Kojima Productions’ tenth-anniversary exhibition in Tokyo includes a confidential Physint story document of more than 150 pages, and its cover points at the espionage game’s next setting. As GameRant reported from the Beyond the Strand exhibition, the document reportedly runs past 150 pages in Japanese, with an English translation of roughly 50,000 words.
Beyond the Strand opened in Tokyo on October 31 and displays internal production materials from the studio’s projects. Among the Physint items, the most revealing is the story document’s cover, which bears the words “A New Cold War Begins.” Three intelligence-gathering disciplines are also visible on it: HUMINT, SIGINT, and OSINT, shorthand for human intelligence, signals intelligence, and open-source intelligence.
HUMINT, SIGINT, OSINT: a hint at the systems
The three labels are the kind of jargon a working intelligence agency uses to sort how information is gathered, and they suggest the shape of the game Kojima has promised. Speaking on his Koji10 radio program in October, the director said, “It’s about spies, but I want plenty of new ideas and a different kind of spy action.”
How those disciplines might translate into mechanics is still open. Kojima has not said whether HUMINT, SIGINT, and OSINT will become gameplay systems or only inform the plot, and no Physint gameplay footage has been shown. Fans tracking the director’s output can follow his steady Death Stranding 2 teases in the meantime.
A finished script, a game that is just starting
The document’s scale says more about where Physint stands than any trailer could. Kojima has indicated that the core plot, the overall concept, and the storyboards are already in place, while character scans and other early development work have only just begun. The full document has not been made public, and access is reportedly limited to selected actors, artists, and other people involved in the project.
The “A New Cold War Begins” cover echoes a tagline on Physint’s September promotional artwork, which also carried a geopolitical framing, and the project has a confirmed ensemble cast in Bill Skarsgård, Charlee Fraser, Don Lee, and Minami Hamabe. Skarsgård was confirmed as the lead in September.
Physint was first announced in 2024 and is being developed by Kojima Productions in partnership with Xbox, following the project’s earlier association with PlayStation. No release date has been announced.
