Owner and creator of Kojima Productions, Hideo Kojima, made his way down to Gamescom 2019 just to present us with more aspects of Death Stranding. While he originally was just going to show us a few character reveals, he also showed off some of the gameplay footage while stating that he plans to do a full gameplay reveal later at the Tokyo Gameshow. While this may have just been a “for-show” style set up, the glimpse of gameplay we are shown reveals some interesting aspects.
Starting with the character reveal trailers, we got to meet Mama, who is played by Margaret Qualley, Deadman, who is played by Guillermo del Toro, and Bridge Baby aka BB. Both of the character reveals are stated to be introductions to the character, but give you the beginning of each characters sub-story. The Bridge Baby and Deadman reveal were combined into one which is where we get to learn more about what the BB is and what its purpose is. We recently got to meet Heartman less than a month ago, so with all these characters shown off, we are sure to come across quite the array of characters in this open world game.
The gameplay is the true hero of Hideo’s Gamescom visit though. This is what many fans have been anxious to see with the release date approaching quickly. Starting off with the waking of Norman Reedus, the gameplay starts off like anybody else’s day does - relieving himself. He does briefly discuss the aspects of the urination role in the game, which is both silly and effective, but at least he doesn’t give the player a chance to see it happening even if they tried. Moving on, the actual gameplay focus starts with him running around the landscape as somebody calls out to him. As he uses his device to scan the grounds, he finds the location of the caller and it is the one he is to drop off his delivery at. This gives us the chance to see him climb the terrain, pull out the extendable ladder, and interact with one of the NPC’s.
Probably the more unique aspect shown is right after the already known delivery style open world system. They purposely have Reedus walk off the cliff to take some damage, in which stresses out the BB attached to him. From there we see the camera go to first person and he kind of interacts with the BB. In his explanation we find out that to do this we will have to actually interact with our PlayStation 4 controller as if it were the BB and that being gentle will help calm it back down, but being too rough will anger it. Is there no detail that he doesn’t have covered?
You can check out all the character reveals and gameplay footage yourself from the full Death Stranding segment at Gamescom 2019 video below. The game is still planned to come out this November on the PlayStation 4 and there will be more revealed along the way to is release. But it seems that no matter how much they show off, the game will remain confusing and full of secrets until we have it in our hands.
