Alex Birlo on June 3, 2019
Finally, we received a release date for the next – highly anticipated – game form Hide Kojima “Death Stranding”. On the twenty-ninth of May, an eight minutes trailer was released, showcasing a lot of areas, characters, some gameplay and ambiguous story moments from the game. And of course – a release date.
The game will be a PlayStation exclusive and will release this year on the eighth of November (11.08.2019).
Now, the marketing for this game was scarce, but to the point. It never gave away too much, but at the same time, it seemed as though we are closer and closer to uncovering something – the suspense! Kojima time and again showed us a glimpse of something original and mysterious, he created a shroud that we cannot wait to lift and uncover all the secrets. And that is – ladies and gentleman – how things are done.
A whole segment of this trailer was dedicated to presenting the cast and the characters they will be playing in the game:
Norman Reedus as “Sam” – the main protagonist
Mads Mikkelsen as “Cliff” – the clearly evil guy, that has demon soldiers attached to him with umbilical cords
Lea Seydoux as “Fragile” – the blond lady whose favorite food is apparently extradimensional larva
Margaret Qualley as “Mama” – that seems to have a thing for the BTs (the floating, invisible monsters in the game)
Guillermo Del Toro as “Deadman” – the person that carried the baby through the first world war
Nicolas Winding Refn as “Heartman” – talk about getting “pulled out” of the collective!
Tommie Earl Jenkins as “Die-Hardman” – cool-maskman
Troy Baker as “Higgs” – looks like he is the evil guy again
Lindsay Wagner as “Amelie” – the lady in the hot red dress
From what we see, it looks like it is indeed some sort of open-world game, with emphasis on exploration and traversal.
As you will be traveling around with a hefty bag of equipment stealth-action will come into play. Hiding in tall grass, sneaking around and kicking ass, all will be a part of the game.
There will also be transport. The protagonist has a great looking futuristic motorcycle and the enemies were shown riding some sort of transport trucks.
Changes in the weather – specifically rain – will symbolize the arrival of the BTs. These are the invisible monster that can sense your breath and are a big danger in the world of “Death Stranding”.
Also, it is more apparent now that there is a parallel dimension in the game. It is probably where the BTs are coming from and Cliff with his soldiers. This dimension looks something like the first world war and is partially immaterial when you are in it.
In terms of the story, we now know that Sam – the main protagonist – is somehow affiliated with the president of the United States and is asked to join an organization called “Bridges” and is working on “Reconnecting the world” – whatever that means is not entirely clear, but it seems “connection” is the theme of the story.
Sam is asked to go “West and finish what Amelie started”, so the game might be this journey that the character undertakes to “finish what Amelie started”.
What is interesting is that coming back to it after several days I found out that the Japanese trailer of the game contains some additional scenes – like an extra scene with what looks like a boss fight and a creepily-awesome scene with golden hands growing out of the ground. But the most important is the scene where Higgs (an important character from the terrorist faction) hugs Amelie from behind, while she wears his golden skull mask on her mouth. This suggests that she might have turned over to the enemies’ side betraying “Bridges” or was captured and brainwashed.
The game continues to have “just the right amount of mystery” to it, but this time gave out enough to shape a world. As for impressions – it is safe to say people are LOVING the game. The music, the cinematography, the performance, and world building is, as usual, a “Kojima’s masterwork” to say the least.
We might see more of the game soon, so we keep an ear to the ground.
