For a few years now, The Walking Dead’s break out star Norman Reedus has been in the spotlight of the video game world, thanks to the upcoming debut of the new Kojima Productions title Death Stranding, which releases tomorrow.
Reedus stars in the cinematic game, which is acclaimed developer Hideo Kojima’s newest venture into the gaming world.
But Death Stranding is not the first project Reedus and Kojima collaborated on. Reedus was set to star in Silent Hills, the now-canceled ninth installment of the popular Silent Hill franchise. It was supposed to be a survivor style horror game on the PlayStation 4 console before the project was terminated. The game’s cancellation came as a result of a falling out between Kojima and Silent Hills developer, Konami.
Reedus, however, is not sad about the cancellation of Silent Hills. In fact, he told The Hollywood Reporter that was happy the original project fell through because it paved the way for Death Stranding, which Reedus described as, “way better.”
The comment spawned from a question comparing Silent Hills to Death Stranding, asking as to any possible similarities between the two games.
Reedus noted that the two games are very different and touched on his feelings regarding the cancellation of Silent Hills, both then and now.
“When that went away I was bummed,” he said, “but when Hideo described what we were doing next, I completely forgot about it. I was like, thank God that didn’t work because this is way better. This is a completely different thing.”
The collaborative partnership between Reedus and Kojima was actually started by director Guillermo del Toro. He advised Reedus that he should agree to work with a guy who was going to call him about doing a video game. At del Toro’s urging, Reedus agreed to work on Silent Hills, but when the game was shelved in 2015, Kojima had another pitch to run by the Walking Dead star.
“So Hideo, Guillermo, and I were going to do another game, a Silent Hills game, but Konami and Kojima had a falling out, so it went radio silence for a minute,” Reedus said, recalling the start of this project. “Then they came back and said Sony is back in with Hideo and we’re going to make a brand-new game. I was more excited about that, to be honest because Hideo came down to San Diego Comic-Con and had an iPad and was showing me some of the graphics he was working on, which were just mind-blowing. I knew it was going to be a home run right from the get-go.”
Death Stranding releases on November 8 on the PlayStation 4.
