Hideo Kojima shared some documents from the very early stages of Death Stranding this week to give his followers an idea of how he looked at the game when presenting it to others. Two infographics outlined how players would not only fend for themselves but would also literally follow in the footsteps of other players for guidance at times. It hammered in the idea of the connected world and shared resources as players progressed through the game by themselves and as a community.

The documents in question can be seen below after they were shared by Kojima on Twitter a few days ago. The first of these shows the progression of how pathways would be formed in the game beginning with one player who travels an area. As others follow those footsteps, the path would become more defined. Eventually, the paths would become roads that could be traversed via vehicles once enough players had visited the route.

“Routes walked on by many players eventually turn into a ‘road,’” Kojima’s document said. “Once the path is cleared, it becomes easier to travel by car.”

While I was writing the concept for the next project I found the old documents in my computer, I miss those early days of working on DS presentation doc. pic.twitter.com/ZnSSXwslr9

— HIDEO_KOJIMA (@HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN) December 24, 2019

Continuing on the next document was an example of how the progress made by three different players would become connected by different features like bridges, buildings, and other resources.

“Sam crosses America from east to west, reconnecting an isolated world,” the document said about the game. “Armed with ‘sticks,’ you defeat those who oppose you, but the roads, bridges, and buildings you build along the way, as well as vehicles, can be shared with other players. The roads and bridges you discover were built by someone else. Thanks to these traces of human activity, you realize you’re not alone – and this feeling connects everyone, like a rope.”

These descriptions echo some of Kojima’s earliest previews of the game when the designer talked about things like strands, bridges, and fighting with “sticks.”

The project referenced by Kojima in the tweet above is the next product that he’s working on, though we don’t yet know what that might be. He’s referenced it more than once now while saying that he was working on his next concept this week.

Death Stranding is now available for the PlayStation 4, and it’ll come to the PC platform some time in Summer 2020.



Posted: Dec 31, 2019 7:36 pm
Related Forum: PlayStation Forum

Source: https://comicbook.com/gaming/2019/12/27/death-stranding-design-documents/