Hot on the heels of the Death Stranding Isolations news comes the exhibition that announcement was timed to. Beyond the Strand: The Odyssey of Creation and Endeavor, Kojima Productions’ tenth-anniversary show, opened at Azabudai Hills Gallery in Tokyo on 31 October and runs until 20 December. Officially it’s a retrospective of the studio’s first decade. There’s Hideo Kojima’s high-school book report, the earliest Death Stranding prototype footage, Yoji Shinkawa originals, a full-size copy of the red door from the OD teaser, a life-size Ludens at the entrance and a 360-degree Death Stranding film projected on a six-metre screen. Unofficially, everyone has been crowding round the Physint corner.
That’s where Kojima has left his homework out. Visitors can see part of the Physint script, reportedly more than 150 pages in Japanese (roughly 50,000 words in English) and illustrated with concept sketches. Until now only a few actors and artists had seen the full text. Beside it stands a statue of the protagonist with five interchangeable busts of Bill Skarsgård in different hairstyles, moustaches and outfits. That points either to a disguise system or to the most expensive barber’s window in Minato. Visitors have also photographed mech designs that bear a striking family resemblance to Metal Gear REX. Nobody has confirmed that either machine will appear in the game, and Kojima has insisted that Physint is “quite different” from his old series. Still, a man who builds a bipedal tank and then denies it is a Metal Gear is a little like a chef serving shepherd’s pie and calling it a surprise.
For the record, Physint is Kojima Productions’ third original IP. It was announced in 2024 as a PlayStation project, but Sony stepped away earlier this year and Xbox is now the publishing partner. Skarsgård was confirmed as the lead during Xbox’s Tokyo Game Show broadcast in September, joining Charlee Fraser, Don Lee and Minami Hamabe, with Shinkawa handling character and mechanical design. Kojima has called it the culmination of his forty-year career, and the marketing promises “the next Cold War”. There is no release window, and the horror project OD comes first.
There’s a small, pleasing irony in where the leading man has turned up this Halloween. Skarsgård’s Pennywise didn’t appear in HBO’s new Derry special at all; apparently he was in Tokyo, standing very still in a glass case and modelling five moustaches. Kojima has always written scripts the length of a Russian novel and cutscenes to match, so putting the screenplay behind glass feels entirely in character. For those of us not passing through Tokyo before 20 December, the takeaway is simple: the next Cold War has a script, a face and a wardrobe department. It just doesn’t have a release date.
Join the conversation (0)