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Mads Mikkelsen Is as Confused About Death Stranding as You Are

But he still thinks Hideo Kojima is brilliant.

mads mikkelsen in death stranding

Sony debuted a new trailer for Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding at the Game Awards on December 1, and many gamers who saw it were extremely confused about just what the heck they were watching. They weren’t alone: even key personnel in the game’s creation like actor Mads Mikkelsen is pretty confused about what Kojima is cooking up with the game.

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Mikkelsen, known for his roles in movies like Hannibal and Doctor Strange, is voicing a character seen controlling a group of undead soldiers via some weird umbilical chords in the new trailer. In a new interview with BirthMoviesDeath, the actor praised Kojima’s creative genius and called Death Stranding’s plot “very intricate,” the point of baffling him even after getting some explanations from Kojima.

He said that Kojima is “a very brilliant man. I mean… the stuff he told me? I only understood some of it.

“There was a lot of (mimes being baffled) ‘what?’ I have to see it before I understand. Because with Death Stranding, he’s creating something completely new.”

Mikkelsen indicated he isn’t much of a gamer and so wasn’t familiar with Kojima prior to working with him on Death Stranding, but that he recognized some of his work when told it was attributed to him.

“But I also saw the trailer he had done with Norman Reedus, and I thought that was spectacular just from the standpoint of an actor,” he added. “The emotion, the feeling of it, the sensuality in what he does. Without even being a gamer, I was like, this is crazy, what he’s doing. I loved it.”

He also identified a certain film-like quality to Kojima’s games in that the director is creating his own worlds with them. For Death Stranding, Mikkelsen is helping bring that world to life through both his voice acting and motion capture.

Calling him “a master,” the actor also heaped praise on Kojima when speaking in a separate interview with IGN. “He’s the Kasparov of video games. He’s such a visionary person. [Working on a video game] was just something I’d never crossed before, so it was a wonderful opportunity to dive into that world.”

Comparing the game designer to Kasporov is high praise, as the former World Chess Champion is widely considered to be one of the greatest chess players of all time.

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About the author

Nick Santangelo

Nick has been a gamer since the 8-bit days and has been reporting on the games industry since 2011. Don't interrupt him while he's questing through an RPG or desperately clinging to hope against all reason that his Philly sports teams will win something.

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