When Death Stranding was first announced back at E3 2016, the initial reactions were mixed, to say the least, with plenty of confusion among attendees and people watching online. There were many elements within Death Stranding's trailer that, at the time, could not be put together in a linear fashion in order to figure out what the story could've been about. Even each trailer revealed after that would be met with the same kind of reactions, and confusion is the main theme surrounding nearly every article published about it.
Even though Death Stranding featured a star-studded cast, no one could put together what the real meaning behind Death Stranding was until it came out. Once fans began finishing the main story after the game's release in November 2019, slowly it became a bit clearer as to what Hideo Kojima wanted them to get out of the experience. In a few tweets written by Kojima himself in the months leading up to the release of Death Stranding, the developer told fans that his upcoming project is the first of a new 'strand' genre, and that players would have to use the power of connection in order to beat the game.
Even though the game contains a ton of various elements mixing together all at one time, the basic concept of Death Stranding can be summarized up by the huge, tragic event that the game is named after. With Earth looking quite different, it is up to the people still left on the planet to understand not only what happened during the titular Death Stranding, but what they can do to put back all its parts and connect to one another again. This is achieved through the player's ability to create bridges, signs, and other useful materials that will not only help themselves, but others in the process. The main character, Sam Bridges, played by Norman Reedus, has the job of a being a porter; delivering packages to other humans who are scattered across the new United Cities of America.
Death Stranding Is About Connection & Disconnection
Kojima didn't set out to make just any other game, but instead he wanted players to feel the presence of other people who weren't physically there with them. While players are going through the motions of the game, traveling with Sam through the mountains and rocky terrain, they have the ability to "like" the features and signs other players have placed in the shared environment. Every time a player logs in to the game, Death Stranding will then tell them how many other people enjoyed or utilized their structures.
The theme of "connection" is very apparent through many other elements scattered throughout the game, such as Sam's phobia of being touched and how he learns to eventually connect with people through hugging and shaking hands. With the "bang" of the Death Stranding event came the BTs, ghost-like figures that haunt the players at certain points of the story or whenever Sam comes across "timefall," which is rain that rapidly ages anything it comes into contact with. These creatures are a result of two worlds colliding, and every human that dies must immediately be properly disposed or will eventually become BTs themselves. Players learn later on that one way to defeat BTs is by cutting the umbilical cords that still connect them to the real world, allowing them to dissipate and finally rest peacefully.
Death Stranding Characters & Their Mysterious Powers
In an interview conducted by Time, Hideo Kojima sits down to discuss what he wanted fans and players to walk away with once they completed the main story line. Speaking particularly about the features which connect players together in the game, Kojima says that "you just can't see them, but you're connected." Not only must the characters connect with each other, but so must the real-life players who want to have a more enjoyable, easier game experience.
With all of the hints pointing towards a linear connection theme, fans have also been speculating about a few theories which also might be at play in the Death Stranding universe. While the humans who walk around the environment might look normal, in reality, a lot of them prove to possess supernatural abilities they have acquired some way or another. Sam is not only a porter, but a "repatriate," someone who has been given the ability to reconnect his soul back to his body after dying at a very young age. With a huge lack of the 'game over' screen, fans have been theorizing about the potential for the game to host a species called Ludens - basically, a species that's just a step or two above a human.
Death Stranding's Luden Obsession
Many examples of a potential superior race are at play in Death Stranding when players meet Amelie, who, as they later discover, has a huge role to play when it comes to how the entire universe will eventually end up. Higgs, the main antagonist, is also shown with extraordinary abilities, like summoning huge BTs and teleportation. Even Die-Hardman, assistant to the president of the United Cities of America, is seen wearing a black skull mask that has the word 'ludens' written on the front of it. Kojima even personally asked the metal band Bring Me the Horizon to write a song called "Ludens" specifically for the Death Stranding soundtrack, and the music video featured four very colorful, unique humanoid-animal like creatures. This theory doesn't just stretch to the characters of Death Stranding, but possibly before the game even starts.
Before the game gets to the main menu, a small Kojima Productions logo will appear, showing an astronaut standing on the moon with a pixelated whale flopping behind him in the background. After some investigation, fans have noticed that the man inside the astronaut suit looks a lot like Sam Bridges, with the whale resembling the beached creatures scattered throughout Death Stranding's many beaches. It could be likely that these two characters could be connected through their extraordinary abilities, but how one becomes a Ludens, or how much the plot of 1987's The Time Wanderers book by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (where the concept of Ludens was initially created) influenced Kojima's direction for Death Stranding, is unclear.
While fans usually have a fair amount of theories lined up for a most video games, Death Stranding seems to have much, much more than usual to explore. One thing is for sure, however, and that's the fact that Death Stranding is a game which is still a one of a kind experience, and it will likely continue to confuse players, as well as encourage them to keep searching for more clues, for quite some time to come.
Source: Hideo Kojima/Time