As Death Stranding approaches its November release date, it’s about time we saw some real gameplay of Hideo Kojima’s open-world America-repairing simulator where you piss mushrooms. There’s only so much he can say about ropes and ladders and babies and famous director friends. There are only so many games journalists he can put in the game. Fortunately, at the Tokyo Game Show we got a nearly one-hour video of Death Stranding gameplay to watch. It doesn’t make sense, but at least it’s gameplay. Check it out!
Four years ago, after delivering the arguably unfinished masterpiece Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, legendary video game designer Hideo Kojima was unceremoniously fired from Konami. Thus began a dramatic arc of rebirth as Kojima started a new independent studio, partnered with Sony, released bizarre trailer after trailer, and settled on developer Guerilla’s Decima’s engine for his next project.
That project, Death Stranding, is now almost here. Check out this long and appropriately inscrutable trailer for the game coming November 9 exclusively on PlayStation 4.
Oh man, where to even begin with this. So from the very beginning we’ve known that Death Stranding would be exploring this idea of connection. It wants to be about “ropes” whereas other aggressive video games are about “sticks.” And we see some of this in practice as Norman Reedus’ Sam Bridges (clever) makes his lonely journey across the fractured country that used to be the United States. He tells the dying president that America is finished, and that’s such a mood. Sam’s various traversal tools like ladders and anchors further this idea of connection, as will whatever the online open world component will be.
But trying to parse the rest of this might be impossible. Your enemies are separatist terrorists, some of whom are called “Homo Demons.” And while you fight them with recognizable guns and punches, there’s also this black goo or mist that can, like, travel through time or to an alternate reality? You’re in a World War I trench full of ghost soldiers all of a sudden? And those babies in tubes (which you can get in the collector’s edition) have something to do with? It’s like if Metal Gear Solid 4 was released exactly as is but without any other Metal Gear games as context. There’s a character named “Die Hardman.”
Fortunately, we have a pretty star-studded cast to hopefully explain all this nonsense to us. Alongside Norman Reedus Death Stranding features Mads Mikkelsen, Léa Seydoux, Nicolas Winding Refn, de-aged Lindsay Wagner, Troy Baker, Tommie Earl Jenkins, Emily O’Brien, and Guillermo del Toro. But famous or not, we’ll all be bound together in the ropes of confusion when Death Stranding launches this November.
For more on Metal Gear check out the tabletop version and here’s why Oscar Isaac would be a great Snake.
