Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is a technical marvel with insanely quick loading screens involving plenty of talent on the art as well as engineering side of things. Interestingly, the credits for the game reveal that Nintendo was also part of the game’s development team. As spotted by VGC, the credits sequence for the title reveals that Nintendo Pictures worked on the game alongside Kojima Productions.
The work involving Nintendo Pictures – the visual content company under the larger Nintendo umbrella – revolves around motion capture, with the credits listing Takuma Kaneko as the motion capture director, and Shiegaki Nunokawa as the motion capture advisor.
Motion capture editors Sebastian Jarlsgard, Yoshiko Koyama, Akane Kurosawa, Miku Yoshioka, Naoya Akuta, Stephanie Golim, Ryosuke Yamagishi, Yoko Hori, and Akihiro Matsui were also listed. Coordination for the motion capture was handled by Takaaki Furusawa, Narumi Yokotsuka, and Haruka Tsujimura.
Teaming up with Nintendo Pictures is an interesting choice for Kojima Productions, since the company has traditionally only worked on games developed by Nintendo, with titles like Pikmin 4, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom under its belt.
According to VGC, Nintendo Pictures had previously worked as Dynamo Pictures before being acquired by Nintendo, and had at the time worked with Kojima Productions on the first Death Stranding. This partnership is likely a longer-running one, with the company having formed a rapport with Kojima Productions beforehand.
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach just came out on PS5 today, and celebrating the launch, Kojima Productions released the final trailer for the game. The trailer features quite a few scenes from all over the game, including out-of-context story bits that don’t seem to spoil too much unless you already know what the complete story is. We also get to see a fair bit of gameplay, complete with action-packed bike chases as well as epic boss fights.
Since its release, players have also discovered that the game has incredibly fast loading times, bordering on being instantaneous. Players took to Reddit to discuss the fact that the game was able to load up a save file from the main menu nearly instantly. This is evidence of the fact that the title is making full use of the fast CPU of the PS5, as well as its SSD to load in data as quickly as it possibly can. There is also likely quite a bit of wizardry going on in the software side of things, with the game probably loading in details of the save data before the player even decides to load it.
Much like the first Death Stranding, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach features plenty of celebrities among its cast of characters. Earlier this month, the studio had confirmed that Korean actor and producer Ma Dong-seok – known for his work in movies like The Neighbour, Nameless Gangster: Rules of the Time, and Train to Busan – will also be featured in the game.
For more details, check out our review of Death Stranding 2: On the Beach. Also check out our guide on how to fast travel all over the game’s massive world.