Hideo Kojima Reveals What Death Stranding Means, Sort Of

Death Stranding

Legendary director Hideo Kojima recently offered up a handful of new details pertaining to his upcoming game, Death Stranding. However, in typical Kojima fashion, those answers are leading us to even more questions. Even his explanation of the game's title doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense.

Of course, that's par for the course when you're talking about anything to do with a Kojima game. His Metal Gear series is loved by millions, but everything from the characters to the plot is about as street-rat-crazy as you can get. Still, things wouldn't be the same without that dose of Kojima eccentricity, which is why we're happy to see the trend alive and well in his new game, Death Stranding.

Speaking of Death Stranding, Kojima explained the game's title during a recent pre-Tokyo Game Show Sony press conference, picked up on by GameSpot. Originally announced during E3 2016, Kojima's debut trailer for Death Stranding left people cheering and scratching their heads at the same time. Rather than try to explain the insanity of a naked Norman Reedus holding a baby on a beach covered in dead whales, we'll instead let you take another gander at it to refresh your memory.

Stranding is a term folks use to refer to whales that have beached themselves so, given the imagery of the whales on what appears to be an oil-covered beach, everyone assumed that the title had something to do with that natural phenomena.

According to Kojima, though, the term actually relates to connections players will have in his upcoming game. When the game's title appears on-screen, it looks like oil is falling from many of the letters. Kojima explained that those are actually "strands," symbolizing the way players will be connected in his upcoming game.

On top of that, Kojima has confirmed that Death Stranding will be an open-world action game with some sort of multiplayer feature that lets you stay connected to online friends and foes. Again, as is common of a Kojima announcement, we feel like we have more questions than when he started offering up answers.

Thankfully, Kojima is expected to make an appearance at Tokyo Game Show on Sept. 18, when he plans to offer up additional details about the game. Hopefully, these won't leave us equally confused. Until then, we don't have much else to go on.

In other DS news, Kojima confirmed that his upcoming title will take advantage of both HDR and 4K resolution, visual upgrades that got a lot of face time during the recent PlayStation 4 Pro event. No extra footage from the game was shown off, however, 4K or otherwise.

Ryan Winslett

Staff Writer for CinemaBlend.