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Hideo Kojima has announced the release date for the mysterious Death Stranding at TGS 2016, indicating that the title will launch before the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
That’s not everything that Kojima announced with regards to the release window, though. Together with the Tokyo Olympics deadline, the developer also teased on Twitter that the game will launch before the year in which Akira is set.
Fans of classic manga and anime will know that Akira is set in 2019, which means that the release date is some time in 2018 or 2019. The official Twitter account of Kojima Productions also stated that the game would be released before the new Akira movie, but considering that the film project has no actual release date window or even production time planned, this could’ve been a mistake.
Kojima also mentioned other Death Stranding features, including that the casting for a female protagonist is in progress. Taking into consideration the prominent role of Norman Reedus in the game’s marketing so far, this indicates that Death Stranding might have some kind of dual playable character system in the works. This definitely ties in with Kojima’s suggestions that the game could be both single player but also include online gameplay, possibly with one player taking on each of the characters – however this still means that Mads Mikkelsen’s potential role remains a secrecy.
Death Stranding’s release date has already been arranged, at least according to the musician behind the E3 2016 trailer’s music. Even so it’s interesting to see that there’s a definite plan of action for when the game will launch, even if this timetable has been announced early in the project’s development period.
Even though a development cycle of three-to-four years might seem like a short amount of time for a ambitious project such as this, there are few things that will work in the favor of Kojima Productions. Above all, the title is being worked on a third-party engine, so that a lot of the preparation time is shortened. Then again, a title this early in development can suffer from lots of changes, so maybe its best to wait for a more concrete release date before a 2018/2019 launch date is expected.
