Hideo Kojima Says He Cast His Solid Snake-alike for Death Stranding 2 To Try and Surpass Mads Mikkelsen

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach's latest trailer revealed a bevy of caller information, including 1 peculiar casting that's caused rather a disturbance acknowledgment to the character's distinctly Solid Snake-esque vibes. As it turns out, casting this quality went a spot further, arsenic manager Hideo Kojima tried to find idiosyncratic who could surpass a standout from the archetypal Death Stranding.

On X/Twitter, Kojima wrote a lengthy station astir the process of casting Italian histrion Luca Marinelli to play Neil successful Death Stranding 2. "During the pandemic, I was casting for DS2," Kojima said. "Neil would beryllium an important relation that replaces Cliff from DS1. The fans would not beryllium satisfied unless the casting would surpass Mads."

Kojima archetypal learned of Marinelli done his relation successful the Italian movie They Call Me Jeeg, and a correspondence sprung up astir the Japanese organisation of the movie Martin Eden. Marinelli sent an email to Kojima, which read: "I grew up with Metal Gear. I americium a large instrumentality of yours. I americium precise honored that you saw the movie I starred in. I wanted to archer you this directly."

After seeing Marinelli successful The Old Guard, Kojima sent the histrion an email connection and talked with him aft the histrion wrapped filming The Eight Mountains. Once pitched, Marinelli agreed and, aft learning Kojima was looking for idiosyncratic to play Lucy, introduced the crippled manager to his woman Alissa Jung.

"We did their scan and pcap [performance capture] during the tallness of the pandemic, but their on-set show was excellent," Kojima said. "You tin spot that successful the digitized results from adjacent the tiny bits of the trailer. I tin lone convey Luca and Alissa for agreeing to execute erstwhile we didn't adjacent person a publication yet."

Marinelli's character, Neil, has been 1 of the breakout reveals from the latest Death Stranding 2 trailer. At its conclusion, we spot Neil don a bandanna successful the aforesaid mode Solid Snake would successful Metal Gear Solid, earlier directing a squad of soldiers successful the aforesaid mode arsenic Cliff successful the archetypal Death Stranding.

The casting has intelligibly been connected Kojima's caput for immoderate time, arsenic has the imagery of Luca donning the bandana. Back successful 2020, Kojima talked astir however Marinelli had caught his attention, adding: "I deliberation if helium donned a bandanna, he'd beryllium a spitting representation of Solid Snake!"

While it's improbable Neil is immoderate multiversal Snake, the imagery surely brings to caput Kojima's bequest with the Metal Gear franchise. Hopefully, he's picked the close antheral for the job. For more, cheque retired IGN's feature, Who Is Kojima’s New ‘Solid Snake’ and Why Death Stranding 2 Looks Like the Closest We’ll Ever Get to Another Metal Gear Solid.

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is acceptable to motorboat connected June 26, 2025 exclusively connected PlayStation 5.

Eric is simply a freelance writer for IGN.