Update: At last night's Game Awards we were treated to a new trailer for Death Stranding. Tonally the trailer is consistent with what's come before, featuring a combination of fantastical elements and more realistic military characters all wrapped up in Kojima's trademark weirdness.
You can watch the new trailer below:
Original article continues below...
To say there’s a buzz around Death Stranding would be an understatement. It may be a confused and excited buzz, like the kind you would hear from a hive of bees that have suddenly found their extinction is in reversal, but it’s a buzz nonetheless.
This is largely because Death Stranding is set to be the first title from Kojima Studios, the company set up by revered Metal Gear Solid creator, Hideo Kojima.
After his well-publicized departure from Konami, Kojima announced Death Stranding at Sony’s E3 2016 presentation and made something of a massive impression.
We don’t know much about the game at all at the moment but there are enough clips, small details and rumors out there that we’re interested and keen to know more.
Cut to the chase
- What is it? Honestly, who really knows. It’s the debut title from Hideo Kojima’s new studio Kojima Studios.
- When can I play it? Sometime in the next 2 years. Maybe.
- What will it cost? Likely to be around $60/£45/AU$59
- What can I play it on? PS4
Trailers and screenshots
The reveal trailer that was shown at E3 in 2016 may have been more than 3 minutes long, but it didn’t reveal much about the game at all other than that it would star The Walking Dead’s Norman Reedus.
A second even longer and 4K trailer was shown at The Game Awards at the end of 2016. This trailer starred Hannibal’s Mads Mikkelsen and Guillermo Del Toro and although it didn’t give us any more of an idea of what the game will actually even be about (in fact leaving us more confused than we were before) it did send expectations soaring.
From what we can guess, the events of the second trailer take place before the events of the first, since the baby being transported in the incubator (in the second) is almost certainly Norman Reedus (as seen in the first trailer). They have the same handcuff and stomach scars.
As for what this means we have absolutely no idea. Bear in mind Kojima has, in the past, been a fan of including footage in trailers that never made it into the final game. Anyone remember the 'Grand Theft Auto' exchange from the first MGS3 trailer?
Release date
There’s no definite release date just yet but Kojima did tell fans during the 2016 Tokyo Game Show that Death Stranding would be out before 2019.
What do we know so far?
Gameplay
At the moment, we don’t know all that much about Death Stranding other than that it’ll be an open world action title starring Norman Reedus and Mads Mikkelsen.
It’s not likely, however, to be the standard open world action fare we’ve grown used to, not that we’d expect anything standard from Kojima.
According to Kojima his first title with Sony is going to be “slightly more edgy” and in an interview with IGN he stated that though he wants “to create something that’s what people expect” he also wants to bring “something new that people haven’t seen before.”
Unfortunately, this raises more questions than it answers.
It seems most likely that Kojima is planning to do something different with the game’s mechanics. Kojima told IGN his plans for the mechanics of Death Stranding were inspired by a Japanese short story.
In the story it’s stated that the first tool mankind creates is a stick for protection but that the second tool mankind created was a rope to keep things close and secure. “Most of your tools in action games are sticks” Kojima explained, “You punch or you shoot or you kick. The communication is always through these 'sticks.' In [Death Stranding], I want people to be connected not through sticks, but through what would be the equivalent of ropes… But of course you will be able to use the sticks too.”
Unfortunately we haven’t seen any gameplay that would give us a better insight into how this rope approach will actually work.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Sony Interactive Entertainment America's President, Shawn Layden, admitted that he's played Death Stranding and that the game is, indeed, "up and running."
After Hideo Kojima appeared at this year's E3 without any new information about, or footage from, Death Stranding, rumors began to circulate that the game is in for an extremely drawn out development process.
However, the mysterious game is apparently far enough along that Layden has played some prototype levels, though he admits "I couldn't explain to you what the game is..."
When asked if the game is as revolutionary as is being promised, Layden says it's "all that and more!" after what The Telegraph calls a "thoughtful pause."
Layden isn't the only person that's struggled to get to grips with Death Stranding; at a Q and A session at the E3 Coliseum, Kojima himself said that his own team didn't understand the game: "I started explaining a year ago to the team what I wanted to make. No one got it!"
Before this, the game's star Mads Mikkelsen admitted he "got lost" when Kojima tried to explain the game's plot to him.
Though it's comfort to know that the game has gotten to the point in its development process that Layden is able to get hands on with it, it's less comforting that so many people close to Death Stranding are so perplexed by it. Or maybe that's exciting? We have to say we can't wait to find out more.
Sporadic details
Though Kojima has been coy, he’s given some nice teases into what we can expect from Death Stranding in terms of tone and gameplay modes.
At the Tokyo Game Show, Kojima told fans the game would have a female protagonist and would feature online co-op play.
We know the game will run on the Decima engine which was created by Horizon: Zero Dawn developers, Guerilla Games. Kojima praised this engine during PSX 2016 as being an excellent engine for creating open world games, something that Horizon: Zero Dawn’s reception suggests has an element of truth to it.
Though its unsettling trailers suggest otherwise, Kojima has said that Death Stranding won’t be as dark as some fans are expecting. It’s certainly not a horror game, he told Glixel, and it would have comedic moments which isn’t entirely surprising considering the overarching tone of the Metal Gear series.
What could it all mean?
Though the game’s trailers don’t tell us much about how we’ll eventually play Death Stranding, they do reveal some important thematic elements.
Quotes from William Blake, the repeated appearance of ruined dolls, and the inclusion of what looks like oil (but could very well be ink) and dead sea creatures suggests Kojima will be exploring the fractious relationship between man and the natural world and the impact it has on us and future generations.
The littering of dead crabs on beaches and tanks with definitely living tentacles coming out of them suggests to us a post-apocalyptic world over-run with robotic sea creatures which would certainly be interesting. After all, Kojima is working closely with Guerilla Games whose Horizon: Zero Dawn game focused on robotic dinosaurs.
There’s also a curious mix of futuristic technology and elements of the past in the game’s various trailers.
In the second game trailer though Mads Mikkelsen is wearing a modern army uniform and appears to be using some kind of cable, the undead soldiers around him are wearing WW2 era uniforms and the game world outside of the tunnel he’s in is almost certainly from the second world war time period.
Whether this mix of past and future will manifest itself as time travelling or simply alternate universe science fiction isn’t clear.
Safe to say, as a Kojima title, there’s a lot of mystery and symbolism at play here and fans online are tearing through what little materials there are to try and find out more information about the game.
We’ll keep updating as more solid information becomes available.
December 08, 2017 at 05:08PM
Emma Boyle
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