Projects involving Hideo Kojima often rely on secrecy and absurd marketing to generate hype within the gaming community. There hasn’t been much information surrounding Death Stranding 2 since its unveiling at 2022’s Game Awards, but a character artist may have just revealed one of the game’s biggest secrets: its 2025 release.
Character artist Aron Vajda is no stranger to PlayStation-exclusive games like DS2, as his work at 3lateral has provided essential art for Spider-Man 2 and Horizon: Forbidden West. Fans have noticed that a listing for Death Stranding is present on Vadja’s ArtStation portfolio with a cryptic 2025 date underneath, signifying a projected release window. 3lateral has confirmed that it is working on DS2, so there’s seemingly a lot of legitimacy surrounding this leak.
On the flip side, this information might be misleading as Artstation requires artists to include a date for large-scale projects, which could simply mean that Vadja is using the 2025 date as a placeholder for the listing. As one ResetEra user pointed out, Vadja works for an outsourcing company rather than Kojima Productions, which means he would be less inclined to know insider information about DS2 than a first-party staff member.
Currently, there is no official confirmation of any of this by Sony or Kojima Productions, but fans are convinced that more concrete information is coming soon as Jeff Keighley’s Game Awards show. On Nov. 22, 2023, The Game Award’s X account replied to a tweet from Hideo Kojima showing images of a mixing deck. This reply was deleted two days later, and many believe that it’s being used to create a trailer for 2023’s Game Awards, which airs Dec. 8, 2023.
With so much information being leaked by accounts linked to the game’s production, it’s safe to bet that an official source will either confirm or deny these details soon.
