Hideo Kojima doesn’t like the name Death Stranding: Director’s Cut

Kojima Productions’ dystopian delivery adventure Death Stranding is getting a rerelease on PlayStation 5, which will be known as Death Stranding: Director’s Cut. That’s a name that one might think that Death Stranding game director, writer, and designer Hideo Kojima would appreciate, but no. Kojima says that he’s not really on board with the concept of a “Director’s Cut” of Death Stranding, a description that he argues is better reserved for film, specifically when creatively compromised by outside factors.

“A director’s cut in a movie is an additional edit to a shortened version that was either released reluctantly because the director did not have the right to edit it, or because the running time had to be shortened,” Kojima said in a pair of tweets. “In the game, it is not what was cut, but what was additionally produced that was included […] So, in my opinion, I don’t like to call ‘director’s cut’.”

Kojima instead proposes “Director’s Plus,” which sounds, well, very Hideo Kojima. (Kojima’s tweet actually reads “Delector’s Plus” in English, but the original Japanese-language tweet clearly says “Director’s Plus,” so the translation appears to be a typo.)

The thought process makes sense. Implying that the original version of Death Stranding wasn’t what Kojima himself wanted to release — the game certainly did not seem to have its running time compromised — feels fraught. He is, after all, the founder and director of the studio that bears his name, Kojima Productions, so any implication that KojiPro brass might hamper the creative direction of Hideo Kojima seems ludicrous.

Director’s Plus reads like a good enough compromise (even though “Plus” implies a streaming subscription service in modern parlance) and better than “Game of the Year Edition,” an all-too-liberally used designation that really means “We put a code for the DLC in this copy.”

Given Kojima’s penchant for coming up with wonderful nonsense terms like Transfarring and highly descriptive character names like Die-Hardman and Hot Coldman, I think he can do much better than “Director’s Plus.” Whether anyone else will be on board remains to be seen.

Death Stranding: Director’s Cut, if that’s really what you want to call it, comes to PlayStation 5 on Sept. 24. The new version of the game will feature additional cargo delivery options (like a catapult!) and race tracks.

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