Kojima debuts 8 minutes worth of new questions for Death Stranding, with no answers just yet

Hideo Kojima’s upcoming title Death Stranding first debuted to the world at Sony’s E3 panel in 2016, and has confused and astounded pretty much anyone that watches its trailers. The title appeared again during The Game Awards 2017 with its longest trailer yet, but with more footage simply comes more questions.

The 8-minute trailer actually included a lot of things we’d already been shown, such as random infant children in artificial wombs, a post-apocalyptic setting ravaged by floating beings and more from leading man, Norman Reedus.

It does take these ‘familiarities’, if you could call them that, and amplify the strangeness of it all. At one point, a flying humanoid being floats down to our main character and his accomplice with similar machinery attached to him. The main cast doesn’t seem particularly alarmed by its appearance, but begins to shoot at it after it makes a gesture, begging one of the more important questions: who and what are they? Are they there to help, hinder or remain neutral?

Moving past the invisible beings leaving prints wherever is walks and onto the Attack-On-Titan-like monstrosity that seems to be puppeteering and eating the world. This is a brand new being that we’ve not seen before that seemingly doesn’t affect Normal Reedus, but everything else gets devoured.

The trailer then takes a distinct shift to even more nonsensical patterns, such as Reedus being naked underwater, looking up at the destroyed world to Reedus, again, being fully clothed at the bottom of the waterbed, unconscious and with the baby now inside of his throat.

He awakes on land to find the artificial womb empty, presumably because the creepy thing is now a part of him and somehow key to his unusual survival. While looking at a crater, he describes a second big bang which will be humanities last, while surrounded by the same five flying humanoids we’ve seen in previous trailers.

Of course, Kojima being famed for his work on Metal Gear Solid, it’s hard not to compare the strange beings to Psycho Mantis along with the Third Child, Tretij Rebenok in The Phantom Pain. No matter the resemblance, these will not be one in the same with the characters of Death Stranding as Konami still holds the rights to the Metal Gear IP and all that goes with it.

KitGuru Says: While many will coin this as complete nonsense, it does show Kojima is going back to his storytelling roots that were ditched in his last title, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. There’s also a distinct horror element, perhaps borrowed from his renown work on PT before Silent Hills cancellation. Still a sore spot for many, but perhaps this can (partially) fill the void. What do you make of the latest trailer?

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