Death Stranding

Pre-release gameplay screenshot of Death Stranding, taken from a trailer shown at E3 2018. Sam, the protagonist, uses a device to uncover several invisible enemies in order to sneak past them.

Death Stranding is an action game set in an open world, and includes asynchronous online functions. Kojima refers to Death Stranding as the first "strand game", an original genre characterized by the game's incorporation of social elements. Kojima compared this genre to how his earlier game Metal Gear—now considered a stealth game—was called an action game during its release because the stealth genre had not been established.[1][2][3]

The player controls Sam Bridges, a porter for a company known as BRIDGES. The player is tasked with delivering supply cargo to various isolated cities known as KNOTs, as well as isolated researchers and survivalists, while also connecting them to a communications system known as the Chiral Network.[4][5] The player is evaluated by the company and recipients based on their performance (including via "likes" similar to social networks), including whether the cargo was delivered, and if it is intact among other factors. These merits are, in turn, used to level up the player's statistics, such as stability and weight capacity, and increase their standing with individual locations and characters (which can improve rewards).[6] How cargo is packed by the player, and the overall weight being carried, affect Sam's ability to navigate through the environments.[7]

The game extensively uses licensed music, most often from the bands Silent Poets and Low Roar, to score and enhance specific set-pieces and moments of traversal. When speaking on the use of music, Kojima said the music "would match this harsh but beautiful and pure environmental setting. I also felt somewhat of a connection to Low Roar and the game, the matching of Low Roar's acoustic but digital futuristic sound and the concept of Death Stranding."[8] After the passing of Low Roar's front-man Ryan Karazija in 2022, Kojima said, "Without [Low Roar], Death Stranding would not have been born."[9]

The player's main enemies include otherworldly creatures known as "beached things" (BTs), MULE (a cult of rogue, bandit-like porters influenced by an obsession with cargo, who attempt to steal deliveries so they can deliver it themselves), and Demens, MULEs who have begun killing porters to claim their cargo.[10][11] BTs are surrounded by a rain known as "timefall", which damages the player's armor and cargo by speeding up their deterioration. BTs are normally invisible, but Sam's suit is equipped with a robotic sensor referred to in-game as an "odradek" that points towards nearby BTs, and the player can then scan the area to reveal them.[12][13][14][15][11]

As Sam is a "Repatriate", he is taken to an underwater world known as the "Seam" if he is killed, where he can "swim" back to his body to revive himself. However, being killed and consumed by a BT also results in a destructive explosion known as a "voidout", which permanently damages the location of the death with an untraversable crater.[11][4][5]

As players expand the coverage of the Chiral Network, they can access maps of areas, and use blueprints to produce consumable items and structures with the Portable Chiral Constructor (PCC, a device similar to a 3D printer), including ropes, bridges, and power generators used for charging battery-powered equipment. The Network is also used as the basis for the game's online functionality, where players can leave supplies, structures, and messages that can be viewed and used by other players, although structures will eventually be destroyed by Timefall after some time. The player can also recover cargo lost by other players to complete their delivery.[15][4][16] The player does not directly encounter other players in the world.[16]

Mads Mikkelsen played the character Cliff

After a lengthy corporate conflict with Konami as a restricted subsidiary,[18][19] Kojima Productions closed in July 2015 and reformed as an independent video game developer and studio in December.[20][21] The same month, Hideo Kojima announced his partnership with Sony Interactive Entertainment, at the time led by Andrew House, to make a new PlayStation game.[22]

Kojima revealed the game at Sony's conference during E3 2016 with a teaser trailer featuring music from Low Roar, whose music would later be used in the final game.[23] The trailer was made possible with the technology of photogrammetry and motion capture.[24] It featured Norman Reedus, who served as the basis for the protagonist. The game is the second collaboration between Kojima and Reedus, following the cancelled Silent Hills.[25] Kojima and Mark Cerny, lead system architect of the PlayStation 4, spent two weeks in January 2016 looking for a game engine on which to develop the game.[26] One of the two remaining candidates had been used to create the teaser trailer.[23] Guerrilla Games would later be announced as a collaborator on the development of the game, as it was providing their proprietary game engine, Decima.[27] Kojima Productions' meeting room was recreated in the engine as a reference of accuracy, and for the purpose of testing physically-based lighting.[28]

The game entered full development in 2017.[29] A few days before E3 2017, Kojima announced that the game would not appear during the usual Sony conference.[30] In June, information came from Shawn Layden, president of Sony Interactive Entertainment America, affirming that Death Stranding was in fact in a playable alpha version, but he had not been able to categorize the game in a specific genre.[31] The official soundtrack of the game, Death Stranding: Timefall, was released through RCA Records and Sony Interactive Entertainment on November 7, 2019, and features artists such as Chvrches, The Neighbourhood, Major Lazer, and Bring Me the Horizon.[32] A teaser was presented during The Game Awards 2017 in December, where Kojima, Reedus and del Toro made appearances.[33] Kojima also revealed that the team was unable to do any performance capture or voice-over for the third trailer in time for E3 2017 due to the 2016–17 video game voice actor strike, so it was delayed until the Game Awards.[13]

In February 2018, Emily O'Brien and Troy Baker joined the cast for the game.[34] At the event, a new trailer was shown, showing gameplay for the first time. It also revealed that actresses Léa Seydoux and Lindsay Wagner were to be a part of the cast.[35] On September 18, it was announced at Tokyo Game Show 2018 that Tommie Earl Jenkins would portray a key character in the game,[36] and that Akio Ōtsuka, Kikuko Inoue, Nana Mizuki and Satoshi Mikami, veterans of the Metal Gear series, along with Kenjiro Tsuda, had joined the game's Japanese voice cast.[37][38] In March 2019, Hideo Kojima said that Death Stranding was slightly behind its release date schedule,[39][40] and that he himself was testing and adjusting the gameplay, day by day, defining that phase of development as "critical".[41]

A trailer released in May 2019 introduced Margaret Qualley as Mama and Nicolas Winding Refn as Heartman. Several character names were also revealed: Cliff (Mikkelsen), Fragile (Seydoux), Deadman (Del Toro), Die-Hardman (Jenkins), Higgs (Baker) and Amelie (Wagner). O'Brien, Jesse Corti and Darren Jacobs are credited for voice-over work in the trailer. Del Toro and Winding Refn both received a "Special Appearance" credit, with Kojima later explaining that their likenesses were only used and their voice and motion capture are performed by other actors.[42] The same trailer also revealed the release date of November 8, 2019.[43] In an accompanying blog post, Kojima explained that the game's core theme was "the true importance of forging connections with others", referring to the player's goal of "reconnecting" an isolated and fractured society, to bridge its divides, and to "create new bonds or 'Strands' with other players around the globe."[44] Certain themes and elements of the story were influenced by Kojima's childhood and the deaths of his parents.[45]

During Gamescom that year, two more trailers were shown: the first showed one of the key elements of the video game, a BB (Bridge Baby), with the participation of the character "Deadman", played by Guillermo del Toro, the second introduces the character "Mama", played by Margaret Qualley. Furthermore, a 6-minute gameplay trailer was shown, which introduces in detail various game mechanics, such as the possibility of urinating and delivering packages to isolated delivery stations. This video also features the participation of Geoff Keighley, Canadian journalist and video critic, as a hologram that interacts with the main character Sam in the delivery station.[46] Japanese writer Junji Ito appears as the model of the Engineer, which is voiced by Yuri Lowenthal. The film director was modelled after Jordan Vogt-Roberts, while director Edgar Wright provided his likeness for Thomas Southerland. Hirokazu Hamamura also made an appearance as the Collector. Liam O'Brien and Sam Lake were credited as the voice actor and model of Veteran Porter, respectively. Phillip North is portrayed by Tommy Wirkola.[47]

During the Tokyo Game Show conference, Kojima showed and commented live a 83-minute video dedicated entirely to the general features of the gameplay of the game.[48] There Kojima proclaimed that he was open to developing a sequel to further solidify the "strand game" genre.[49] On September 26, 2019, Kojima Productions announced that the game had gone gold, meaning that development on it had finished.[50][51] In October 2019, it was announced that the game would be released on Microsoft Windows in mid-2020 by 505 Games,[52] confirming rumors about a PC version that had existed as early as 2015.[25] It was released on July 14, 2020.[53] The same month during a segment of Conan, comedian Conan O'Brien revealed that there is a character modeled after him in-game, with O'Brien having been digitally modeled during a visit to Kojima Productions' studio.[54] A director's cut version of the game featuring new gameplay additions was released for the PlayStation 5 on September 24, 2021, followed by a release for Windows on March 30, 2022.[55][56] The base game is scheduled to release for PC Game Pass on August 23, 2022, and features several unlockable items.[57]

The game's announcement at E3 2016 was met with a positive reception.[70][71] In 2017, Death Stranding was nominated by Golden Joystick Awards in the category "Most Wanted Game".[72][73] In June 2018, during the days following the E3 press conferences, Death Stranding reached the top ten in the most watched video game trailers on YouTube, with more than 4.5 million views.[74]

Upon release, Death Stranding received "generally favorable" reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic.[58] Publications noted a range of reactions from reviewers across the board, with the game being praised for its unique concepts, lasting appeal, graphics, voice acting, and soundtrack, but also being considered to be bloated, frustrating, and slow-paced.[75][76][77][78]

Russ Frushtick of Polygon described Death Stranding as "the most advanced walking simulator the world has ever seen", and as being "composed entirely of fetch quests", but that it was "pretty damn fun once it gets out of its own way". Frushtick argued that the game "felt like two games in one", consisting of "a wholly unique open-world adventure with asynchronous cooperative multiplayer that allows me to feel like I'm part of a community, building a world from scratch" and "a long, confusing, deeply strange movie."[79] Rating the game 7 out of 10, Game Informer's Matthew Kato wrote that the gameplay "really is as simple as it appears to be, and the elements around it – the story, combat, and lackluster mission objectives – aren't satisfying enough to anchor the title and get players invested."[80] Gaming journalist Jim Sterling called Death Stranding "Hideo Kojima at peak indulgence" and found the game to be "annoying" and "boring", criticizing the game's intricate systems and details, which they felt did not enhance enjoyment but instead were implemented for the sake of realism or to "show off". Despite this, they praised the online social features, as well as certain segments that "[build] a nice little atmosphere".[81] It is the fourth Kojima-directed game but only the 26th overall to be awarded a perfect 40/40 score by Japanese video game magazine Famitsu.[82]

Death Stranding was also subject to review bombing on Metacritic. In December 2019, the website removed over 6,000 negative user reviews to prevent "potential score manipulation", judging them to be suspicious.[83][84]

A sequel was first revealed to be in development in May 2022, when Norman Reedus participated in an interview with the outlet Leo Edit to discuss his work on the game. Speaking to Ilaria Urbinati, Reedus exclaimed, "We just started work on the second one". Later in the interview, he would reminisce about how, "the game came out, and it just won all these awards, and it was a huge thing", before reiterating that the development team had "just started part two of that". In response, game writer and director Hideo Kojima would post a series of photos on Twitter, cheekily depicting him punishing Reedus for confirming the game's existence while telling him, "Go to your private room, my friend".[123][124] The sequel might be related to images posted featuring Elle Fanning due to a now deleted producer's tweet from Kojima Productions.[125]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Death Stranding.

• Official website
• Death Stranding at IMDb