Death Stranding 2’s lavish and slightly leery photo mode is what happens when Kojima has a big budget and no oversight

Kojima Productions hosted a 90 minute panel at the Tokyo Game Show, during which Hideo Kojima and assorted guest stars introduced around eight minutes of new footage from the bonkers-looking Death Stranding 2: On the Beach. Among these was a glimpse at the upcoming game’s photo mode, an incredibly lavish take on the idea that initially left me open-mouthed and then with an unmistakeably Hideo Kojima question: Is this genius manifest, or just ever-so-slightly creepy and weird? 

We’ll get to Kojima’s considerable history with in-game cameras shortly, but the Death Stranding 2 clip shows Sam Porter-Bridges (Norman Reedus) taking pictures of Fragile (Léa Seydoux), Rainy (Shioli Kutsuna), and Tomorrow (Elle Fanning) at various locations within the Magellan, the ship that seems to be your home base. The full clip can be seen during the TGS panel (timestamp) or in the below from Kojima Productions.

To begin with the positives, Kojima Productions’ motion capture technology is the best I’ve seen in a game, with its animations creating a real authenticity behind the character movements (for the most part). Atop this the studio’s hyper-detailed aesthetic is stylised just enough that it’s sanding off the photorealism before it reaches that uncanny valley stage: though under certain lighting, some of these shots could fool you at a glance.

This positively luxurious-looking photo mode is a love-letter to that scanning tech and Kojima being a hopeless star chaser as much as anything else, the kind of overwrought minor feature that you can tell was made a priority by one man because he loves to use it.

As the three characters swing their arms, shuffle around, and interact with one another there are a few noticeable loops and awkward transitions, but you’re really having to look to pick the faults. One element of this mode, which I may be misreading, also seems to be that the characters adopt certain expressions when you click the shutter, such as Seydoux’s winning smile, and the resulting Polaroid-style snap brightens the lighting and definition considerably. Going on past form there will be a million filters for that stuff.

While the characters are acting out, you as Sam can move around (though the demo is not clear about how free your movement is), and in an expected but pleasing touch one of the environments boasts a mirror in which to admire those Reedus cheekbones.

This already looks like a best-in-class photo mode, and that’s in-keeping with Kojima’s history. Metal Gear Solid included a camera, which over the series’ history became more fully featured: usually for good but, sometimes, skewing towards some of the bad Kojima tendencies.

I could give quite a few examples of dodgy photo opportunities over the course of the series, but the one I always found most distasteful was the photo mode for bosses in MGS4. That game’s bosses, the Beauty and the Beast unit, are all female soldiers traumatised by war experiences. Also: under the mech suits, they’re smoking hot! You discover this because, after defeating each member, they can then be photographed cavorting around and in various positions while soft porn music plays. Yes, you can pan around their bodies and zoom in and out. Just a bit dodgy and gratuitous if you ask me.

Nothing in the DS2 photo mode approaches this level of WTF but all I’m going to say is I’ve played every game that Kojima has directed, and there are a few alarm bells here. The audio is straight-up weird, with the three women constantly giggling like they’re at a slumber party over low jazzy techno. All three are dressed in ship uniforms, but again I know Kojima and would bet there are other crew outfits to be obtained through the game. Certain poses… you can kind of tell where some players are immediately going to try and move the camera. Is Kojima Productions really going to produce a full body scan of Elle Fanning and then just let sweathogs pilot a camera around her bottom?

Some of that might seem unfair but then this is the guy who gave us Quiet, and I just don’t dig how gratuitously horny Kojima’s games can be. I could be wrong, and who knows, maybe one day I will be ashamed of my words and deeds. But this incredible-looking photo mode has me hoping it’s purely Kojima at his whimsical and creative best, rather than repeating old mistakes.