What the hell is Death Stranding? What will the game be like? When will it come out? Will it actually ever release? These are just a few of the questions I ask myself whenever I think about the upcoming (maybe) release from Metal Gear man Hideo Kojima.
See, for every time Kojima opens his mouth to share more details about his ambitious new project, all I end up with is more questions. This time around, he’s been comparing his game to the excellent Oscar winning animated feature Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse.
Why? I’ve no idea. Let’s dive in anyway and try to make sense of it all, shall we? Quick side note, the Japanese poster for the film is so much cooler than our one.
Spider- Man: Into the Spider-Verse was great masterpiece! Live action, full CGI, Japanimation, puppet anime, tokusatsu, manga, American comic, graffiti, it carries all the DNA and MEME SCENE, SENSE to make the next gen entertainment art. Good story too! The theme is like TPP+DS👍 pic.twitter.com/dYTKH1SkPM
— HIDEO_KOJIMA (@HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN) March 3, 2019
As you can see from the above, Kojima had high praise for the latest Spidey flick, calling it a “great masterpiece.” He then goes on to suggest the theme is like TPP + DS. Urm, what?
If you hadn’t already guessed, TPP is The Phantom Pain, which was Kojima’s last Metal Gear Solid game. DS, meanwhile, is obviously Death Stranding. So if Into The Spider-Verse is like those two games combined, does that mean Death Stranding is like The Phantom Pain crossed with Spider-Verse?
If so, what does that mean? Will the game feature plenty of twisted dimension hopping action? Will it focus on a heartfelt coming of age story? Will there be a wise cracking cartoon pig? Kojima why are you like this?
Hell, for all I know it could just be because Sony are involved with both.
Knowing Kojima as well as I don’t, these comments really could mean any number of things. But as an elevator pitch, Metal Gear Solid crossed with Spider-Man is absolutely something I’d be interested in, so maybe for now it’s just best he keep it vague.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.