Death Stranding: release date, trailers and news

[Update: New Death Stranding rumor klaxon! Death Stranding is a game that has several famous faces attached to it at this point, but the latest rumors suggest that Diane Kruger could be the next one.

It's already been mentioned by Hideo Kojima that the game will have a female protagonist of some kind and recent deep dive video in the game's casting suggests that it's Kruger. On her instagram, the actress has been spotted wearing the same motion capture suit that Norman Reedus has been photographed in. The video also calls attention to instances where Kruger has praised Kojima and been seen to be receiving Kojima productions merchandise. This is, of course, all purely conjecture but it's certainly worth keeping an eye on.]

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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 trailers, 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 most recent Death Stranding trailer featured at the Game Awards 2017. Coming in at nearly eight minutes long, this isn't a quick watch and unfortunately it doesn't answer many of the questions we have about the game (actually we think we have more). Watch it for yourself below:

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. During a recent interview at the 2017 Game Awards, Kojima seemed to be happy with the development progress of the game, stating that a lot of work had been done with the Decima engine.

In an interview with Dengeki PlayStation (via Wccftech) at the end of 2017, Kojima said that development of the game was going well: “Development on Death Stranding is going well enough that [Sony Interactive Entertainment] told us, ‘We have never before seen a game being created at such a fast pace.’ We are planning an announcement that will further surprise everyone in 2018.”

This bodes well for a late 2018 release.

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.

We do know that Kojima is planning to do something different with the game’s mechanics, most notably around the concept of dying and involving the baby that has appeared in every trailer. 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.

An impressive cast

We already knew Death Stranding had some big names attached to it including Norman Reedus and Mads Mikkelsen . But now we know they'll be joined by writer and actress Emily O'Brien and the voice of video games, Troy Baker.

O'Brien recently posted a picture to Instagram which showed her alongside Baker and Reedus, with a caption stating "Honored to be working alongside these two fine lads on [Hideo Kojima's] new project Death Stranding."

While Baker is well known for his starring roles in video games such as The Last of Us and Bioshock Infinite, O'Brien has had roles on both TV and in games, featuring in Telltale's Guardian's of the Galaxy and Batman: The Enemy Within as well as Rock in a Hard Place.

Players won't die

In a recent interview with IGN, Hideo Kojima was slightly more open with details than he usually is. The strange underwater sequence from the 2017 Game Awards trailer for example? That's apparently a kind of purgatory where players will go and freely explore when they die in the game, though Kojima notes that "death will never pull you out of the game."

The game apparently explores the themes of life and death and it's for this reason that Kojima would like to explore the traditional death mechanic in games and let players know that in-game death isn't the end for them when it happens.

In this underwater area, he explains, “you're not dead or alive. It's the equivalent of that screen that says 'Continue?' and a counter ticking down towards zero.” When players decide they're ready to leave and return to the game world, they won't be returned to a point before their death. Instead the game acknowledges their defeat and coming back to life is more of a reincarnation than a respawn.

There's a weird time rain

During the trailer shown at the 2017 Game Awards, fans noticed there's a strange kind of rain that has an effect on time. In makes plants grow in wilt and makes human bodies age and degenerate when it touches them. The rain is apparently called Timefall and it has a big role to play in the game's story.

What's the deal with the babies?

There's been some seriously strange recurring baby imagery in the footage we've seen for Death Stranding that's included Norman Reedus cradling a baby while standing nude on a beach as well as having one living inside his throat. According to Kojima in an interview with IGN, the baby is apparently the same baby and it's a part of the game mechanics as well as the overarching plot. We assume it's related to the idea of not ever finitely dying but Kojima didn't confirm this.

There will be online elements

We already knew there would be online co-op elements in the game after Kojima confirmed it at the Tokyo Game Show, but in a recent IGN interview he acknowledged that he's been keeping up with recent players reactions to things like microtransactions.

“I think there are a lot of people out there who still enjoy single-player games, aside from some microtransactions." This suggests that while the game will have online co-op elements, they won't make up the entirety of the game.

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.