Everything We Know About Death Stranding so Far

Themes About Strands and Connections

It would be disingenuous of me to try to explain what Death Stranding is gonna be about, considering Kojima’s tendency to over complicate his stories, but we’ll try anyway.

From what we know of the game so far and what Kojima himself has stated, Death Stranding is very much a game about, well, strands. That is, we’re supposed to think of strands as ropes or strings that tie us together.

This is, of course, a metaphorical explanation for the bonds and connections that human beings create with one another.

The game’s latest trailers have leaned heavily into this concept as well, as its characters talk about how the world has been fractured after some sort of cataclysmic event. Death Stranding seems to be all about bringing the world and society back together as one cohesive unit.

Playing as Sam, you’re tasked with walking from one coast of the United States to the other, reactivating communication nodes in an effort to spread messages of hope to whoever’s left and bring humanity back together again.

Sam is on this mission for Amelie, the daughter of the President whose been kidnapped by a terrorist organization known as the Homo Demens. So, along with spreading your hopeful messages, you’ll also be looking to rescue her from the bad guys.

One other interesting thing worth mentioning is that Death Stranding will have some sort of asynchronous multiplayer function. We have some theories about how this will play into the theme of reconnecting, but whether it’s accurate remains to be seen.

Time Travel and the Primordial Soup

One of the earlier theories we had about Death Stranding was that it would be a deep dive into the concept of time travel and how it negatively affects our environment. Literally.

While this theory seemed plausible a few years back when the game was initially announced, the ideas of time travel and preserving marine life feel like they’ve been pushed aside in the more recent trailers to make way for strands and connections. Still, they’re worth talking about.

So basically, the idea was that humanity experimented with time travel and ended up pushing things too far, resulting in a perversion of nature where marine life is near extinction, and the Earth has broken apart as a result.

This idea of perversion continues as we see Sam appearing to give birth to a baby in the first trailer, along with the overwhelming death of natural life and beached whales all over the place.

It’s possible that time travel could still be a very prevalent concept in Death Stranding, as we see Mads Mikkelsen’s character decked out in outfits from different time periods, but it’s unclear whether this will be a focus of the game.

It’s an Action Game

Now that we have all the story stuff and theories out of the way, it’s time to talk about the gameplay itself.

Simply put, Death Stranding is going to be a third-person action game. From what we’ve seen of the trailers, the environments do look pretty open, but at this point it’s unclear whether it’s going to be a full-blown open world game with an emphasis on exploration.

Sam can travel around the world on a motorcycle, beat up people with his briefcases, and also summon ladders to climb up to high places.

The gameplay loop seems to consist of Sam gathering resources around the world to help rebuild society, along with hitting up various communication nodes and waypoints to spread the message, and it’s definitely possible to lose your belongings when you get attacked by enemies.

Death Stranding also features stealth elements, especially when the more supernatural enemies are involved. You’ll use the little baby to render yourself invisible to your foes as you try to sneak around them without attracting any attention.

There are some extra gameplay details that seem eccentric, but we’re sure will have some sort of impact on the experience. For instance, you can get Sam to pee via an option in a radial menu, and even use motion controls to rock the Bridge baby to sleep.

No idea what that’s about just yet, but I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough.

Release Date

Finally, this might be a little hard to believe considering it was announced quite a few years ago and we still barely know anything about the game, but Death Stranding does indeed have a set release date.

It’s going to be released exclusively for the PS4 on Nov. 8, 2019, which isn’t too far off at all. At that point, we’ll finally get to see if our theories are right.