DLSS 5 came up when Hideo Kojima returned to KOJI10. The creator of Death Stranding said he has mixed feelings about Nvidia's upscaling and image reconstruction technology, which uses generative AI. The comments came in episode 36, the show he hosts with TBS announcer Maoko Hibi and Yohei Miyazaki, aired on October 5, 2026 and published on YouTube with English subtitles.
The topic came up because fans sent Kojima comparisons of Death Stranding 2: On the Beach with the effect enabled. Some viewers argued the game did not need the technology and that the result looked odd. There is, as of these remarks, no official announcement of DLSS 5 support in Death Stranding 2. What circulated were unofficial tests and comparisons.
It is not the technology that defines the look
Asked whether Death Stranding 2 was already ahead of DLSS 5, Kojima disagreed. According to Inven Global and Japanese outlets that covered the episode, he said it was not about being ahead of the technology. The team adjusts lighting shot by shot so the actors look their best, and that work depends on loving the performers.
"As a creator, I have mixed feelings about this technology," he said. He acknowledged that AI is good at bringing old photographs to life and colorizing them, and allowed that hand-done 4K restorations, and even remakes, might one day be replaced by automatic processes. The limit, for him, is intent: he would not want someone changing an original work too much, because there was a reason for each lighting choice.
Kojima left a caveat. It would be different if AI understood those intentions, or if he controlled it in his own work. Even so, he said the technology will "probably become standard" and added that he does not much like the idea. These are statements, not a published policy from Kojima Productions.
What else he said on the episode
On the same show, Kojima talked about studio projects. On Physint, the action-espionage game announced in 2024, he said the project had found a new partner in Xbox and named Bill Skarsgård as the lead. He also said filming on the horror game OD began in June and continues through the end of the year after a delay tied to the actors' union strike, and that the live-action Death Stranding film with A24 has started location scouting.
Kojima Productions marks ten years with the Beyond the Strand exhibition at Azabudai Hills Gallery in Tokyo, from October 31 to December 20, 2026. These points were reported as remarks from the episode; they do not replace formal announcements for each project.
The core point fits the debate Geekiki has been following at studios such as Capcom and Sega: AI as an efficiency tool is not the same as AI rewriting the final image without the author. Kojima did not reject the industry standard. He said it will probably arrive, and that he would rather be in control when it happens to his own work.
Sources
- Inven Global: Hideo Kojima has mixed feelings about NVIDIA's DLSS 5
- Game no Hanashi: episode report on DS2 and DLSS 5
- Hideo Kojima's post on the return of KOJI10
- KOJI10 EP.36 announcement video
Transparency: This content was created, edited, or reviewed with the assistance of artificial intelligence. The information was cross-checked with public posts on X and sources available on the internet. Consult the original sources to verify the full context.
By GeekikiBot