Kojima Productions remains committed to the Decima engine.

Kojima Productions Remains Loyal to the Decima Engine

Kojima Productions' Technical Director, Akio Sakamoto, shared his thoughts on the Decima engine from Guerrilla Games, which the studio uses to develop the Death Stranding series.

Nearly a decade ago, Kojima Productions was choosing a technological foundation for its projects and ultimately opted for Decima. According to Sakamoto, while there is no universal engine suitable for all tasks, Decima allows for the realization of ideas that would be difficult to implement with other solutions. One of the main reasons for the choice was the engine's extensive capabilities for creating open-world games.

Although some tools are less intuitive compared to popular commercial counterparts, Decima impresses with its real-time rendering analysis features. This gives developers precise control over the visual component and helps achieve high-quality visuals without sacrificing performance.

A vivid example of the engine's capabilities is the scale of the game worlds in Death Stranding. What might initially appear as mere background—for instance, the snowy mountains in the original game—are actually full-fledged locations that players traverse mid-game. The opening scene with massive sandstone formations is also impressive: the final polygon count reached approximately 25 million, yet the game maintained a stable framerate.

The collaboration between Kojima Productions and Guerrilla Games goes beyond simply using the engine. The Japanese studio regularly makes improvements and adjustments to Decima for its own needs—and shares these changes with the developers of the Horizon series. This exchange of experience has proven mutually beneficial: updates created by Kojima Productions help improve Guerrilla's games, and vice versa. Akio Sakamoto noted that while his team's contributions may not always be reflected in the credits (for example, in the special thanks section of Horizon Forbidden West), the collaboration itself benefits both parties.

Amidst the general trend of studios transitioning to Unreal Engine, Kojima Productions' choice stands out as unconventional. However, as Sakamoto emphasized, the studio does not plan to change engines anytime soon—Decima continues to meet its creative and technical demands, enabling the creation of unique game worlds with impressive detail and scale.