What is Death Stranding actually about?
Hideo Kojima, t-shirts and pee mushrooms
This week we got another glimpse of 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Death Stranding thanks to 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:new footage from Gamescom 2019, and honestly it raised more questions than it answered. Not least about why Norman Reedus' character can grow mushrooms with his winky. Determined to figure out the strange riddle that 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Hideo Kojima has posed, we set the GamesRadar team on interpreting t൩he most anticipated game of 2019.&nꦫbsp;
This is the latest 💞in a series of big questions we'll be interrogating our writers with, so share your answers and suggestions for topics with us on
Hideo Kojima is messing with us all
Think what you like of what you've seen / heard about Death Stranding so far, because I'm convinced Kojima is messing with us. In what could be the greatest illusion of all time, I have a feeling that what we think Death Stranding is couldn't actually be further from the truth. Pack away your thoughts and feelings on DHL The GameTM, and prepared yourself for the most Kojima game of all time. After all, Kojima has – and always will be – a master trickster. Remember when all the trailers and gameplay footage for Metal Gear Solid 2 featured Snake, and then the main game actually had you playing 99% of the game as Raiden? He's done it before, pulled the heavy wool over our eyes, and he could do it again. Sam Loveridge
We've only seen a tiny part of Death Stranding and it might not be the actual game
This is the first time Kojima's been allowed to do exactly what he wants since probably the first Metal Gear on MSX, and he is going to go 'radio frequencies on the back of the box' levels of mad. This is a man who loves forth wall breaking, 'I'm sorry what?', fake outs and tricks, and with full creative freedom from Sony he's likely to draw on a lifetime of things he's probably never been allowed to do before. I still think that we may have only seen a small part of what Death Stranding is and, like the 'you're playing as Raiden' surprise from MGS 2, I think there's a whole element to the game that's yet to be revealed - there's chunks of gameplay that don't currently entirely connect, for example. A ton of 🥃weird PT links, from before D🐼eath Stranding existed, further point to some element we don't fully understand, and even Low Roar, a band featured heavily in the initial gameplay reveals, made a music video linked to Death Stranding where people in the real world entered the game via a sinister machine a motel bathroom. I think it's going to be impossible to really know what's going on until we see what the game actually is. Leon Hurley
"The most elaborate walking/sitting simulator hybrid you’ll ever experience"
From what I’ve seen of Death Stranding so far, I’ve come to believe it’s actually the most elaborate walking/sitting simulator hybrid you’ll ever experience. From all the shots Kojima has posted in the last few months, Norman Reedus is either sitting or standing in various landscapes, and the control command to “get up” is frequently on show. Maybe it’s like a round of musical chairs, except instead of music there’s a baby making noises and the sound of urination... Okay, perhaps not, but the only thing I’m willing to bet on at this point is that you will walk, and stand and sit a lot. Maybe there doesn’t even really need to be a purpose to it. Just as that saying goes, it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey. Heather Wald
"The bleakest game ever made"
Take a deep breath and close your eyes. You're in bed. It's Saturday morning. Someone's cooking breakfast downstairs. It smells good. You have no commitments, no social engagements, no work, no school. You are content. There's never been a better moment to absorb yourself in another world - to play a video game and become a warrior/soldier/tomb raider/Italian plumber. You sit down and turn on your PlayStation. The words "Death Stranding" appear on the screen, and your heart fills with dread.
Death Stranding will no doubt be the bleakest game ever made: a baby growing simulator where all color has drained from the world and normal people have been replaced by Hollywood actors and directors. You don't play Death Stranding for fun - you play because you have to learn that Global Warming is bad and that Kojima's vision is good. And after 42 hours of aimlessly walking Norman Reedus around this hellish, bleak landscape, you'll realize the ultimate truth: that you just wasted your entire weekend and life is actually shit and that smell from downstairs wasn't your mum's cooking but actually Kojima frying a magical mushroom that he grew from his own piss. I can't wait. Jack Shepherd
Citizen Kane and dick
Death Stranding is the Citizen Kane of video games that let you try to look at Norman Reedus' dick. Connor Sheridan
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"A deep dive into the existential questions that plague Kojima's elaborate psyche"
Death Stranding is a deep dive into the problems and existential questions that plague Hideo Kojima's elaborate psyche. The only way he knows how to make sense of these problems and free himself from the shackles of confusion are to fold them into a super-hyped video game. After ordering a Mads Mikkelsen photo collage T-shirt from Redbubble, Kojima became ob📖sessed with tracking the package. Its path was a confusing one - it bounced around FedEx SmartPost locations across the United States, moving only infinitesimally over the span of day. Why in the name of Naked Snake did it go from Bloomington, CA to Chino, CA to Los Angeles in the span of a week? Were they punting this priceless package from facility to facility, careless to the needs of one of the foremost game thinkers of a generation? How does FedEx even work?
, master of the pre-and-post-release hype cycle, breaker of , unprecedented master of meta and visionary who only predicted the perils of our digital society 15 years before anyone else - including pervasive tech giants, systems of control and digital privacy - some slack. Not even Game of Thrones' Dragon Queen Daenerys Targaryen deserves such a rap card. Oh, and let's not forget that Kojima made the scariest horror game of all time, PT, on his first go. Call me the type of person who holds R2 to urina🤡te, but I'm giving that guy the benefit of the doubt.What is Death Stranding about? More fool anyone who thinks Kojima has any interest in giving up that information pre-release. Death Stranding has been engineered as a global guessing game since announcement - perhaps linked to its themes of strands and connections - which won't reveal its secrets until days, weeks, or month after release (like MGS5's hidden global disarmament multiplayer game, which was only solved by PC data miners). This is the guy who duped the world into believing you'd played Metal Gear Solid 2 as Solid Snake… only to make you play for 90% of the game as fop-haired nobody Raiden, just to make a point about video-game sequels a༺nd the video-game industry hype cycle. In so many words, MGS5 told its fans to get over the series and get a life… while still delivering the deepest, most emergent, stealth game in history. Sure, Kojima is pretentious as all hell, but his body of work supports a legacy of artistic intent; a claim that might not perhaps belong to Gears of Duty 17, or Game As A Service: Season 10.
In time, we'll see if the emperor really does have no clothes… and whether committed Kojima fans like myself, who have sunk thousands of glorious hours poring over his work and connecting with like-minded souls, will be compelled to argue that he meant to appear naked all along. Watching armchair pundits write off Death Stranding months before release, makes me feel like I'm sat with cavemen mocking the outsider with a torch. That said, if Kojima really does deliver a game where you trudge around an empty mountain delivering parcels for no reason in an unfinished game which garners atrocious reviews - after three years visiting celebrities' at Sony's expense - then that might just be his greatest magic trick yet. My bet? Death Stranding's wider context - and gameplay - is being deliberately withheld, in order to surprise an audience who demand everything yesterday, only to complain when it feels so rushed. And, hell, if - even, when - I'm wrong, you can find me soothing my baby on a distant moonscape. Dan Dawkins
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Rachel Weber is the former US Managing Editor of GamesRadar+ and lives in Brooklyn, New York. She joined GamesRadar+ in 2017, revitalizing the news coverage and building new processes and strateg⛎ies for the US team.