Recently, new character posters for Hideo Kojima's spy thriller "Physint" were released. Attentive players noticed copyright attributions for MetaHuman, 3Lateral, and Epic Games at the bottom of the posters. This has led to speculation that the project, after parting ways with Sony, is now being developed using Epic-related technologies.
"Physint" was initially supported by PlayStation in collaboration, with early development relying on Guerrilla's Decima engine. However, after Sony recently announced the termination of this partnership, the game is now set to be published by Xbox Game Studios. It is widely believed in the industry that since Decima is a first-party Sony engine, Kojima Productions will lose access to it following the end of the collaboration and must switch to a different technical solution.
MetaHuman is Epic's high-fidelity digital human and motion capture pipeline tool, which can be integrated into other engine workflows. "Death Stranding 2" also uses MetaHuman for facial capture, while still running on the Decima engine underneath. Currently, neither Kojima Productions nor Xbox has confirmed which engine "Physint" is using; it has only been confirmed that the project employs Epic's digital human production toolchain.
If the project switches entirely to Unreal Engine 5, it would mean migrating and reconstructing a large number of completed scenes and assets, potentially extending the overall development cycle. Others believe that only the MetaHuman digital human module is being introduced, while the underlying engine will remain a different solution. The actual technical details await further official disclosure.
In a recent interview with The Washington Post, Hideo Kojima revealed that his team is currently testing multiple engines and has not yet made a final decision. He stated that the script for "Physint" is complete, the game concept is established, and storyboards are ready. The studio has begun creating 3D models and scanning actors for modeling.
