Mads Mikkelsen on Death Stranding: the story is completely out of this world
In an interview with IGN Japan (translated by IGN US) held during Tokyo Comic Con last weekend, Mads Mikkelsen talked about Death Stranding and working with Hideo Kojima. When discussing his character in the game, he explained that it’s not really a matter of good guys or bad guys, something he also said in an interview earlier this year.
“The characters are very dualistic in (Kojima’s) games: There is no such thing as a bad guy or a good guy in his games.” Mikkelsen told IGN.
“It is all a challenge; you have to go through these characters to achieve certain things. And it’s also a learning curve, and they will be an obstacle for you sometimes, and sometimes they will be a help for you.”
Furthermore, the characters’ roles may change during the course of the game.
“[Kojima’s] games are not as black and white as Hollywood is sometimes. So there are more nuances of gray in his world. You’ll have to encounter these characters in different ways throughout the game.”
When IGN asked him what attracted him to the project, Mikkelsen replied: “Well, him [Kojima], and the fact that he is the Einstein of the gaming world. Everybody knows him. My son heard about this offer and he went, ‘Woah, are you serious?!’ He’s just a legend in this world.”
Due to the nature of games and game development, recording is very different than for a movie, Mikkelsen explained.
“It’s obviously very, very different work from being an actor in a film, where you have a curve, you have an arc, you have lines, you have a fellow actor, you have a scene. Here it’s a different world. We have to do some generic things that can be used in [Kojima’s] world and he can manipulate that. So for us it’s all this motion-capture and wearing a helmet, and doing specific moves – it’s got nothing to do with acting, in that sense.”
“But it’s been really fun, and you can just tell that Hideo has an otherworldly approach to all of this. He has is a master genius in this part of the world. He’s very, very easy to work with – the whole thing is in his head, and he just asks us to do certain things, and he knows exactly what he wants to use them for. It’s very interesting.”
For now the game is still shrouded in mystery, and Mikkelsen could offer no further clues on what to expect.
“It’s an enormously labyrinthine game, and I would not be sufficiently educated in it to tell you how it’s working yet. All I can say is that I’ve seen some stuff and I’ve never seen anything like it; the story is completely out of this world.”
