Death Stranding will have ‘a lot of long cutscenes’

On Thursday night, Hideo Kojima and Norman Reedus appeared at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York to talk about their collaboration on Death Stranding. During the discussing, Kojima talked about how ‘connection’ will be a key theme of the game, saying how ‘everything is actually connected by the internet, but in a way we’re not connected in the real world these days.’, as quoted in an article by GamesRadar.

“I also threw in a really new idea. 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.”– Kojima, via GamesRadar

Kojima seems very pleased to be able to work with Norman Reedus on this project, saying there’s a real back and forth of ideas, and Reedus does a lot of ad libs as well during shooting. And, as can be expected with Kojima, the game will have ‘a lot of long cutscenes’.

“In Death Stranding I’m going to put every aspect of Norman in there. There’s a lot of cutscenes, and there’s a lot of long cutscenes. You’ll see Norman as Sam in the game, and see his acting in the cutscenes, and you’ll enjoy that.” – Kojima, via GamesRadar

One particularly interesting thing Kojima talked about was a certain area where you won’t be controlling Sam, but the game’s camera instead.

“One more thing, I can’t say where, but if you go somewhere in the game, you won’t be controlling Norman or Sam, you’ll be just controlling a camera. You’ll see Sam/Norman, and you can kind of move the camera to see around, and when you look at him he might do something like wink at you. So you’re actually playing as Norman Reedus as Sam, and in the drama part Sam will act to hit your emotions,  but when you go into this special area you’ll definitely love Norman. You’ll be a Norman fan.”– Kojima, via GamesRadar

Tribeca’s official Twitter account shared some interesting bits as well.

“I want people to play and enjoy the story, but also look at the real world and see how’s it’s close or different,” says @Kojima_Hideo. Kojima notes that, for certain players, DEATH STRANDING may evoke some of the human rights crises currently occurring in and around Europe. pic.twitter.com/Ro1gFA9JPN

— Tribeca (@Tribeca) April 25, 2019

.@WWWBigBaldHead says that working with @Kojima_Hideo is a lot like working with @RealGDT. “You want to get inside his head,” says Reedus. “You want to see everything. It’s super fascinating.” Reedus notes Kojima’s approach is incredibly collaborative, organic, and open to ideas. pic.twitter.com/BWDYolcJWq

— Tribeca (@Tribeca) April 25, 2019

Death Stranding does not have a release date yet, other than some vague remarks by Kojima. Recently, in an interview about Sony’s plans for the (still unnamed) PlayStation 5, a spokesperson of the company reaffirmed that Death Stranding will release on PS4, but according to the author of the article Mark Cerny possibly hinted at a PS5 release as well. In other words, it may be a cross-generation title for both systems.

Either way, Kojima did mention during the Tribeca panel that we may see get more news on the game in a month or so.

Source: GamesRadar, CNET