Norman Reedus casually reveals the existence of Death Stranding 2
The Walking Dead star blithely ended years of speculation about a follow-up to Hideo Kojima's 2019 package delivery game
Video game development can be a weirdly secretive endeavor, with even the existence of a future project kept as some powerful reveal, only to be doled out when the hype engine goes hungry. Sure, Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding was a critical success, made a lot of money, and got a big, fancy director’s edition earlier last year, But a sequel? Who’s to say?
Norman Reedus, apparently: The Walking Dead star gave a long, genuinely interesting interview touching on a wide number of aspects of his career—Actor! Artist! Author! Motorcyle Man! Etc.!—that also briefly touched on his job as the face, body, and voice of Sam Porter Bridges, star of the 2019 package delivery simulator. And also its sequel, which Reedus revealed, completely casually, while talking to Leo, even though neither game director Kojima, nor game publisher Sony, have revealed the second game’s existence in any concrete terms to date.
“We just started the second one,” Reedus notes when asked about the series, accidentally breaking major gaming news before going on to reference Ms. Pac-Man of all things. Reedus also revealed the very charming story of how he got the gig:
Guillermo Del Toro, who gave me my first movie, called me up and said, “Hey, there’s a guy named Hideo Kojima, he’s gonna call you, just say yes.” And I go, “What do you mean just say yes?” He goes, “Stop being an asshole, just say yes.” Then I was in San Diego and Hideo came with a big group of people, he’s from Tokyo, and he showed me what he was working on on a game called Silent Hill. I was blown away by what he was showing me, and I was like, “Yes, let’s do this.” It’s not Ms. Pac-Man; it’s so realistic, it’s so futuristic, it’s so complicated and beautiful, and I was completely blown away.
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.
We would like to note that a), we all genuinely deserve to have a Guillermo Del Toro in our lives, and b), the technical requirements for Death Stranding and its sequel do sound more technologically complicated than Ms. Pac-Man (1982), so, fair point to Reedus there.
Reedus goes on to talk about the weirdness of being scanned by game makers so that his likeness can be used in perpetuity (something he shares with future Ride With Norman Reedus guest Keanu Reeves, whose digital appearance in Cyberpunk 2077 spawned a whole bunch of questions about how these sort of virtual likenesses can be, uh, “used” by fans). He also talks about what’s going on with his Walking Dead spinoff, his upcoming book, and all of the millions of other things Norman Reedus does when he’s not killing zombies on the teevee, or blowing up the marketing plans of massive video game developers.