Innovation

It was Covid-19 that inspired Hideo Kojima to create Death Stranding, a video game that defies genre with first-person shooter, narrative adventure, stealth, driving and some sim elements all bundled together into one odd package. The social connections built within the game between other players and the core tenets of the game itself led to Kojima calling it a “Strand” game. People build roads and connections across a post-apocalyptic US in a bid to resuscitate humanity on the verge of extinction. Combining synchronous and asynchronous collaborative play with real-world design and multiple genres, the game blurred the boundaries of reality and fiction.

A “walking sim, with feelings” is one way of putting the bleak, dark world into perspective. Gold hands emerging out of the earth. Timefall – rain that changes time. A baby in a tech-papoose capable of detecting the BTs (beached things/the dead) roaming the Earth. And a storyline that needs a whiskey and a long conversation to understand.