In the beginning of the new Death Stranding teaser, we get an opening very similar to its reveal trailer from E3 2016: a panning shot of dead sea creatures scattered around in the mud. This time, we get a much clearer shot of the strands of black wire running across the sand and directly into the abdomens of a number of dead crabs.
In an interview at E3 this year, game director Hideo Kojima told IGN that Death Stranding will be played not with “sticks” like in most games — guns or other weapons — but “ropes.” We’ll see this manifest quite literally later in the trailer, but for now the wired-up crustaceans act as cryptic foreshadowing. They also call to mind Gyo, Junji Ito’s sci-fi horror manga about an invasion of technobiologically reanimated sea creatures.
Left: Death Stranding. Right: Junji Ito's Gyo.
Ito, the renowned Japanese horror manga creator was said to have been involved in the Silent Hills team along with Kojima and Guillermo del Toro, so it would not be a surprise to see his twisted imagination play some role in Kojima’s new game, whether directly or as mere inspiration.
But remember — this is all speculation.
At this point in the trailer, a figure walks into view and stops to look up just as a number of fighter planes fly overhead. Trailing behind them are long, black cords and in the backdrop, what appears to be an upside-down rainbow. This strange meteorological event is actually called a circumzenithal arc, and is caused by light refracting through ice crystals in the atmosphere instead of water droplets. It seems like Kojima might be hinting that Death Stranding’s world is experiencing significant environmental distress.
We also get a look at what appears to be a bombed-out city. The era is uncertain until the figure in the foreground turns to reveal himself.
Played by Guillermo del Toro, he appears to be an authority figure, wearing a modern-day suit and a pin on his lapel that reads “Bridges - United Cities of America.” The pin depicts the mainland United States with a spiderweb pattern branching out from the Washington, D.C. area. This is the first detail that gives us some sense as to the when and where of Death Stranding’s story — despite its heavy sci-fi elements, it is still set in our world. This closer look at Del Toro’s character also reveals a scar running across his forehead.
Suddenly frightened by something he sees off-screen, the man runs into the tunnel up ahead, but a tank battalion moving across the bridge above stops him from going further. The tank appears to be bursting with organic matter, like entrails, and trailing from behind it is a thick cable.
The tank’s passing triggers a waterfall of a black, oil-like substance, possibly the same from the first trailer.
As if in direct response to the substance’s appearance, Del Toro’s character plugs a tube into the tank he is holding, which reveals the baby inside. The rising liquid has also caused the baby doll we saw in an earlier shot to float towards Del Toro.
But the doll is not just being swept along by the current — look closely and you’ll see it’s actually being tugged by a cable tied to its leg.
It also has a cross-section scar on its abdomen, which is identical to the one Norman Reedus’s character has in the first trailer.
Left: Second Death Stranding trailer. Right: Norman Reedus's scar in the first Death Stranding trailer.
Del Toro’s character seems to be suddenly overtaken by something at the sight of the baby doll, as if possessed by an unseen force. It isn’t until the baby inside the tank opens its eyes and then closes one — something that the baby doll mirrors at the very end of the trailer — that Del Toro’s character decides to venture into the tunnel.
Outside the now-flooded tunnel, where there was once only rubble, are now hordes of dead dolphins and whales.
Inside the tunnel, you’ll notice a number of black handprints on the walls, which beckons back to the reveal trailer.
Both the baby doll and a light in the distance begin to glow red, suggesting the doll is being controlled remotely, perhaps even endowed with some kind of psychic attributes, and is being used as bait to lure Del Toro’s character into the tunnel.
Given the doll’s mirroring of the baby in the tank (the way it opens one eye at the very end, as seen above), it’s possible the doll itself is acting as some kind of tracking device, which activates when the child in the tank (or any child?) is nearby.
The big reveal in the trailer comes at this point, when we see a group of soldiers emerge from the darkness of the tunnel with their commander in the back. We saw soldiers earlier in the trailer, but this gives us our closest look.
They are World War II-era U.S. paratroopers armed with M1 rifles, with shoulder sleeve insignias that read “AIRBORNE” across the top. They are also skeletons. The soldier in the middle, played by Mads Mikkelsen, is the only soldier with modern-day military gear. A mass of cables emerging out of Mikkelsen’s character is hooked up to each soldier: a literal manifestation of Kojima’s “rope” analogy.
Mikkelsen’s character’s ability to psychically command the dead soldiers he’s hooked up to seems to hint at some kind of future where biotechnological necromancy is not only a possibility, but a major factor in the fighting of wars. Given the importance of children (or at least this one child, if we are to assume this baby and the baby in the first teaser are the same one), it wouldn’t be too far-fetched to speculate that Death Stranding takes place in a Children of Men-like world, where humans have lost the ability to conceive. That would mean the young are diminishing in numbers, which would lend some rationale to the need to recycle corpses for use as soldiers, and make the existence of this one child in particular very important.
Another theory suggests that the oil-like substance is an alien compound that can take control of organic matter (reminiscent, again, of Gyo, but also Metal Gear Solid’s nanomachines) — a technology that powerful groups have learned how to wield through the manmade cables, which would explain why Mikkelsen’s character seems to be covered in it.
Given how cryptic both trailers have been, and absent of any gameplay footage, we can’t say for sure what any of this means yet. If there’s anything I missed in my breakdown, or if you have a theory of your own about Death Stranding, feel free to share it in the comments!
Chloi Rad is an Associate Editor for IGN. Follow her on Twitter at @_chloi.
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