Hideo Kojima took to San Diego Comic-Con to reveal a brand new trailer – though this trailer was in fact a logo movie for his studio, and not new footage of Death Stranding.
Still there’s plenty to enjoy in the bizarre ‘logo movie’, as company mascot Ludens plants a flag on what at first appears to be the bottom of an ocean, before turning out to be an alien planet.
Kojima explained:
At first it looks like Ludens is underwater, his footprints are there. He looks like he’s walking in the ocean or somewhere, the whole idea is to go somewhere he ever been to, then you have something big crossing in front of the character. You’re led to believe it was the ocean, but it turns out it’s a different planet. Then you have the flag, and the huge whale that has an effect that makes it hard to see if it’s real or not.
Given the amount of theorising around the Death Stranding trailer, I’m sure there are fans out there who are already poring over frames of this new footage trying to discover new clues.
Just be warned that Kojima revealed during the Comic-Con talk that Ludens won’t be in Death Stranding. Then again, can you really trust anything this guy says? He lives to toy with us.
Also during the event, Kojima discussed how Ludens represents Kojima Productions and what it stands for:
Kojima Productions is represented in Ludens. The concept is to use bleeding-edge technology and exploring the unknown. A scientist in the Netherlands proposed the concept that the more we play, the more we evolve. This is what I want to be, I want to put this concept into Homoludens.
Beyond that, Kojima said that he wanted Ludens to look like something between a samurai and a knight – which does sound like a fucking cool pitch, to be fair.
Death Stranding – Kojima Production’s first game for PlayStation 4 and PC – is still a long way from being released, but it looks like Kojima is willing to put the time in to really get it right.
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.