Legendary video game developer Hideo Kojima revealed more cryptic details on his current project, Death Stranding, that raise speculation that the game is a massively multiplayer online game, or MMO.
Kojima took the stage at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York with Norman Reedus, the star of Death Stranding, and made some comments that suggest a multiplayer element for the secretive project.
“It’s an open-world action game, but it’s really something new,” Kojima said, as reported by GamesRadar. “There are so many things happening in the real world — in America, in Europe — everything is actually connected by the internet, but in a way we’re not connected in the real world these days. I’m putting that as a metaphor in the game. The player will have to reconnect the world in the game. You’re very alone, there’s solitude, but you’re trying to connect.”
Kojima made further enigmatic comments indicating that interactions with other players will be an important part of Death Stranding, leading to theories that it will be an MMO connecting people across the world. “I also threw in a really new idea,” he said. “You’re connecting the game, and everyone is playing it together, and you’ll be connected, everyone will be connected together as well. I can’t say anything because Sony will be very unhappy. I don’t want to be disconnected from Sony.”
The game, however, will likely not be similar to all the other MMOs that are out right now — frankly, because this is Hideo Kojima we are talking about.
“It’s a different way of thinking,” said Reedus. “I have a teenage son, I’ve played some games where you just kill everybody. It’s not like that. There are violent elements to it, but it’s just a different thing.”
The plot and mechanics of Death Stranding are still very much unclear, with Reedus’ co-star Mads Mikkelsen revealing that even he is still confused as to what the game is all about even after a year working on the project. The game’s first gameplay trailer, revealed at E3 2018, brought more questions than answers, such as when Reedus’ character Sam moves through a field of floating shadow creatures with a glowing baby.
Death Stranding is a PlayStation 4 exclusive, but there is no release date yet. As such, it remains unknown how long Kojima will keep dropping mysterious information before we finally find out what Death Stranding is all about.