Death Stranding 2 Characters Are Powered By Unreal Engine 5’s MetaHuman Tech

The characters featured in Kojima Productions’ Death Stranding 2 are powered by Unreal Engine 5’s MetaHuman technology.

Towards the end of the reveal trailer for Death Stranding 2, it is revealed that the game is powered by Unreal Engine 5’s MetaHuman technology. The feature has previously only been demonstrated on Epic Games’ modern game engine. However, it appears that Epic Games is now allowing developers to incorporate the technology in their in-house game engines.

Decima is the first non-Unreal Engine title to use MetaHuman. The technology paves the way for the creation of fully rigged photo-realistic digital 3D character models in a matter of minutes. This will undoubtedly save Kojima Productions’ a lot of development time and effort.

The original Death Stranding is a 2019 action game developed by Kojima Productions and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment for the PlayStation 4. It is the studio’s first game since it parted ways with Konami in 2015. A Microsoft Windows port license. A director’s cut version was released for the PlayStation 5 in September 2021, and then for Windows in March 2022.

The game is set in the United States following a cataclysmic event which caused destructive creatures to begin roaming the Earth. The player assumes control of Sam Porter Bridges (Norman Reedus), a messenger tasked with bringing supplies to remote colonies and reuniting them via a wireless communications network. Along with Reedus, the game also features the likenesses of actors Mads Mikkelsen, Léa Seydoux, Margaret Qualley, Troy Baker, Tommie Earl Jenkins, and Lindsay Wagner, Guillermo del Toro and Nicolas Winding Refn as supporting characters.

The player is tasked with connecting isolated researchers and survivalists to a communications network known as the Chiral Network while also delivering supply cargo to various isolated cities known as KNOTs. The company and recipients evaluate the player based on their performance (including through “likes” akin to social networks), as well as other factors like whether the cargo was delivered and if it is intact. The player’s statistics, such as stability and weight capacity, are levelled up as a result of these accomplishments, and their standing with particular settings and characters is raised (which can improve rewards). Sam’s ability to move through the environments is influenced by how the player packs their cargo and how much weight they are carrying overall.