Death Stranding — Theories And Predictions

The more skeptical fans may believe people are thinking too hard into Death Stranding. After all, it is just a video game, isn’t it? Well, we have to realize that Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro are first and foremost, storytellers. There is absolutely no reason for a story-driven game to have less depth than a novel or movie. With new information from the 2017 Game Awards trailer as well as an interview Kojima had with IGN, fans are finally shining some light on this elusive and downright bizarre game. Here is Death Stranding: Theories and Predictions.

Death Stranding Trailer 3 and Interview

During the 2017 Game Awards, Kojima and Guillermo del Toro unveiled Death Stranding’s latest trailer. In many ways, it remains consistent with the first two. There is the black oil, the long ropes and cables connected to alien figures, and of course, the babies in pods. However, there are a ton of new things including an upside-down water world and rain that ages anything it touches.

Meanwhile, in his interview with IGN, Hideo Kojima dropped some hints into the lore and gameplay of Death Stranding. He mentions two key points to keep in mind. First, that death does not work in Death Stranding as in the traditional concept of video games. Upon dying, players will be able to explore an eerie underwater universe until they return to a world in the same continuity as when they died. Second, that the baby in the pod, on the beach, and in Norman Reedus’s esophagus are one and the same.

Death Stranding Gameplay Mechanics

Kojima has long been a proponent of blurring the distinction between the physical and game worlds. What does this mean for gameplay? What can we expect from Death Stranding? It has been described as an action game, so it is quite possibly a third person shooter.

In the trailer, Norman Reedus’s character acquires the baby before an explosion kills him. The camera then zooms into his throat, where the baby appears, and he returns to life. Finally, he wakes in front of a crater presumably formed by the blast. From a gamer’s perspective, it is possible that the baby is the manifestation of an extra life. This logic can extend to the black cables and robotic arms seen in trailers 2 and 3. These could be the physical manifestations of controllers and crosshairs respectively. Remember how even the aircraft in the second trailer had black cables behind them? Remember how Mads Mikkelsen issued orders to a squad of soldiers with the same cables attached to their backs?

Death Stranding Plot Theories

Kojima is by nature, a playful man. He is a proponent of the 1938 book Homo Ludens (The Playing Man) in which the author describes how the play is necessary for societal development. His own website uses the tagline “From Sapiens to Ludens.” In fact, the company mascot’s name itself is Luden. So when Hideo Kojima begins developing a game, you know he’s already playing one. The website of Kojima Productions, the trailers, and the interviews are all part of an intricate online scavenger hunt to piece together what Death Stranding truly is. So what is Death Stranding?

Based on what we know so far, Hideo Kojima could be looking to deliver us a world where the in-game characters are aware of the players controlling them. It would be a world where the story involves the player themselves; not just the characters. Kojima states that the title refers to something alien being stranded in the world. (It could also be a double entendre on the game’s death system. After each death, the player finds themselves literally carried by waters back onto the “shores” of the living.) What if then, that alien being is a player? What if the story is about one of us — Homo ludens — stranded in this world of Death Stranding and unable to make it back?