Troy Baker Won't Blame Kojima for Walking Away From Death St

"I don't want to spend the next 20, 30 years of my life in one world." That's not Troy Baker talking about himself. It's Baker describing how he understands Hideo Kojima's mindset as a creator, and it might be the most honest thing anyone close to the director has said about the future of Death Stranding.

In an interview with GamesRadar+ ahead of the 2026 BAFTA Game Awards, Baker, who played the flamboyant antagonist Higgs in both Death Stranding games, was asked about whether the series has more life in it. His answer was generous toward Kojima but surprisingly candid about the possibility that it might not.

"I've learned to trust Hideo, and he's not running out of ideas anytime soon," Baker said. "I think that there's a lot that he did to set up this world and these characters that we could extrapolate from. But I also understand him as a creator going, 'I don't want to spend the next 20, 30 years of my life in one world.' We've already seen he's got so many other ideas and things that are already in development."

Those other ideas are OD, the mysterious horror project being developed alongside Xbox Game Studios, and Physint, a stealth-action game reportedly straddling the line between film and video games. Both are in active development at Kojima Productions, and both represent a pretty clear signal that the studio's attention is elsewhere.

Baker as audience member first

What struck me about Baker's comments is how little ego is in them. This is an actor whose role as Higgs gave him some of the most memorable scenes in either Death Stranding game, and he's essentially saying he'd be fine watching Kojima's next thing from the couch. "I always try to approach this as an audience member," Baker added, "and what is it that I would want to appreciate from [creators], and if I get the opportunity to double down and be a part of it, then that's gravy. That's a bonus."

He went further: ", I think, for these creators and these developers that I've worked with, I'm more excited to see what they come up with next, and one way or another, be a part of it."

I think Baker's framing here is the right one. Kojima has never been a franchise guy in the traditional sense. He famously tried to leave Metal Gear Solid behind multiple times over the course of two decades and only fully escaped it when Konami forced his hand. Death Stranding, for all its weirdness, was born out of that liberation. Asking Kojima to settle into another long-running series would be asking him to repeat the exact pattern he spent years trying to break.

And honestly, two Death Stranding games might be exactly the right number. The sequel, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, launched on PC in March and has been receiving steady post-launch support from port developer Nixxes Software. Patch 1.4 dropped yesterday, improving texture quality on medium and lower settings, expanding sharpness controls for upscaling, and fixing frame generation bugs with AMD FSR and Intel XeSS. It's the kind of quiet, competent patching that suggests a studio wrapping up its obligations on a finished product rather than building toward years of ongoing content.

The game is also available on Fanatical and the Humble Store for anyone still on the fence.

Kojima turning his full attention to OD and Physint feels like the natural move. Both projects sound like they're pushing into territory he hasn't explored before, which is exactly the kind of restless creative energy Baker was describing. Whether Death Stranding ever gets a third entry is up to Kojima alone, but Baker clearly isn't losing sleep over it. Given how many actors in this industry cling to franchise roles like life rafts, that level of detachment is refreshing. Baker's resume, spanning The Last of Us, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and both Death Stranding titles, probably makes it easier to be generous about letting one series go.