Kojima Productions Debuts Beautifully-Creepy Death Stranding Trailer

After a year of anticipation, we finally got to see a bit more of Hideo Kojima’s brainchild Death Stranding in the newly-released E3 gameplay trailer. The protagonist, a likeness of Norman Reedus, named Sam Porter Bridges, is known as the “man who delivers.” Throughout the trailer, we see the Sam carrying many things on his back, from bodybags to boxes, in a beautifully-articulated open-world landscape.

However, everything changes a few minutes in. We already knew the rain, or timefull, had adverse effects on the human body from previous trailers, but this scene portrays what it can do to really speed up the aging process when we see the spot where Sam’s hand is hit by rain earlier in the trailer. It’s not pretty.

We also find out what the dialogue in the beginning of the trailer means, "I can sense them,” when we see the likeness’ body break out in pseudo-hives from being close to one of them. A mysterious woman helps to save Sam from one of them and promptly leaves, after filling us in on his name.

Cut to the next scene and things get even weirder. We see Sam in a warehouse. It’s raining and they are closing in on him. We learn now that if one of them eats him, he will return, but it will cause a “voidout.” This apparently equates to a massive, crater-creating explosion. Sam does what anybody would do and straps a baby in a metal incubator to his chest, plugs its needle into himself, and looks out the window. This is the first, albeit blurry but so eerily-awesome, glimpse we get of them.

They seem to resemble larger-than-adult humans on umbilical cords (that or extremely long tails) floating in the sky. The next scene portrays Sam presumably trying to escape before being consumed by them. After the closing frame showing the game’s logo, we see the mysterious woman eat what appears to be a grub called a cryptobite, which can keep timefull, the aging process, away.

What is this recurring idea of a Hand in Life? Death? Flesh? Spirit? What is the Extinction Factor and do cryptobites keep this mystery affliction at bay? What are they? What is the baby on Sam’s chest symbolizing? Whatever all this means, we cannot wait to play this game.

About the Author

Joe Antonucci

Joe’s love for “terrible” B-horror/sci-fi films started way back when he was young. When he isn’t watching the classics like Chopping Mall, Ice Spiders, or Sharktopus vs. Whalewolf, he spends his time gaming, playing with his Yorkie-Poo, and traveling with his wife. Joe always tackles life in the way that a grizzly bear, his favorite animal, would: with a loud roar, a raging charge, and a good night’s sleep.

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