it also seems aware of those flaws and is making them work in service of a higher purpose.” Death Stranding features an all-star voice cast that includes Norman Reedus, Mads Mikkelsen, Léa Seydoux, and Margaret Qualley. Kojima Productions recently shared a trailer for the game’s sequel (Death Stranding 2: On The Beach), which features many returning actors as well as Luca Marinelli, George Miller, and Elle Fanning. The new game is due out June 26.
Death Stranding creator Hideo Kojima is well known as perhaps the most prominent cinephile on Twitter/X, where he frequently posts about the films he’s watching (and the actors and filmmakers he’s befriended). He previously said that “expanding the game IP to other media” was always the “second phase” of his company after breaking with Konami and going independent in 2015. In 2021, he officially launched a film and television division of Kojima Productions to explore “different forms of media: movies, anime, TV dramas, etc.,” as he told Variety last year. Though he has expressed a desire to write and direct his own film someday (he admitted that “there is a different story I’ve written that’s intended for a movie. But I don’t have the time to direct it, so I won’t”), his involvement on Death Stranding will be to “supervise the plot and help them make it,” he said. “I’ll help by communicating with a director I really trust.” Apparently that honor has been bestowed upon Sarnoski, for whom Kojima praised his “great” plot and screenplay of A Quiet Place: Day One.
