Hideo Kojima’s vision of Death Stranding is as uncompromising as it is very strange, and a recent tweet he released that discusses how he defines the game has done little to alleviate the confusion surrounding the title’s thematic concerns. Death Stranding is one of the video game events of 2019, and a recent eight-minute-plus trailer was released that sent fans into a frenzy over the deluge of new content regarding a game that has been, since 2016, mostly a mystery to anyone observing its progress.
What we do know about Death Stranding is that it is reportedly unlike any action game that has come before it. Kojima has enlisted the talents of several high-profile celebrities to take on vital roles in the game’s narrative, including Norman Reedus and Mads Mikkelsen, who both appear to be close friends with the game director as well. Death Stranding is Kojima’s first game since his messy departure from Konami back in 2015, and the man behind such incredible series as Metal Gear Solid and Zone of the Enders appears to be in the process of launching his most ambitious work yet. That’s saying something given the pedigree of Kojima’s other projects, and it might also be why it’s been so difficult to pin down exactly what Death Stranding is meant to be.
Although Kojima evidently though the trailer would be pretty self-explanatory—it was not in any sense of the phrase—the visionary took to his personal Twitter account to attempt to shed some light on what people can expect from his new game. The problem? Kojima’s definition of Death Stranding is, at best, incredibly strange, and at worst, incredibly unhelpful. It’s worth noting that, while Kojima is a good English-speaker, it’s not his first language, so something may be getting lost in translation, though we suspect it’s more a product of Kojima’s brilliance being difficult to decipher at times. Here’s what he tweeted:
Perhaps it’s easier to define what Death Stranding is not, rather than what it is. To that end, it’s definitely not a stealth game, which Kojima has stated multiple times. It’s also not a FPS shooting game, although that comes with the caveat of being able to “move subjectively.” To his credit, Kojima understands that whatever Death Stranding is, it’s hard to define, which is why he attempts to create a new genre to house it: the action game/strand game, with a social strand system. Anyone claiming to know exactly what’s meant by this is either lying or a prophet.
So, as it turns out, Kojima’s definition of Death Stranding has, predictably, created more questions than answers. As is often the case with Kojima, his ideas are best experienced where he wants them to be—in this case, as the PS4’s most exciting exclusive of 2019. With that in mind, it’s entirely possible no one actually figures out what Death Stranding is before the game actually releases, a fact that will, bizarrely and joyously, likely not impact its sales in any form when it launches on November 8, 2019.
Next: Death Stranding Launches November 8
Source: Hideo Kojima/Twitter
