Kojima Productions and Sony Team up for Death Stranding

This week during the events of E3 2016, Hideo Kojima officially announced that Kojima Productions would be partnering with Sony on a new horror game titled Death Stranding. Along with the official announcement a teaser trailer featuring our favorite zombie killing bad-ass, Norman Reedus, was also released.

Now, I know we have all had our hearts broken many times at this point. Fans of horror games remember the cancelation of Silent Hills, and Kojima’s departure from Konami. Then there was the recent cancelation of the Allison Road. One might start to think that anything associated with the old Silent Hills project is cursed. It would be fitting for a horror game.

Since leaving Konami, Kojima has been hard at work getting Death Stranding off the ground. He eventually struck a deal with Sony to make this new PS4 exclusive game. Kojima has been quoted saying that the partnership between Kojima Productions and Sony will allow him creative freedom with his new IP while Sony handles the business end of the game’s release.

There is precious little to glean from this first teaser trailer, but here are a few of the things we know about this new AAA horror game so far. Let’s start with the obvious; Norman Reedus will once again be lending his likeness, and presumably his voice, to the game. It is fantastic that we will get a second chance to see Norman Reedus act in a horror game as opposed to on screen. Kojima also seems to be heavily hinting that this will be an action-heavy horror game, which suits their lead actor. Kojima is confident that this game will be easily accessible to both action and horror fans.

As of this first teaser, we don’t have many details about the game’s plot. We know from statements made at E3 that some of the game’s themes revolve around life and death being connected. The birth of an infant, the death of a man, the death of an animal, all these things are intertwined. Kojima also stated he draws inspiration from a short story by Kobo Abe. In this story man first creates a “stick” with which to defend himself from bad things. Man then creates “rope” to keep the things precious to him close. Rope imagery plays heavily in the teaser trailer. The dark rope-like umbilical cord attached to the baby, and the ropes descending from the title sequence are just a couple examples.

The ghostly appearance of handprints would suggest that this will be a supernatural horror title, and the hordes of beached whales, fish and crabs suggest something on a grand scale. The exact nature of the threat is still unknown. We will have to wait for more trailers to come out!

There is no official release date yet for Death Stranding. The earliest we can likely expect to see this game would be late in 2017. Would it be nice to have this game in time for Halloween?