Hideo Kojima's Death Stranding has now been out for nearly a week, with the infamously complicated game giving gamers everything one would expect from a Kojima title: a wildly 'out-there' plot that has Hideo putting plenty of his artistic license to use. Some gamers are finding the excessive walking within Death Stranding disenchanting, while others have been captivated when given the arduous task of reconnecting a shattered world.
While many fans celebrated the game's release by releasing Death Stranding memes far and wide, one of the more high-effort ones takes it to the next level. A deepfake-centric YouTube channel has plunked Kojima's face over every character in the trailer, making a hilarious mashup from the otherwise serious trailer and, well, showing off a lot of Hideo Kojima. He's a fantastic artist with many talents, but portraying a wide cast of character isn't one of them:
For the uninitiated, a deepfake is essentially when media of an existing image or video has the person or people in them replaced by someone else's likeness using artificial neural networks. A well-done deepfake can legitimately make it appear as though someone is doing or saying something they're not, and while it's a technology that's equally parts fascinating and frightening in most situations, here it's just done for some Kojima-based fun.
Now that fans have had time to delve into the walking-filled world that Kojima Productions has crafted for gamers across the globe, the game has ended up being one of the most polarizing experiences in years. The deepfake video is likely to be less of a crowd-splitting production, with Kojima's face on characters like Sam, Fragile, Deadman, and even BB sure to get some decent laughs.
The real Hideo Kojima has been in the spotlight for some recent comments he made regarding US-based reviews of his latest production. The 56-year-old videogame designer declared that Death Stranding may have been difficult for an American audience to understand, which wasn't entirely well received by his American audience.
Death Stranding is available now for PlayStation 4, with a PC release slated to arrive in the summer of 2020.
Source: YouTube