PRECIOUS CARGO

Exploring Hideo Kojima's new perspective as he prepares delivery of the sequel to Death Stranding

- BY SIMON PARKIN

When Death Stranding arrived in November 2019, several months before the COVID-19 pandemic upended our lives and outlooks, it was widely considered the strangest mainstream videogame we'd ever seen. The first project by Hideo Kojima following a messy divorce from Konami, the company at which he made his name, the game defied convention or easy summary. Its protagonist, portrayed by The Walking Dead's Norman Reedus, was a courier named Sam Porter Bridges, and the game mainly involved trudging across desolate, ankle-spraining terrain with an infant strapped to his chest, while burdened with luggage and chased by ghosts.

Looking back at the game, Kojima concedes that it was "weird". One of Bridges' first tasks was, remember, to hoist the US President's cadaver on his back, on a cross-country dash to a local incinerator. But beneath the eccentricity there was also something vaguely humorous about its central challenge: to carry heavy cargo upon your back across North America without tripping. The taller the load, the greater the chance you'd topple. It's the kind of idea you might expect to find in the work of an indie darling such as Bennett Foddy (see p38). And yet, with Sony's keen backing, and Kojima's attention-grasping reputation, a game founded on an indie-esque fancy was rendered as an extravagant epic, one featuring celebrities scanned into the game in screamingly high definition, plus a wistful, expensive soundtrack and a story whose looming relevance nobody foresaw.

Set in a fragmented America,