We have further confirmation that the character masquerading as the Kojima Productions mascot is, in fact, human. The ever enigmatic director, Hideo Kojima, has released a new image of his beloved hero, this time showing off a bit more skin.
Keep in mind that when we say “a bit more skin,” we mean exactly that. Kojima revealed in May that his new studio’s mascot was named Ludens but, at the time, we weren’t sure if the armor/space suit-wearing adventurer was a person or just a cool glowing skull. Now that we can see his eyes, we’re fairly certain that it’s the former.
Kojima Productions sent a new image of Ludens to Gamespot earlier today, revealing that the character is human or, at the very least, has human eyes. You can check out a close-up of Luden’s face below, which is probably one of the most badass character designs we’ve seen in quite a while. In it, we see Ludens adjusting a light that’s mounted to his helmet. The image came with the tagline, “I’ll keep coming,” which is just as mysterious as the character himself, especially since Kojima Productions keeps saying that Ludens is not planned to actually appear in a video game.
As for Ludens’ inactive role in gaming, we’re calling shenanigans on Kojima and Co. For starters, the guy loves to release information a little bit at a time and keep his audience guessing. When P.T. launched, his team went around wearing shirts that claimed they were part of the fictitious studio responsible for the Silent Hills demo.
Ludens started off as little more than a super cool-looking logo showing off a black and white profile of a skeleton in space armor with the words “Kojima Productions” next to it. Later we got a look at a far more detailed version of the image, with the skull armor glowing under the suit’s clear visor. Now we’re seeing a bit more of Ludens and, despite that fact, we still don’t know what the hell is going on with the guy. Kojima, you squirrely trickster! It’s hard to believe that a mascot would be given this much attention and not be used in an actual game but, hey, maybe the team is being truthful this time around.
Aside from putting a lot of effort into creating a mascot, Kojima has kept plenty busy lately. After his falling out with Konami, the director of all those wonderful Metal Gear games took a short break before signing on with Sony to create his next big project. He built a team, toured a bunch of Sony studios and then went on a trip around the globe looking for a new engine to utilize in his upcoming game. Here’s hoping we get some more details next week at E3!
