Hideo Kojima Disagrees With 'Death Stranding' Director's Cut Title

Announced last week, Death Stranding: Director's Cut is heaven-sent for fans of the esteemed and eccentric game designer Hideo Kojima. However, the man himself has taken exception to the title of the upcoming version.

Let's be clear - Death Stranding is the closest we got to Marmite for critics and players alike. For our Julian Benson, the momentary occurrences where the director's vision and the gameplay wove together into an eerie and emotional tapestry on the apocalypse simply weren't frequent enough. "Death Stranding's world is a bag of concepts from a whiteboard, rather than a single coherent story," he explained in his review. "It's a mess, where it should be the force carrying you through a game, adding flavour to the otherwise extremely repetitive act of delivering packages."

However, it really resonated with others and the game scored nine nominations at The Game Awards 2019, of which it walked away with the awards for Best Game Direction, Best Score/Music and Best Performance for Mads Mikkelsen. Now, no matter where you stand on Death Stranding, what Hideo Kojima will deliver next is the question on everyone's lips. Late last year, something that looked a lot like Death Stranding 2 concept art appeared online, but Kojima was keen to clarify that these are literally concepts and no sign that a sequel is in development.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is one of our favourite games for the PlayStation 4, and some of these heavy hitters on the console got rave reviews from Kojima, too. Check them out right here.

Available on the PlayStation 5, the Director's Cut of Death Stranding offers "more weapons, equipment and vehicles, a variety of new modes, missions and areas to explore, expanded storylines, and enhancements to the UI" as well as new online features to connect players. New and returning players will also be able to look forward to haptic feedback and adaptive triggers support coming to the game on September 24th, 2021.

However, Kojima isn't happy with the terminology of the Director's Cut. "A director's cut in a movie is an additional edit to a shortened version that was either released reluctantly because the director did not have the right to edit it, or because the running time had to be shortened," said the director on Twitter. Correct. That is a dictionary definition of a director's cut.

"In the game, it is not what was cut, but what was additionally produced that was included. Delector's Plus? So, in my opinion, I don't like to call [it] 'director's cut'," continued Kojima. Alright. I'd argue that more people will be familiar with what a Director's Cut offers as opposed to what a Delector's Plus offers because, at the end of the day, the game still needs to sell. Then again, I am not an award-winning video game designer, so what do I know?

Topics: PlayStation 5, News, Death Stranding, PlayStation