It’s not a new month (hello October) without some Kojima rumor hitting the internet. The latest rumor comes from ResetEra Dusk Golem, who has claimed that Death Stranding 2 is in the works under the codename “Ocean”.
Dusk Golem has been known for his horror game-related leaks in the past, so his word does carry some weight. Taking to ResetEra, Dusk Golem said:
“Death Stranding 2 is in development (and for some insiders to know I’m not bullshitting about this in the future, its internal codename is Ocean), but Kojima has had a long standing deal with Sony on this, which is being analyzed if Sony and Kojima Productions should renew their contracts after DS2 or not at present, but was never in question before this due to a multi-game contract Sony and Kojima Productions have.
But Death Stranding 2 itself was always plotted to be with Sony. I’m not going to say a single actual thing about the game itself, not now or in the future, so don’t ask even if people figure out later I’m 100% telling the truth about the codename and contract stuff. But any murmurs about a DS2 with anyone other than Sony is bullshit.
The deal with Xbox was never meant to be DS2, this rumor is just false, Sony and Kojima Productions have a multi-game contract that expires after DS2 and at present is being decided by both parties whether to continue their relationship or end it after DS2, and that is the truth.”
The claims seem to be in apparent retaliation to a report from 9to5Google, which claims Death Stranding 2 was slated to release on the Google Stadia, however, it didn’t come to fruition because it was a single-player game.
Our analysis:
None of what’s been said is actually new and the claims from 9to5Google doesn’t really make sense to us. We know that Sony owns the IP to Death Stranding via trademarks, so why Sony would allow Kojima to make a Google Stadia game with it doesn’t add up. Logically, it makes no sense for Sony to give up its very successful single-player IP to Google.
In addition, we already know that Kojima is very likely working on Death Stranding 2, thanks to Norman Reedus himself. In a Leo Edit interview, Reedus acknowledged that he was working on a second game. In a response to a Death Stranding question, Reedus said “We just started the second one”.
He follow up with “It took me maybe two or three years to finish all the MoCap sessions and everything. It takes a lot of work. And then the game came out, and it just won all these awards, and it was a huge thing, so we just started part two of that.”
Soon after, Kojima himself acknowledged the apparent slip-up with a playful tweet on Twitter.
It’s been heavily rumored that Kojima was working on a Stadia game in the past, but Death Stranding 2 logically seem like it could be it.
So in short, none of this is really new, apart from the possibility of Death Stranding 2 being codenamed “Ocean”.
For more news, check out another actor slip-up from Lance Reddick who might have revealed he’s working on a Horizon Forbidden West expansion.
