One of the centerpieces of the new Death Stranding 2 trailer is a big kiss between Norman Reedus's Sam and Léa Seydoux's fragile. Hideo Kojima found this a difficult scene to direct, but Reedus found the romantic moment pretty pleasant.
A kiss between the two characters is a particularly notable romantic consummation here, since Sam suffers from aphenphosmphobia, or the fear of being touched. "Sam has this phobia, but finally kisses Fragile," Kojima explained during a SXSW panel. "But this is their first kiss, so it was very difficult to direct in that way."
Asked about his experience performing the scene, Reedus had pretty much the response you'd expect from anybody getting to smooch an attractive film star: "It was niiice." And somehow, the experience reminded him of acting alongside Mads Mikkelsen in the first Death Stranding.
"The first time I had to go face-to-face with anybody, I think it was Mads. I mean, not that same face-to-face, but a different version of that face," Reedus explained, indicating an image of the romantic mocap session being shown on stage. "You see the helmets that we're wearing, they usually have cameras on them," Reedus added, miming two heads bouncing off of each other. "Mads and I were like 'toing! toing!' So we took the cameras off for this."
Reedus noted that he tends to be a "very subtle" actor, which makes performance capture harder. But he was inspired by "this video tape of Benedict Cumberbatch playing the lion in one of the Lion Kings or something, and he's like 'rooooaaaar!' And I was like 'wow, he's really good at this.' So I'm learning, I'm trying to get better." Since Cumberbatch has never been part of a Lion King cast, I suspect Reedus was actually referring to that viral clip of the motion capture for Smaug in the Hobbit films.
The actor says he also took big inspiration from fellow DS2 star Troy Baker, who has plenty of experience with serious performance capture acting in titles like The Last of Us. Baker's take on Higgs is going way over the top this time – Kojima says he'll "apologize beforehand" – so it looks we're getting a pretty wide array of acting styles in this sequel.
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