Kojima and Reedus Give New Info on “Death Stranding”

Five nights ago in New York, on stage at the Tribeca Film Festival with the star of Death Stranding, Norman Reedus, Hideo Kojima gave the audience a few new bits of information about his upcoming game. He announced how all players will be connected to each other, how Reedus shapes the hero Sam, and shared a secret area of the game where the player can take control of the camera.

“It’s an open-world action game but it’s really something new,” said Kojima. “There are so many things happening in the real world — in America, in Europe — everything is actually connected by the internet but, in a way, we’re not connected in the real world these days.”

“I’m putting that as a metaphor in the game. The player will have to reconnect the world in the game. You’re very alone, there’s solitude, but you’re trying to connect. The story and the gameplay, the keyword is ‘connection.’ There are so many things in-between, of course, but the key is connection,” he added.

“I also threw in a really new idea. You’re connecting the game and everyone is playing it together, and you’ll be connected. Everyone will be connected together as well. I can’t say anything because Sony will be very unhappy. I don’t want to be disconnected from Sony.”

It’s fairly easy to read this as some sort of online world, similar to an MMO, but knowing Kojima it will be something far more than that … and could use PlayStation’s online capabilities in a brand new way. After all, this is the man that had characters in the Metal Gear Solid series ordering the player to turn off their console to abort a mission or (back in the day) reading the contents of the player’s memory card.

Reedus, who most recognize as Daryl from The Walking Dead or as one half of The Boondock Saints, also spoke carefully about how this game is different from others he’s seen.

“It’s a different way of thinking,” said Reedus. “I have a teenage son, I’ve played some games where you just kill everybody. It’s not like that. There are violent elements to it, but it’s just a different thing.”

Reedus and Kojima clearly have a lot of mutual respect and affection, and Kojima spoke of the actor almost like a muse.

“In Death Stranding, I’m going to put every aspect of Norman in there,” he said. “There’s a lot of cutscenes, and there’s a lot of long cutscenes. You’ll see Norman as Sam in the game and see his acting in the cutscenes, and you’ll enjoy that.”

“One more thing. I can’t say where but if you go somewhere in the game, you won’t be controlling Norman or Sam. You’ll be just controlling a camera. You’ll see Sam/Norman and you can kind of move the camera to see around, and when you look at him he might do something like wink at you. So you’re actually playing as Norman Reedus as Sam, and in the drama part, Sam will act to hit your emotions but when you go into this special area you’ll definitely love Norman. You’ll be a Norman fan.”

Basically, prepare for Death Stranding to be very, very meta.

No trailers were shown, but Kojima promised there would be more to see in a month or so. Now, Sony said that they wouldn’t be at E3 this year. However, they never said the developers making games for their system wouldn’t be so we could possibly see something new around then.

Death Stranding will release on the PS4 so stay tuned for more news and hopefully a release date soon!

Written by
A survivor of the 16-bit console wars, fan or horror films, and pro-wrestling. Lover of all things Sega.

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