Death Stranding: everything you need to know about Hideo Kojima’s new game – The Verge

The haunting art behind Death Stranding’s gear and ghouls

2020-02-11T09:31:04-05:00

It has been months since I played Death Stranding, but I haven't been able to stop thinking about some of the details: the satisfying way Sam Bridges packs up metallic cases and then carries them on his back; the nightmarish, tar-like monsters that emerge when you're spotted by the ghostly BTs that dot the landscape; and the almost adorable robotic arm that does everything from sense ghosts to calm down babies. It's a weird mix of supernatural and mechanical that's pretty unforgettable.

That shouldn't be too surprising, though. Hideo Kojima and his teams are known for their robust world-building and almost fanatical attention to detail, bot …

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Playing piano with a sledgehammer: creating Death Stranding’s unidentifiable score

2019-11-08T10:26:41-05:00

One of the first places Joel Corelitz went when he got off the plane from Chicago was a nearby Home Depot. He wasn't getting wood, supplies, or power tools for a home renovation project. He was shopping for instruments. Anything he could use to make noise: a paint roller without the brush, a sledgehammer, and pretty much anything that was made of metal.

"We were just walking around Home Depot and treating it like it was Guitar Center," Corelitz, who previously scored games like TumbleSeed and Gorogoa, told me. "We probably looked like we were absolutely insane. We were doing things like putting air vents up to our ear and hitting them. Who …

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Death Stranding’s creepy little baby is also kind of cute

2019-11-08T08:30:00-05:00

It's impossible to miss when BB cries. The unsettling baby is one of the constants of Death Stranding, the latest game from Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima. BB is part equipment, part character; it remains helplessly trapped in a sci-fi jar, where it both bonds with Death Stranding's lead character Sam, and also serves as a tool that alerts him to deadly, ghostly apparitions that are largely invisible to humans. When BB gets scared, it starts to cry. And on the game's default setting, that anguished sound comes through the speaker built into the PS4 controller. It's like you're holding a tiny, crying baby in your hands. It's incredibly unset …

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Death Stranding’s best moments are its quietest

2019-11-08T08:00:00-05:00

Death Stranding, Hideo Kojima's long-awaited debut under his new studio, is a large and convoluted game. Most of your time is spent navigating indecipherable terms like "chiral network," or delivering packages and grappling with goo ghosts. A lot of headspace goes toward balancing your cargo load and building in-game structures like bridges. When you do find downtime, it's a welcome break - mostly thanks to how interactive and strange these moments can be.

Major hubs in Death Stranding, like cities, include underground private rooms where Sam (Norman Reedus) can relax. Each room includes a spot for his infant companion, BB, to happily hang …

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Death Stranding is so good that it shouldn’t have a sequel

2019-11-07T10:00:00-05:00

The most implausible thing about Death Stranding is that it exists at all. Hideo Kojima, its writer and director, has been saying that he wants to stop making Metal Gear Solid games for as long as he's been making Metal Gear Solid games. Now, with a newly independent Kojima Productions receiving what appears to have been carte blanche from Sony to make whatever it wanted to as long as it was a PS4 game, Kojima's first non-Metal Gear directorial project in decades is here.

And, while I love Metal Gear, the one thing Death Stranding has made me feel above all else is that I wish Kojima had left the series behind sooner.

Death Stranding posi …

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Death Stranding: an explainer for Hideo Kojima’s inscrutable new PS4 game

2019-11-07T09:00:00-05:00

Hideo Kojima's long-anticipated game, Death Stranding, is out on the PlayStation 4 on November 8th. The star-studded action game utilizes actors such as Norman Reedus, Guillermo del Toro, Mads Mikkelsen, and Léa Seydoux to tell a long and winding story about the state of mankind and human connection in a post-apocalyptic future.

The buzz around the game, as well as understanding what it's actually all about, takes a little bit of unpacking for those who haven't been following along. How do you explain what is definitely the most bizarre game of the year?

First, the basics.

Who is Hideo Kojima?

Death Stranding is unmistakably A Hideo Kojim …

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Death Stranding is a long, bizarre journey that’s both breathtaking and boring

2019-11-01T03:01:00-04:00

In Death Stranding, your character Sam carries a small baby in an orange bottle strapped to his chest. It stays with him at all times. The child, called a BB, is essentially a tool: it alerts Sam to ghostly apparitions called BTs, which dot the post-apocalyptic landscape he must traverse. The whole situation is unsettling. BB cries when it gets scared - whether it's because of imminent danger or because you keep falling down a slippery mountain - and the haunting sound is piped through the speaker on the PS4 controller. This makes it even more unsettling.

Over the course of the game, which lasts upwards of 50 hours, my feelings toward BB ch …

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Death Stranding will make its way to PC in ‘early summer of 2020’

2019-10-28T08:53:55-04:00

Death Stranding - the highly anticipated next game from Hideo Kojima and his studio Kojima Productions - will be making its way to PC next year in "early summer," the studio announced today in a tweet.

The PC port will be published by 505 Games, the same group behind the excellent PC version of Control, so it seems Death Stranding's port is in good hands. There's no firm release date for Death Stranding on PC outside of the "early summer of 2020" window, though.

Thanks to all of you who have been supporting #DEATHSTRANDING!
DEATH STRANDING release on PS4 is November 8, 2019!!
Furthermore, KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS is happy to announce that DEATH ST …

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Sony’s Death Stranding PS4 has a translucent BB pod controller

2019-09-24T16:51:44-04:00

Death Stranding is this year's big PlayStation 4 exclusive, and that means one thing: a limited edition console. Today, Sony revealed a new version of the PS4 Pro that comes in a basic shade of white that's covered in dark handprints, which seems to be a theme in Hideo Kojima's new game. The real standout feature, though, is the DualShock 4 controller. It's designed to look like a BB pod, those disturbing baby carriers that Norman Reedus carries around in the game. It has the same translucent yellow look as the in-game object, and Sony says "throughout the game, you can gently rock the controller to emulate holding the BB pod in your own han …

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Watch nearly an hour of new Death Stranding footage

2019-09-12T09:24:31-04:00

Tokyo Game Show just kicked off, and it started with a bang, with Hideo Kojima showing off a huge amount of footage from his upcoming game Death Stranding. First, there was yet another story trailer, this one titled "Briefing," which provided a bit more insight on the game's post-apocalyptic world, in which Norman Reedus' character Sam is tasked with reconnecting humanity and rebuilding America. It's basically one long cutscene set inside of the Oval Office, and while I can't say I understand the story any better, it's at least an interesting watch.

More exciting, though, was a live gameplay demonstration that showed off around 50 minutes o …

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