Beyond the Strand stages Kojima Productions first decade

Kojima Productions has wired its 10th anniversary exhibition straight into the office. For the whole run of Beyond the Strand: The Odyssey of Creation and Endeavor, at Azabudai Hills Gallery in Tokyo from Oct. 31 to Dec. 20, the venue is connected around the clock to the studio through MADO, the telepresence system that kept production going during the pandemic. It anchors a section on how the studio's tools and working methods changed while making Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, next to early ending concepts and location-scouting material from that game.

The opening section goes further back: a book report Hideo Kojima wrote in high school, footage from the earliest Death Stranding prototype and original design art by Yoji Shinkawa, the studio's longtime artist, all shown for the first time. A third section looks ahead to OD, the horror project in development with Xbox Game Studios, with a full-scale recreation of the red door from its teaser and filming props that have never been shown.

New work was made for the show, too: three statues, a life-size 10th anniversary Ludens at the entrance and a 360-degree Death Stranding video projected on a screen six meters across. Shinkawa also has a first solo show, Yoji Shinkawa Personal Works, free at the books ogaki store in the same complex through Nov. 3. Early visitors have already been through the main exhibition.

The studio was founded in December 2015, after Kojima left Konami, and its first game was revealed the following June. Killscreen spent that week asking what was going on in Death Stranding. Ten years on, the earliest prototype footage is in a gallery.