Kojima Productions’ Death Stranding has a release date. Of course, it’s not an officially announced release date but creator Hideo Kojima has noted that at least internally, a release date has been decided. Kojima Productions official Twitter noted that, “Yes, Death Stranding has a set release date. Duh, how else would we be able to set a budget?” Of course, he also said it would be out before the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 so that’s not exactly narrowing it down.

It also seems that other casting is happening with Norman Reedus’s character having a possible heroine. Again, this was in response to a joke about the game being about a naked dude so do what you will that information.

However, there is something more concrete. It seems that Death Stranding will introduce a new kind of co-op gameplay, though it’s still playable solo. Kojima’s goal seems to be in creating bonds between players, which leads us to assume some kind of Journey-like style of co-op. Again, nothing is confirmed at this time.

Death Stranding is currently in development for PS4 and PC.

Humble beginnings… pic.twitter.com/IDNAAQ3tZd

— KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS (Eng) (@KojiPro2015_EN) September 18, 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNTdus18zyM&feature=youtu.be

Update: The headline of this story has been updated accordingly to correctly the reflect the content of this story. Our apologies for any confusion caused.

Original story:

There are a lot of people eager to play Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding– his next game appears to be every bit as ambitious, crazy, and out there as his precious work, and it is also going to be the first time in years that Kojima gets to break free from the confines of the Metal Gear series and make something altogether new.

However, at this point, most people have also accepted that the game is a long way from release- at this point, it doesn’t even have an engine! Who knows when we will get to play it, right?

Well, it sounds like at least one person in the world does- Icelandic music artist Ryan Karazija (one of the members of Low Roar who provided the song used in Death Stranding’s E3 trailer) was recently on YongYea’s YouTube channel for an interview, where he revealed how a meeting with Hideo Kojima went. “We had drinks, we talked, we had good food and laughed a bunch, and he asked about how I made certain sounds on a song, and different things like that,” he recounted. “And he showed me, he had his iPad, so he showed me all his pictures about what he was doing, his work with Norman Reedus. So he shows me a bunch of photos, and I know when the game is coming out, and all this stuff, and I can’t tell you guys,” he laughed, before re-emphasizing that he does in fact know when it will be out, and he’s not just joking.

While we still don’t know when the game will be out, we now at least know that Kojima has a projected release date for it in mind, which is good to know- some kind of deadline ensures some implicit structure to the development process after all. Let’s hope that Death Stranding comes out sooner rather than later.

Hideo Kojima has talked a bit about episodic gaming in the past and while you don’t necessarily need to press the panic button when it comes to his next game Death Stranding, he is upbeat for what the future holds.

Speaking to GameSpot following the Develop 2016 keynote, Kojima noted that making Death Stranding a triple A title was to prove that one could achieve such a project without “being part of a big company.”

Kojima was then asked if episodic releases appeal to him. “For [Death Stranding] I can’t tell. I’m not sure. But in the future I think this is a change that will definitely take place and I’d be interested. I don’t think movies in the future will last two hours, especially when people are already demanding more speedy experiences and delivery.

“So taking shorter time spans to develop, putting it out, integrating user feedback quickly, and having that freedom in game-making, I think it will apply to movies and TV too. Right now we have two-hour-long movies and TV episodes are roughly 40 minutes, but in Japan you have morning shows that last 15 minutes. That’s where I think things are headed, having five or 15-minute episodes. For games, having massive, long games will become a thing of the past.”

Episodic games are fairly popular – titles like Life is Strange, Hitman, Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead and Tales From the Borderlands, Resident Evil Revelations 2 and so on have seen a good to great amount of success. We’ll see if Death Stranding goes in that direction or not.