In a series of tweets, game developer Hideo Kojima showed off the beautiful landscape of Death Stranding, as well as a new sleep mechanic. It appears that the protagonist, Sam “Porter” Bridges, will have to sleep to regain strength on his long travels.
Although Death Stranding has had more than one trailer, many have joked that no one knows what the game is about. Partly this has to do with Kojima himself; his reputation as a video game auteur and some of his non-traditional views on game design lend themselves to jokes. Still, the actual plot of Death Stranding is hard to pin down. Even Kojima himself has said that Death Stranding is a new type of genre, a “Strand Game.” But now we have at least one more hint about what this enigma of a game has in store. It’s going to have a sleeping mechanic.
Kojima tweeted three photos, one showing Porter sitting down, with a prompt that says “Rest,” one showing him hunched over from fatigue with a prompt that says “Rest,” and one showing him sitting down with a prompt that says, “Sleep.” It appears that Porter has to rest and sleep to avoid getting fatigued from his long journeys. Being a mailman is tiring work after all.
However, the tweets also show off a glimpse of the game’s landscape. The green, rocky fields and mountains are quite a difference from some of the bleak images of grey skies, ruined cities, and black sands that were in the trailers. Then again, if Porter’s entire job is traveling long distances, we might see many different types of landscapes. Hideo Kojima may just be showing off one of the many places we will eventually see in the final game.
The sleep mechanic might not seem like a big deal considering how much we don’t know about the game, but maybe Kojima just had sleep on his mind. The caption he wrote for the tired Porter – “My eyes…” – is very similar to Kojima’s own comment about how sore his own eyes were from working on the game to make sure it is working properly for release. Considering that game developers are often overworked, we hope that Kojima is finding time to get some sleep of his own.