Despite Kojima Productions recently facing trouble during the development of Physint, it looks like work on the action-espionage game is making steady progress. The studio has released a new video – the first one to credit Xbox as the publisher for Physint – where Hideo Kojima revealed the actor who will play the main protagonist in the game: Bill Skarsgård.
Skarsgård joins previously-confirmed cast members for Physint, which include Charlee Fraser, Don Lee, and Minami Hamabe. In the video, Kojima spoke about how he and Skarsgård have been “long-time fans of each other’s work, and we’ve decided to embark on this new adventure together.” He wrapped it up by noting that there will be more cast announcements made in the future.
In the meantime, Kojima has already expressed optimism regarding the casting decisions so far thanks to the costume fittings, scans, and camera tests that were done with Skarsgård and Fraser earlier this year. “My vision of the final form became much more solidified.”
The same video also features some more details about OD, development on which was seemingly also progressing at a smooth pace, according to Kojima. Noting that performance capture and ADR recording work had to be paused due to last year’s SAG-AFTRA strike, he confirmed that the work has now resumed and that production is continuing on schedule.
“OD is a completely new kind of game that tests the thresholds of fear,” he said. “Through constant experimentation and iteration, the project is steadily taking shape. We look forward to sharing more information later down the line.”
Both OD and Physint have been mysterious projects so far, with only OD having gotten a trailer giving us our first look at what the upcoming horror game will end up looking like. Physint is likely still too early in development to get trailers anytime soon, however. OD, on the other hand, got its Knock trailer last year, and Kojima has said that it should be seen a hundred times so that fans can discover a “big hint” about the title.
“I think when you first see OD it looks like horror. But the system it uses isn’t ordinary. Everything is made in a game engine, and a game is a game, but it’s still a system like no other. That’s why we built a completely new medium together with Microsoft.”
As for Physint, Sony recently announced that it was dropping out of the deal it had signed with Kojima Productions to publish the game. While Kojima said that this came as a surprise and that he was already looking into getting a new publisher, Xbox swooped in and signed a deal with the developer.
Interestingly, Sony’s move to drop Physint also came as a surprise to former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida, who had likely worked with Kojima in the past, since the Metal Gear games used to be heavily associated with PlayStation’s consoles since the release of the original Metal Gear Solid all the way back in 1998. While Yoshida didn’t discuss the subject too much, he simply said, “Wow, that surprised me…”
