Death Stranding Team Featured a Ton of Metal Gear Solid Talent

It looks like Hideo Kojima convinced quite a few former Konami employees to help him work on Death Stranding. 

Death Stranding‘s credits confirm that about 67 of roughly 120 members of the main Death Stranding team previously worked on the Metal Gear Solid series. Of those 67, it seems that 62 worked on Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain. 

What’s even more interesting than the number of former Konami employees who worked on Death Stranding is what roles those team members played. All of the game’s writers were former MGS staff (including Kojima himself), and most of the game’s lead designers and key artists also previously worked on the Metal Gear Solid series. In fact, the vast majority of “newcomers” who worked on the game appear to have served as programmers. 

Speaking of programming, the credits also make it clear that the Horizon Zero Dawn team played a pretty important role in the development of Death Stranding. It seems that about 70 Guerrilla Games developers assisted with the development of Death Stranding, and those numbers include contributions from Horizon Zero Dawn‘s lead programmers (Tommy De Roos and Frank Compagner) as well as that game’s technical director (Michiel van der Leeuw) and art director (Jan-Bart Van Beek). Insomniac and Bend are also listed as partners on the game, but it’s unclear how, exactly, they contributed to the title. 

While most people figured that Death Stranding would feature some MGS elements given that Hideo Kojima’s ideas were the backbone of that franchise, it’s interesting to see how many of the people working on the game day-to-day in various positions previously contributed to Metal Gear Solid in similar capacities. 

So while the future of the MGS franchise is very much in doubt (and we wouldn’t expect Kojima to pick up exactly where he left off following his infamous split from Konami), it’s nice to know that the talent responsible for the recent entries in that franchise is being put to good use. 

Matthew Byrd is a staff writer for Den of Geek. He spends most of his days trying to pitch deep-dive analytical pieces about Killer Klowns From Outer Space to an increasingly perturbed series of editors. You can read more of his work here or find him on Twitter at @SilverTuna014.