Death Stranding, Hideo Kojima's weird and mysterious debut solo venture, sees a reunion between the Metal Gear series creator and cinema icon Guillermo del Toro. Yet while the pair were set to co-direct the ill-fated PT/Silent Hills, del Toro will feature in Kojima's latest project exclusively as an actor.
In conversation with IGN, the Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy filmmaker described himself as "a puppet in [Kojima's] hands" and his role in Death Stranding as "limited to being a cheerleader" to Kojima's artistic direction.
"I’m involved as a character. Kojima-san called me and said, 'I want you to be a character in the game,' and I said, 'Gladly'," explains del Toro. "He’s discussed his ideas so I could understand the character, but other than that I’m not involved, creatively, at all. This is entirely Kojima-san’s game.
"I think it’s gonna be a fantastic game, 100 percent. But this is him and his ideas. I’m just a puppet in his hands. My contribution is limited to being a cheerleader for his ideas and being scanned for long hours at a time. That’s about it."
Del Toro continues, discussing the complex process of face scanning—something he's pretty familiar with against his back catalogue of creative films. To this end, here's another look at December's del-Toro-featuring trailer:
"We did incredibly detailed scanning. It took about seven hours or so, just for the scanning alone," del Toro tells IGN. "We did it with almost three time the number of cameras you normally use for medium or close-up models. I’ve done scanning myself in my movies, and I know that what he did allows me to be a real character in the game, for sure."
Beyond that, we still don't know an awful lot about Death Stranding. Even Mads Mikkelsen, who features in the trailer above, is at a loss as to what it's all about. It's supposedly due at some point between now and 2019 when it'll land on PlayStation 4 first, before making the jump to PC thereafter.
