The picture seems to have been taken from a phone, but you can still pretty clearly see Spencer, Bond, and Kojima donning a ceremonial sash with Japanese text printed lengthwise.
“You know how before making horror movies or dramas, people go to a shrine for Oharai?” Kojima said. “Well, this is a scary game, so we did the Oharai ceremony with Microsoft.”
According to Wikipedia, Oharai, also spelled Ōharae, is a ritual traditionally held biannually to purify a large group of people for whatever reason. In this case, Kojima is strongly suggesting it was performed in order to cleanse or purify his collaborative project with Xbox, OD, which is a very strange-looking horror game that probably could some sort of cleansing.
While we didn’t learn much else about OD from the video, we know it’ll explore the nature of fear and blur the lines between video game and movie, which Kojima is increasingly leaning into with OD, Death Stranding 2, and the recently announced, untitled action-espionage game.
OD is just one of many upcoming horror games we can’t wait to get spooked by.
Source: gamesradar.com
