Hideo Kojima Tried To Explain Death Stranding And Now We're Even More Confused

A soldier hugs a baby in Death Stranding

Death Stranding is a tricky game to explain, and apparently, that rings true even for the game's legendary creator, Hideo Kojima. He recently tried to put the game's concept into words, and now we have even more questions than answers.

Kojima, the man behind the Metal Gear Solid series who had a rather ugly falling out with long-time publisher Konami a couple years back, was in New York this past week to attend the inaugural Tribeca Games Festival. While there, Kojima took part in an interview where Geoff Keighley asked him a few questions about the upcoming Death Stranding and how the new game is coming along. As Polygon is reporting, Kojima pulled a Kojima-ass move and confused everyone even further. Here's an analogy he offered to help clear the air.

Let's say the character goes in an Italian restaurant. Who the character meets going into the restaurant, what he will be eating, all those details are decided, are set. What we're working on right now is what kind of table will be there, what kind of specific details will be there, what's on the specific menu for this restaurant.

We'll give you a moment to let that settle in. Honestly, given his history of plugging a large quantity of WTF moments into his games, I think we'd be a little disappointed at this point if Kojima said anything that made a lick of sense.

As best as we can figure, Kojima was saying that the framework of Death Stranding is set. We take the "Italian restaurant" bit to be a reference to the game's genre, even if it's kind of unknown to the public at this time. We know it's going to be multiplayer and action-based in some way, and that players' actions will tie together like "strands," but that isn't exactly painting a clear picture.

Anyway, the rest of the analogy seems to be saying that they've got the characters set in stone and what the player will need to do on their journey, but some of the more fiddly bits are still up in the air. The bit about the table we take to refer to design elements within the game. So maybe they know where they'll be taking the player on this journey, but they haven't settled on all of the specifics of the design just yet. As for the details of the menu, we figure that's tied to gameplay elements. In other words, what all will the player be able to do in Death Stranding?

Then again, maybe Death Stranding is set in an Italian restaurant and Kojima was being 100 percent literal with his response. At this point, that really wouldn't surprise us.

Speaking of Death Stranding, we're expecting it to make an appearance at E3 this year, but nothing has been confirmed at this point. As for our readers, how far up is the game on your hype meter? Did Kojima's comments, no matter how bizarre, crank up the dial a bit? Let us know in the comments below.

Ryan Winslett

Staff Writer for CinemaBlend.