Death Stranding: Everything New We've Spotted In the Teased Gameplay

By Joe Skrebels and Colin Stevens

A new trailer for Death Stranding has revealed new cinematics, story details, and most importantly, a closer look at this enigmatic title’s gameplay.

Following a build up on Twitch, which included a looping set of clips that showed new gameplay and cinematic sections of the game.

The new trailer gave us a lot of new information about how the gameplay works, even if it is still decidedly vague. Here are some of the major new things we noticed about Death Stranding’s gameplay.

• Snow – Norman Reedus’ character Sam is shown trekking across a snowy mountain, where crumbling trails are left behind him, a la Red Dead 2. This stands in contrast to the grassy environments we’ve seen before.
• Interactive UI – A radial menu pops up, allowing Sam to place useful items in the world. One shows a ludicrously long ladder (which we’ve seen him using to cross a ravine previously), and a climbing anchor that allows him to use a rope to rappel down a cliffside.
• Stealth and Tracking – An orange pulse emits from one of the crates Sam is carrying on his back, which immediately cues him to get low and move away from the pulse – a ghost image of this crate appears in the air where he once was, as if the group is tracking that specific package. Sam then hides in tall grass as the men come driving up searching for their target.
• Melee combat – Following this, these men in yellow equipped with shoulder mounted sensors notice Sam and a noise reminiscent of the Metal Gear alert sound occurs. They begin chasing Sam with electrified staffs, trying to stun him – one even knocks off a piece of his pack, which then falls to the ground with a purple glow. He starts fighting these foes hand-to-hand, using uppercuts, kicks and more before using a briefcase as a weapon.
• Vehicles – Sam then rides off on a futuristic motorcycle with glowing blue wheels, revving up the engine and popping a wheelie to get away from his pursuers. Rain begins to fall, which scares off the pursuers.
• “Bridge Babies” – Still as confusing as ever, the babies that have been shown throughout Death Stranding’s promotion are still part of its gameplay, and it appears Sam needs to be connected to one in order to use his scanning device and see the ghost-like, tethered enemies that drag him through the ground as his surroundings go black, and orange handprints appear. This seemingly transports him to new locations, perhaps the past, if text in the trailer is anything to go by.
• War Zones – Once Sam is dragged through this black goo, he appears in a war zone with bullets flying everywhere. There are wooden wagon wheels, barbed wire and sandbag barricades and tanks that suggest this could be a war from the past, perhaps even the first World War. Sam is seen using a moving tank as cover as he sneaks past the battlefield.
• Weapons – While some of Kojima’s previous comments suggested Death Stranding wouldn’t focus on weapons, Sam is seen using an assault rifle, popping off headshots while a floating ammo count appears in front of him. When his bullets hit, fire and small explosions seem to emanate from his target.

There are also some major story elements that appear in this latest trailer. At the very beginning, Mads Mikkelsen’s character Cliff is seen talking to what appears to be one of the Bridge Babies, and he begins singing to it. The camera is from the baby’s perspective, and it begins blinking, periodically covering the camera for brief periods – many cuts for the rest of the trailer fade from the outside in, as if this blinking continues throughout.

A photograph then shows what appears to be a young Sam, a pregnant woman and an older woman standing between the two. Soon after, Sam is having a conversation with a woman in a hospital bed in what appears to be the White House, who tells him “You can make America whole,” to which Sam says “No, America’s finished.” She then says “Sam, if we don’t all come together again, humanity will not survive.” Sam ultimately calls her “The President of Jack-shit,” with all of these hints suggesting she’s the President of what’s left of America.

There’s also a militant separatist group described as “Homo demons,” that are “a bunch of terrorists who go around towns killing people, and leaving craters.” These extremists plot in the shadows, and appear to be the ones tracking down Sam.

A series of brief shots occur toward the end of the trailer, showing off Sam falling through some water with a dreamcatcher necklace, a body being incinerated in a machine, dog tags being analyzed, a whole lot of characters crying (sometimes tears, sometimes ink, sometimes blood), a Sam drained of color who puts a gun to his head, soldiers that light themselves on fire and feel no pain, and more seemingly unrelated but still captivating craziness.

In the end, Cliff is once again talking to a Bridge Baby, saying it can “go wherever you want, even the moon.” So what does this all mean? We have no idea! The game as a whole appears to have parallels to global warming and increasing tensions between groups, ideologies and countries – specifically America. Of course, considering Kojima created Metal Gear Solid with all of its talk of nuclear proliferation, none of these themes come as much of a surprise.

The trailer finally gave us a release date for Death Stranding: it’s coming to PS4 on November 8, 2019.

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