Death Stranding
I'm going to be completely honest with you from the offset, this game is still very much in development and there is no word as to when we can expect a release date.
Let's start at the beginning, once upon a time there was a game developer named Hideo Kojima, who got a job working at a really cool game company called Konami. He worked on a few games which weren't really anything special, until one day, when they assigned him to a new game called Metal Gear. He did so well with that game and all it's sequels, that they made him Executive Vice President of the company. He eventually decided to part ways with the company after completing the best game Konami had ever released, but at the launch of this new game, the company barred Kojima from attending. They also went as far as to remove any recognition and his name from the titles of the game.
A few months later at E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) 2016 in Los Angeles, Kojima personally showed up to announce his new independent studio which he form with the help of Sony Computer Entertainment, as well as a brand new game, Death Stranding. Below was the trailer for the game that was shown at E3.
The trailer looks amazing and at the same time, really creepy. Something just doesn't feel right, it's ominous. They have gotten actor Norman Reedus to play a character. I'm sure you know who Norman is, he also goes by the name Daryl Dixon in The Walking Dead, and if you are proper old school and love your cult movies, he played one of the brothers in The Boondock Saints.
Apart from that, there's not much you can tell about the trailer, but the last scenes did give away some important information. The game's title as well as those scenes is a reference to the cetacean stranding phenomenon. The Cetacean Standing is this very strange occurrence where some whales and dolphins strand themselves on a beach to die, and to date no one knows for certain why it happens.
"Once there was an explosion, a bang that gave rise to life as we know it. And then, came the next explosion." - Norman Reedus
On Thursday, at the 2017 Game Awards held in Los Angeles, Kojima Productions presented the above trailer for Death Stranding. It looks to be a really suspense filled game, and what we know so far is that it will be an action game set in an open world environment, with a multiplayer aspect as well.
The actor Mads Mikkelsen from Hannibal and Rogue One will be portraying a lead role along with Norman Reedus, through the use of motion capture, facial scanning, and vocal performances. This is the second time Norman has worked with Hideo, he was the lead character in the new Silent Hill game, but it got canned by Konami and we suspect is the reason for the breakup.
Kojima has stated that one of the key aspects of the game was the idea of a connection between life and death. One of the game's main themes is a short story by Kōbō Abe, about the first tools man made. The first was a stick for protection, and the second was a rope to secure things of importance. Kojima compared the main "tools" in action games to sticks, and said that in Death Stranding he wants people to communicate through the game equivalent of ropes.
There are also some unnoticed ideas that relate towards the theory of relativity and quantum field theory, so the game is still very much a mystery for now.