Death Stranding

• 1. Introduction

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  Death Stranding is a 2019 video game in which a courier named Sam Porter Bridges crosses a wrecked United States on foot, carrying a premature baby in a pod. The baby is not cargo. It is a tool, a companion and, as the story unfolds, something far more personal than Sam first understands.

  The job itself sounds humble. Sam is asked to deliver supplies to isolated settlements and to stitch them back together. Yet the road is haunted by monsters and bandits, and every parcel is a gamble.

  Director Hideo Kojima invented a new genre label for this experience. What does that label mean, and how does a game about hauling packages involve other players? What happened to America, and who is the baby in the pod? And why did critics argue so fiercely over a game that asks you to walk?

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• 2. Fresh Start

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  In July 2015, Kojima Productions closed after a long corporate conflict with Konami, which had treated it as a restricted subsidiary. The studio re-formed as an independent developer that December. In the same month, Hideo Kojima announced a partnership with Sony Interactive Entertainment, then led by Andrew House, to make a new PlayStation game. That game became Death Stranding, the first from Kojima and his studio after the split with Konami.

  Two weeks of January 2016 went to the hunt for an engine. Kojima and Mark Cerny, lead system architect of the PlayStation 4, spent that time looking, and one candidate was used to build a teaser trailer. Guerrilla Games was later announced as a collaborator, because it supplied its proprietary engine, Decima. To check accuracy and test physically based lighting, the team rebuilt the Kojima Productions meeting room inside it.

  Kojima revealed the game at Sony's conference during E3 2016. The teaser relied on photogrammetry and motion capture, and it starred Norman Reedus, who served as the basis for the protagonist. It was the second collaboration between the two men, after the canceled Silent Hills.

  Full development began in 2017. A few days before E3 2017, Kojima announced that the game would skip Sony's usual conference. In June, Shawn Layden, president of Sony Interactive Entertainment America, confirmed that a playable alpha existed, though he could not place it in any genre. Meanwhile, the 2016-17 video game voice actor strike had stopped the team from capturing performances for a third trailer. It finally appeared at The Game Awards 2017 in December, where Kojima, Reedus and Guillermo del Toro all made appearances.

  In March 2019, Kojima admitted that the game was slightly behind its release schedule. He was testing and adjusting the gameplay himself, day by day, and he called that phase critical. A trailer in May 2019 set the release date for the 8th of November 2019. On the 26th of September 2019, Kojima Productions announced that the game had gone gold.

  A blog post accompanying the May trailer gave the core theme as "the true importance of forging connections with others". Certain themes and story elements were shaped by Kojima's childhood and the deaths of his parents. The post also promised that players would "create new bonds or 'Strands' with other players around the globe."

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• 3. The Strand Game

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  The phrase "strand game" belongs to Kojima, who describes Death Stranding as the first of its kind. He drew a comparison with Metal Gear, now considered a stealth game, which was called an action game on release because the stealth genre did not yet exist. The new genre is defined by social elements, and the mechanics show how.

  Sam Bridges works as a porter for a company called Bridges. His task is to carry cargo to isolated cities known as Knots, and to researchers and survivalists, while linking each of them to a communications system called the Chiral Network. The company and the recipients grade his work, including with "likes" similar to those on social networks. They look at whether the cargo arrived and whether it is intact. Those marks raise statistics such as stability and weight capacity, and they build standing with locations and characters, which can improve rewards. How Sam packs his cargo, and how much he carries, shapes how well he moves across the terrain.

  MULEs are rogue porters so obsessed with cargo that they try to steal it and deliver it themselves. Demens are MULEs who have begun killing porters to claim their loads. Otherworldly creatures called beached things, or BTs, add a second kind of threat. Sam's suit carries a robotic sensor called an odradek, which points toward nearby BTs, and the player can scan the area to reveal them. Sam is what the game calls a repatriate, so dying sends him to an underwater world where he swims back to his body. Being killed and swallowed by a BT is worse. It causes a destructive blast that leaves an untraversable crater at that spot permanently.

  As the player widens the coverage of the Chiral Network, maps open up and blueprints become available. With the Portable Chiral Constructor, a device similar to a 3D printer, the player makes ropes, bridges and power generators that charge battery-powered equipment. The network also underpins the online features. Players leave supplies, structures and messages that others can see and use, though the rain called Timefall eventually destroys the structures. A player can even recover cargo that someone else lost and finish that delivery. Yet no player ever directly meets another in the world.

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• 4. The Stranded World

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  The cataclysm called the Death Stranding left the United States in ruins. After it, creatures known as Beached Things began roaming the Earth. They are invisible, and they originate from the Beach, a land said to be unique to each person. People visit their Beach during near-death experiences, and it is said to be the link to the afterlife. BTs form from the dead through necrosis. When one swallows a living human, the result is a voidout, an explosion on the scale of a nuclear bomb.

  Timefall is the rain that the BTs bring, and it rapidly ages and deteriorates whatever it hits. Damaged infrastructure forced the surviving population to confine themselves to remote colonies. Together those colonies make up the United Cities of America. Their lifeline is Bridges, the company whose porters brave BTs, bandits and terrorists to deliver supplies. Bridges also performs various governmental functions on behalf of the UCA.

  The Bridge Baby, or BB, is a premature child who reflects a state between life and death. A person who achieves a mental connection with one can sense the presence of a BT. Porters therefore carry a BB in a pod that simulates the womb of a "stillmother". A condition called DOOMS, depending on its severity, lets a person sense, see or even control a BT. It can also grant powers such as teleportation or travel to other people's Beaches.

  Repatriates are people who can return after death from the Seam, a place between the world of the living and the Beach. They can effectively come back from death. Their deaths still cause voidouts if they are killed while in contact with a BT.

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• 5. Journey West

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  Freelance courier Sam Porter Bridges is hauling cargo to Central Knot City when Timefall forces him to take shelter. Fragile helps him evade a BT. When Sam arrives, a citizen has died by suicide, and the corpse is on the verge of necrosis. Because Sam is both a repatriate and a person with DOOMS, he is given an emergency assignment to accompany the disposal team to an incinerator. An encounter with BTs causes a voidout that destroys Central Knot City.

  Sam revives in Capital Knot City and meets Deadman, a doctor from Bridges. Deadman has him deliver morphine to the dying President of the UCA, Bridget Strand, who is Sam's adoptive mother. Before she dies, Bridget pleads with Sam to rejoin Bridges and help realize her dream of "reforming America". Sam takes her body for incineration but refuses to burn a Bridge Baby involved in the Central Knot City voidout. With its help he escapes a horde of BTs and decides to adopt it. The UCA tells porters to treat Bridge Babies as pieces of equipment, but Sam gradually forms an emotional bond and nicknames this one "Lou".

  Back in Capital Knot City, a message arrives from Sam's estranged sister, Amelie Strand. Over three years, she says, she led an expedition across what is left of the continental United States. She contacted isolated cities and settlements and set up terminals to connect them to the Chiral Network, a system that allows instant communication and data transfer across vast distances through the Beach. At the last city on the West Coast, Edge Knot City, the terrorist group Homo Demens captured her to guarantee the city's independence. She asks Sam to follow her route and complete the network. Then he can rescue her, and she can take Bridget's place as President. Sam reluctantly accepts.

  Die-Hardman, Bridget's personal aide and the Director of Bridges, directs Sam's trek from the east coast to the west. Sam delivers valuable cargo, and he helps Bridges staff such as Mama, her twin sister Lockne and Heartman research the Death Stranding. He also thwarts deadly plots by terrorists and their leader, Higgs Monaghan. While connected to Lou, Sam experiences memories of Clifford Unger and his hospitalized wife and BB child. Sometimes he is pulled into Clifford's Beach, where he fights a BT manifestation of Clifford who is searching for his lost BB.

  At Edge Knot City, Sam fights and defeats Higgs on Amelie's Beach. Higgs reveals that Amelie is an Extinction Entity, a godlike being manifested by the universe to trigger mass extinction events. She is the true leader of Homo Demens, and she conceived the Chiral Network to enable the Last Stranding, the end of life on Earth. Amelie and Bridget turn out to be the same person. Bridget's soul separated from her body during early experiments into the Beaches, and she used the name Amelie as cover. Amelie is conflicted about her cosmological duties and finds the Last Stranding more humane than endless cycles of growth and extinction.

  With help from allies he made along the way, Sam reaches Amelie and convinces her to delay the Last Stranding. Moved, she agrees, but she must separate herself and her Beach from the world forever. Sam is rescued by his Bridges allies. Die-Hardman becomes President of the UCA, and Fragile resolves to rebuild her company. Then Sam learns that Lou is dying. UCA law demands that dying Bridge Babies be incinerated, but Sam follows Deadman's advice and removes Lou from the pod, hoping to save its life.

  In that last contact, Sam discovers that the memories he has been viewing are his own. He is Clifford Unger's son. Bridget Strand had turned him into one of the first BBs, and he was accidentally killed alongside Clifford during a botched escape. Amelie resurrected him, and in doing so she accidentally caused the Death Stranding, which let the BTs cross over. The spirits of deceased BBs help save Lou. Sam destroys his UCA cufflinks, goes off the grid to live peacefully, and a post-credits scene reveals that his Bridge Baby is actually named Louise.

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• 6. Faces And Sounds

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  In February 2018, Emily O'Brien and Troy Baker joined the cast. A new trailer that month showed gameplay for the first time and revealed Léa Seydoux and Lindsay Wagner as part of the company. At Tokyo Game Show 2018, Tommie Earl Jenkins was announced in a key role. The Japanese voice cast also gained Akio Ōtsuka, Kikuko Inoue, Nana Mizuki and Satoshi Mikami, who are veterans of the Metal Gear series, along with Kenjiro Tsuda. A trailer in May 2019 introduced Margaret Qualley as Mama and Nicolas Winding Refn as Heartman, and it named Mads Mikkelsen's character Cliff. Reedus plays Sam, Seydoux plays Fragile, Baker plays Higgs and Jenkins plays Die-Hardman.

  Guillermo del Toro and Nicolas Winding Refn both received a "Special Appearance" credit. Kojima later explained that only their likenesses were used, while other actors performed their voices and motion capture. The same approach shaped a gallery of cameos, many revealed in a six-minute gameplay trailer at Gamescom 2019. Canadian journalist and video critic Geoff Keighley appears as a hologram. Japanese writer Junji Ito appears as the hologram of the Engineer, voiced by Yuri Lowenthal. Edgar Wright lent his likeness to Thomas Southerland, and Tommy Wirkola portrays Phillip North. Hirokazu Hamamura appears as the Collector, while Sam Lake modeled the Veteran Porter, voiced by Liam O'Brien. In July 2020, comedian Conan O'Brien revealed on his show that a character was modeled after him, after a digital scan at the studio.

  Silent Poets and Low Roar supply most of the licensed music that scores the game's big moments of traversal. Low Roar's songs had already played in the 2016 teaser. Kojima said the music "would match this harsh but beautiful and pure environmental setting." He added, "I also felt somewhat of a connection to Low Roar and the game, the matching of Low Roar's acoustic but digital futuristic sound and the concept of Death Stranding." After the death of Low Roar's frontman Ryan Karazija in 2022, Kojima said, "Without Low Roar, Death Stranding would not have been born."

  The official soundtrack, Death Stranding: Timefall, was released through RCA Records and Sony Interactive Entertainment on the 7th of November 2019. It features artists such as Chvrches, The Neighbourhood, Major Lazer and Bring Me the Horizon. It arrived one day before the game itself.

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• 7. Praise And Backlash

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  Death Stranding earned a top-ten place among the most watched video game trailers on YouTube in June 2018, with more than 4.5 million views. Its E3 2016 announcement had been met with a positive reception, and in 2017 it was nominated for Most Wanted Game at the Golden Joystick Awards.

  On release, Metacritic described the reviews as "generally favorable". Reviewers praised the unique concepts, lasting appeal, graphics, voice acting and soundtrack. They also called the game bloated, frustrating and slow-paced. Russ Frushtick of Polygon called it "the most advanced walking simulator the world has ever seen" and "composed entirely of fetch quests", yet "pretty damn fun once it gets out of its own way". He said it "felt like two games in one": an open-world adventure with asynchronous cooperative multiplayer, and "a long, confusing, deeply strange movie". Matthew Kato of Game Informer gave it 7 out of 10, writing that the gameplay "really is as simple as it appears to be". Japan's Famitsu magazine awarded it a perfect 40/40, the fourth Kojima-directed game and the 26th overall to earn that score.

  Criticism also targeted a data log in the original release. It portrayed asexuality as a "sexless" lifestyle choice, a rejection of emotional relationships, and a cause of declining birth rates. The director's cut revised the log and attached a note saying it "advances a controversial thesis widely regarded as unsubstantiated and discriminatory". Separately, Metacritic removed over 6,000 negative user reviews in December 2019 to prevent "potential score manipulation", judging them suspicious.

  The game won the most Game of the Year awards of any title in 2019. IGN named it "Best PS4 Exclusive" in its 2019 awards. The list of categories where it appeared is long. At The Game Awards 2019 it featured in categories including Game of the Year, Best Narrative and Best Performance for Mads Mikkelsen. Later it appeared at the 23rd Annual D.I.C.E. Awards, the 16th British Academy Games Awards and the Steam Awards.

  In its debut week, Famitsu reported 185,909 copies sold in Japan, making it the best-selling physical game there. That was the most successful debut for a new intellectual property in Japan in the eighth generation of consoles, overtaking Judgment. In the UK it debuted at number two on the physical chart, outsold by Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. It was the second biggest PlayStation exclusive debut of the year, behind Days Gone. It also debuted at number one in Taiwan and South Korea, and it topped the Italian and French charts.

  SuperData Research estimated 477,000 digital copies on Steam in the first month. In May 2020, Kojima stated that the game had recouped its development costs and turned a profit. That secured funding for Kojima Productions' next project. The PC release was the highest-grossing game of 2020 for publisher 505 Games' parent company, Digital Bros. By March 2021, the game had sold 5 million copies worldwide on PlayStation 4 and PC. By April 2025, it had reached over 20 million players.

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• 8. Beyond The Game

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  The COVID-19 pandemic began in the months after the original release, and numerous commentators noted that the game's story and gameplay resembled it. The comparison echoes how Kojima's 2001 game, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, anticipated phenomena of the 2010s such as fake news and echo chambers. A parody game set in a post-apocalyptic world devastated by COVID-19, Walking Simulator, was released in March 2020.

  The Windows version arrived from 505 Games on the 14th of July 2020. A director's cut came to PlayStation 5 on the 24th of September 2021 and to Windows on the 30th of March 2022. The base game joined PC Game Pass on the 23rd of August 2022. On the 9th of November 2024, the five-year anniversary of the PlayStation 4 launch, Kojima Productions announced that it had reacquired the intellectual property rights from Sony Interactive Entertainment. The director's cut launched that day on the Microsoft Store, Xbox Series X/S and Amazon Luna. It had already reached iOS, iPadOS and macOS in January 2024.

  In May 2022, Norman Reedus told the outlet Leo Edit, "We just started work on the second one." Kojima answered with a series of photos on Twitter, cheekily showing him punishing Reedus for confirming the game's existence. Images teasing the sequel, with Elle Fanning, Shioli Kutsuna and Léa Seydoux, appeared at several game expos. A first trailer at The Game Awards 2022 carried the working title Death Stranding 2 and confirmed Troy Baker's return. A second trailer, shown during a State of Play presentation on the 31st of January 2024, confirmed the subtitle On the Beach. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach released for PlayStation 5 on the 26th of June 2025.

  A live-action film was announced on the 15th of December 2022. Kojima Productions partnered with Alex Lebovici and his company Hammerstone Studios, with Allan Ungar as executive producer. A24 was revealed as a co-producer when a Death Stranding T-shirt bearing its logo appeared on its merchandise website. Michael Sarnoski is set to write and direct, with Ari Aster and Lars Knudsen as producers. In June 2025, an anime film tentatively named Death Stranding Mosquito was announced with Line Mileage. Hiroshi Miyamoto will direct from an original story by Aaron Guzikowski, and a teaser followed on the 23rd of September 2025.

  In November 2025, E&H Production's animated series Death Stranding Isolations was announced, telling a story separate from the game. It is set for Disney+ in 2027, the same year Kojima has given for the live-action film.

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