‘You can get in vehicles’ and other Death Stranding tidbits from Kojima

It’s an ‘open world game, with a lot of freedom’

In an interview with PlayStation Blog, Hideo Kojima let loose a few more tantalizing details about Death Stranding, a game I simultaneously want to know everything and nothing about before playing. Some of the tidbits are well-known, some less so, and some wholly new, at least to my eyes.

Perhaps most importantly, what even is this strange game? That’s a good starting point, a necessary foundation that plenty of folks are still fuzzy on through no fault of their own. According to Kojima, “it’s an action game – an open world game, with a lot of freedom. You have a lot of freedom of choice to do what you want to do and you can get in vehicles and so on. If you are a fighter, there’s plenty of opportunity for that. If you’re not that type of player, there are other ways to play this game. I can’t really say much more, but it’s an open-world, action game that’s very intuitive to play. Once you get into the world and start to explore more, we’re hoping there’s something there you’ve never seen before.”

Adding to that notion of wanting to provide new experiences, he said that the norm in action games is for players to face off against enemies with a gun in a single-player or competitive environment. “They join in together with guns – [laughs] it’s almost always with guns – to take down a stronger opponent. In this game you can do that but I wanted to go a little deeper beyond that with something that doesn’t focus on a weapon like a gun and that’s what has a connection to the strand concept.”

Kojima’s response to a probe about Death Stranding‘s online play was also answered in terms of what it won’t be like. “Again, this is something that we can’t say a lot about at the moment but if you want to play the game stand-alone, without an online component, that’s perfectly fine,” he said. “We do have an online component and, again, it’s different as there will be something different versus what most people expect from an online game. A lot of games have a ‘campaign mode’ and once you’re done with that you take it to the online mode. This game is not that kind of structure.”

Part of me likes the sense of intrigue surrounding Death Stranding — it leaves us room to try and piece things together and imagine, particularly with respect to the story, characters, and the world — but part of me just wants some solid answers already. I suppose there’s plenty of time left, though.

“We’re still running tests on the game, but we have made it to the stage where we have the framework worked out,” Kojima said in closing. “This year is all about hardcore production and development, so please look forward to the fruits of our labor further down the road.”

The Hideo Kojima Death Stranding interview: Strands, Decima and Guerrilla Games [PlayStation Blog]