Death Stranding Studio CTO Explains Choice of Decima Engine for Both Games

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Most major games today are made with popular engines like Unreal Engine 5 or Unity, but Kojima Productions continues to use Guerrilla Games’ Decima Engine for both Death Stranding games. In a recent interview with Automaton Media, the studio’s chief technology officer, Akio Sakamoto, shared details about why they’ve chosen this engine.

For Sakamoto, the key reason to choose the Decima engine was its ability to support the technology Kojima Productions needed for creating expansive, open-world games. Although it wasn’t as user-friendly as some other options, its powerful tools for analyzing how things render on screen really stood out. He believes there’s no single ‘best’ game engine – each studio has to pick what works best for its specific projects, and for Kojima Productions, that was Decima.

Sakamoto shared that when they were considering using Decima for their game, he personally tested the engine. He found it had many of the features needed for an open-world game, and while it wasn’t as user-friendly as some commercial engines, its built-in tools for analyzing how the game renders were a major advantage. Being able to get detailed data without needing separate programs was especially helpful. He also appreciated that the development environment was designed for large teams, and included features he’d wanted in his previous engine. Considering all these benefits, they decided to move forward with Decima.

Wow, it’s been almost ten years since we started working with the Decima engine! I’ve seen firsthand how it lets us do things that would be really tough, maybe even impossible, with other engines. It’s not perfect for everything, of course, but it really opens up possibilities for us creatively.

Later in the interview, Sakamoto explained that he’d like to see artists working directly with Decima to design their own visual effects, instead of relying solely on programmers. He pointed out that game engines do much more than just handle graphics; they’re involved in almost every aspect of development, meaning all developers interact with the engine in some capacity, even if it’s not directly.

People often think of game engines as tools for creating graphics, but they actually do much more – they support the entire game development process. While different developers use different tools depending on their job, everyone involved in creation interacts with the engine in some way. In this case, every developer uses Decima in some capacity.

Kojima Productions revealed last week that Death Stranding 2: On the Beach will launch on PC on March 19th. A new trailer accompanied the announcement, showcasing how the game will look on the platform. The studio also confirmed the PC version will offer smooth, uncapped frame rates, support for the DualSense controller’s features, and compatibility with ultrawide monitors at 21:9 and 32:9 aspect ratios.

For more details about Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, check out our review of its PS5 version.

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2026-02-17 16:11