watch now! detail...
death stranding is a hideo kojima game through and through. now, how can i say that when all we've seen so far is a three and a half minute long, highly surrealistic and ambiguous trailer that raises way more questions than it answers? well, mystery and ambiguity was always what kojima wanted his games to be about. and in a way, it's just him evolving into a new stage of creative freedom, finally unshackled from the enormous restrictions that were always laid upon him by his old employer. his games have always been filled to the brim with tiny little details and lots and lots of indirect storytelling that invites people to speculate and come up with their own interpretations, theorise and debate about them and actively engage in conversations about them.
his aspirations were always to make something that is bigger than just a video game - stories that feel like more than just a fun little distraction. in many ways, pt was that philosophy taken to the extreme. the actual game could easily be finished in thirty minutes, but it managed to engage a huge fanbase over an unproportionally long time with people all over the world trying to figure out what the whole thing is actually about- collectively sharing, discussing, exploring all the little details, ideas and secrets hidden in this uncanny haunted hallway. and even konami shutting down the demo didn't prevent the community from digging deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole. kojima crafts his games in a way that actively involves the community to discover in combined effort
and thereby makes them, in a way, an integral part of its writing. this approach creates a form of interactivity that goes beyond the constraints of the screen. it trains the audience to be more vigilant, almost paranoid, for details. because we're taught that every little nook and cranny might be more important that it seems at first glance. and that is what death stranding is all about at its core. and in this spirit this trailer is already part of the experience. the game has already started.... umm just to clarify, that whole thing about the game having already started... that wasn't just me waxing poetic about video games. kojima himself actually suggested that idea, that even though the actual product is far from being released
the "game" has already begun. that he wants people to try and see what they can find, like a scavenger hunt with little details scattered all around for the fans to search and interpret. for this video i'm going to assume you are familiar with death stranding's e3 trailer. if you haven't seen it yet then follow this annotation or the link in the description to watch it first. now, you only have to go a few moments into the trailer and it becomes instantly apparent that it's littered with metaphoric imagery that raises way more questions than it answers. but, above all the little signs and symbols there are three core themes at work in this trailer that are all closely connected with each other - which already hints at the first theme. connection, or relation.
kojima himself has highlighted this motif several times clearly in interviews and official statements, hinting at a plethora of strong metaphors pointing to this idea. for example, the umbilical cords that all the creatures, both living and dead possess; the crabs, the whales, the dolphins, the baby - even the on-screen text has these umbilical cords "growing" away from them. umbilical cords are, throughout many cultures, a classic symbol for a symbiotic bond between a mother and her offspring, representing an altruistic relationship between two living beings with the host literally giving away a part of themselves to substantiate a new life. when you think about the fact that even non-mammalian creatures, and even the letters on the screen
all possess umbilical cords in this trailer, it implies that things in this world are abnormal, that things share a connection with each other where we normally wouldn't expect it. if we just think outside of the box a little bit, before the name and the nature of this new game was finally announced, sony and kojima repeatedly stated that this new ip has absolutely no connection with pt whatsoever. of course they had to say that, because it's konami's intellectual property, legally speaking. but not too long ago, fungo and i had come up with a theory (in this video, link's in the description if you haven't seen it) how the final monologue in pt was actually a message by kojima himself directed at the fans, telling them that this whole thing was planned all along, and that he will be coming back.
"but guess what? i will be coming back and i'm bringing my new toys with me." and now just think about the precise words with which kojima chose to open up his official announcement of death stranding at sony's e3 conference: "i'm back!" *cheers and applause* "thank you. and today i bring something new..." this combined with the game's theme being about coming back,
the homo ludens picture on his twitter a few days ago with the subtitle "i'll keep coming", the trailer song which is also called "i'll keep coming". it's all such an obvious follow up on pt's final message that it almost inarguably confirms our theory that he indeed had lots of plans for his future after konami, way before pt was even released and the whole debacle had started. to go full circle and include kojima's way of thinking, and hiding little messages everywhere into the way we look at death stranding it's simply another external indicator for his idea that there are connections hidden in things that we normally wouldn't think of. and that we are supposed to think outside of the box if we want to make sense of the death stranding trailer.
now, the other really obvious symbol that represents a form of connection are the handcuffs the protagonist is wearing around his left wrist. first of all they imply that he had been restrained in the past but is now freed because they're only around his left wrist and not the right. people instantly came up with the idea that it might also symbolise how kojima is now "unshackled" from his former employer. an interesting idea at least, and that's what i mean when i speak of multi-layered symbolism. what's also interesting to note is that the left bracelet looks completely different than the right one in design and it also emits a blue glow right when the handprints in the sand reach him. you'd normally expect to see footprints in the sand, not handprints but again, things are not meant to be taken in a literal way.
where a footprint indicates a trail of where someone has been, handprints (with the hand also containing the fingerprint, a universal symbol for an unmistakable identity) represent a tangible proof of an act someone has committed. the protagonist himself is the only being, at least on the ground, that has no external umbilical cord and, as we see clearly, no belly button as well. instead, his abdomen is covered with a large cross-shaped scar which suggests that he's been freed or excluded from this connectivity that every being shares. umbilical cords, handcuffs and kojima himself pointing at the theme of connectivity. all well and good, but what does that tell us about the game itself?
in an interview not long after the trailer's release, kojima had referred to the novella "the rope" by kobo abe in which the author describes the stick as mankind's first invention: used to defend themselves, attack creatures and keep others at bay. he then went on the explain that the rope had been their second invention with which they secured things that were more important to them. an evolutionary development when humans aspired to more intellectually complex tasks and ideas. kojima used this metaphor as an analogy for what he envisions death stranding to be as a video game. like the first metal gear in 1986 for the msx2 was, at the time, considered an action game since it relied on the same action control standards as archetypical action games of that era.
metal gear would later be heralded as the grandfather of all stealth games and in that sense be regarded as one of the earliest catalysts of the birth of a new genre. for the case of death stranding, kojima stated that players who are familiar with modern action titles - he specifically cited tom clancy's the division and the uncharted series - will feel very familiar with it, but after a while they'll realise that this game is - in the same way metal gear had been thirty years ago - something entirely new at the same time. in his analogy, action game mechanics are what the players are used to - "sticks" while the novelties in game design his title will bring to the table are going to be the equivalent to the "ropes" in this metaphor. we're still gonna use sticks, but at the same time we, the homo ludens, will evolve into the next evolutionary phase.
this is kind of typical for kojima because it is both an interesting statement and at the same time super vague and inscrutable. but considering that he specifically used the rope for his allegory and repeatedly mentioned the theme of connection and relation, it seems safe to assume that this overarching theme will somehow be reflected in the game play in some way. but there is yet another very important clue that cements this idea of interconnectivity: the quote at the beginning of the trailer. it's the first four lines of a poem by the english poet william blake ... no, not this one. the real one. and this poem, auguries of innocence, consists of a series of paradoxical stanzas that juxtapose innocence and corruption in humanity.
these first lines shown in the trailer are in many ways the essence of the rest of the poem in a nutshell. like a key that shows how to read the rest, and also the trailer. blake's poem holds so much vital information to understanding the imagery shown in the trailer that it can't be a coincidence that kojima chose blake for the opening quote. he's an author whose life work is so complex, convoluted and all the pieces are in many ways - yes! - interconnected with each other, that there have been scholars whom dedicated their entire lives to understanding and interpreting his works and the complicated ways in which they cross reference each other. william blake himself can be seen as a symbol for relation: a complex array of things that are interwoven with each other in ways we can only fathom once we start
to look at things from a slightly different angle. we're gonna delve really deep into this poem later in this section for now, let's take a look at those first four lines. it suggests that the entire world can be contained in a grain of sand, in a spiritual way. a glimpse of something tiny that can provoke you to imagine something really big, just like the beauty of a flower embodies, in a metaphysical sense, heavenly perfection. experiencing its beauty can change your world as you perceive it into something perfect and beautiful. it plays with the idea that, once again, everything is connected. a grain of sand is part of the world, and therefore the world wouldn't be the same world without it
which is, according to blake, the whole point of a metaphor. and in the same way it also hints at the idea that information is not an absolute cold truth but that the intrinsic value of things depends on the viewpoint of the recipient - it's relative. and that's the second theme: relativity. now, to approach this one, let's have a look at those metal things dangling from norman reedus' neck. i've heard people call them locks, keys, artifacts, magnets, usb sticks! and also dog tags among others. now, normally a dog tag is a little badge that soldiers wear as a means of identification and that can be quickly recovered from a chain necklace in case of death. they don't really look like that, but kojima himself has already referred to them as dog tags
but always with air quotes, so let's go with that for the time being. now, if you look closely, there is something engraved on each of them sadly though, due to the very limited resolution of the trailer, it's illegible. so i've gone through the video frame by frame, trying to visually enhance the images yada yada yada - but in the end this was the best result i can could come up with. luckily however, someone on reddit found this very high resolution image on the servers of the kojima productions homepage that provides a much clearer picture of the engravings upon zooming in. and look at that! two of them have scientific equations etched into them. the first equation describes the so-called schwarzschild radius
and, as several sources have already pointed out, that has something to do with black holes. now, to really understand the schwartzchild radius and what it's about let me try to explain it in layman's terms. a black hole is an object whose gravitational force is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape it. so, according to newton's law of universal gravitation, the more mass an object possesses the stronger its gravitational pull. but if you were to take any object and compress its mass exponentially it will eventually reach a point where it becomes a black hole. for instance, if you compress the entire mass of the sun down to a radius of about 2.5 km - roughly the size of downtown los angeles - or the earth down to a radius of about 0.9 cm - which is roughly the size of a jelly bean - they'd turn into black holes! and that's what we call the schwartzschild radius: the radius an object needs to be compressed to in order to become a black hole.
the other dog tag shows the so-called dirac equation: a breakthrough accomplishment in particle physics by the british physicist paul dirac. basically, it accurately describes particles such as electrons and quarks in the context of quantum mechanics and its publication in 1928 led directly to the discovery of the existence of antimatter. but now, what does that mean for death stranding? because of these clues people have already suggested that the game itself might have something to do with black holes.. and maybe it incorporates particle physics as a game mechanic... we don't know! the thing is, with so much at this early stage, it's just pure speculation.
but what we can, and i think should, do is focus on what these topics mean, what they add to the interpretation as i'm fairly convinced these equations bear a more metaphoric implication for the overall themes. because what commonalities do these two equations share? what's their greatest common denominator? it's relativity. before dirac there have already been equations describing particles in quantum mechanics. the schrã¶dinger equation for example. the achievement that dirac brought to the table was that he was the first to take einstein's theory of special relativity into account. his conclusions were an immediate result of einstein's riveting discovery.
whereas the schwartzchild solution was directly based on einstein's theory of general relativity. einstein's theory of relativity is without question one of the most groundbreaking discoveries of the twentieth century. it not only had a tremendous impact on science as a whole but it similarly led humanity to completely new ways of thinking about life, the universe and everything. you know what? let's go briefly through the idea behind einstein's concept of relativity. imagine you're in a car and you're driving at sixty miles per hour. now let's say you throw a can of mountain dew at thirty miles per hour. then it would travel at ninety miles per hour total (thirty plus sixty is ninety) since you're travelling at sixty miles per hour you'd perceive the can moving away from you at precisely thirty miles per hour,
but to these guys standing still at the roadside it would appear to be travelling at ninety miles per hour, right? now following this logic, if while you are driving you shot a laser gun, with the laser travelling at the speed of light, we'd assume that from your perspective it would travel at the speed of light but from their point of view it would be sixty miles per hour on top of the additional light speed, right? well, that is wrong! according to einstein, that light beam would travel at exactly the speed of light - 186,000 miles per second - for both persons equally, while the sixty miles per hour of your car account for absolutely nothing. our intuition tells us that this is bogus, because speed is determined by distance over time. so if the speed of light doesn't change, that means distance and time must both be variables to always lead to the correct result.
and herein lies the great revelation that einstein brought to the table. that time itself is, unlike we have assumed for millennia, not a constant but, in fact, relative. there are forces in the universe that exert a tremendous impact on the way time itself behaves, or flows. like a black hole, for example. because of its exorbitant gravitational force time on the inside of a black hole is infinitely extended - a phenomenon which is called space-time singularity - while on the outside it's finite. "infinity in the palm of your hand" you've probably seen this phenomena depicted in interstellar - with a certain degree of cinematically embellished artistic freedom of course -
when the endurance lands on a planet in close proximity to a black hole which causes such a severe dilation of time that for each hour passed on the surface seven years would transpire on earth. it sounds like a ghost story, but it's actually really how time would be affected by gravitation in such a scenario. the concept of relativity was a fundamental shift in how we perceive the known universe that not only turned science as we knew it completely on its head, but that also overthrew the cornerstones of philosophy on which thinkers such as kant, aristotle and descartes have based their logical premises on. the idea that the universe itself is centred around an absolute cosmic truth. einstein's realisation that time, which had been universally accepted as an irrefutable constant,
isn't actually absolute ultimately fuelled tenets such as post-modernism and philosophical relativism - the idea that literally everything lies in the eyes of the beholder. which would mean that when you are able to see a "heaven in a wild flower" you are literally holding eternity in an hour. since time itself is relative, an hour might very well hold infinity, depending on the perspective. blake's poem leads this premise that all things are connected to the conclusion that that there exists a greater cosmic entity that judges us for our deeds... the concept of rapture. in christian eschatology, meaning the part that's concerned with the end of times,
rapture refers to the belief that in the final days of the present age of mankind, the ultimate judgement will be held. sinners will be reprimanded for their crimes toward creation, while the good people will be rewarded for their spiritual purity. auguries of innocence is laden with warnings and omens of cosmic justice - call it karma if you will. it draws a distinct line by pitting the innocent and underprivileged against the blessed elite. in a theological sense, innocence is often seen in things like infants, animals and nature. which is why one of the poem's predominant themes is animal cruelty and the cosmic imbalance it creates. it vehemently condemns the ubiquitous injustice caused by our secular ways of living. most people couldn't care less if you killed a moth, but according to blake such an act is an affront against the divine innocence of nature which inevitably leads to retaliation.
death stranding's trailer also clearly shows mistreatment of animals and crimes against nature in many obvious ways. the beach is absolutely littered with dead animals; crabs, fish, dolphins, whales - we mentioned this. the handprints in the sand are filling with oil which is a symbol for mankind's greed and its exploitation of nature, and sometimes even referred to as "the blood of the earth". think about it. all the creatures have umbilical cords, but these cords are black. umbilical cords are usually red because they're covered in blood, but blood in death stranding's metaphorical language is the blood of the earth. we as a species leave "bloody" handprints everywhere we go, and in doing so inevitably destroy our own future. the newborn child is seen in many cultures as a symbol for the future of society
and it simply vanishes as soon as the protagonist touches it and it leaves his hands covered in "blood". the game's title itself - death stranding - is an expression for a particular type of mass stranding. mass strandings, or cetacean strandings, are a phenomenon of maritime life that occurs from time to time all over the planet when large quantities of sea creatures simultaneously beach in the same place. if they die in the process we call it a death stranding. now, it gets even more interesting. those whales that are scattered around the beach, they're sperm whales. you can tell this by their distinctive scarring as well as the shape of their heads and mouths. among them is one white whale, judging by its shape and size it's also likely a sperm whale,
and white sperm whales are extremely rare. they are regarded as something like a holy grail for whale watchers. this originates from one legendary white sperm whale... moby dick. the illustrious giant captain ahab obsesses over in herman melville's classic novel from 1851 which is often regarded as a universal metaphor for mankind revolting against forces greater than themselves. and what do you know? before kojima officially announced metal gear solid five he had mischievously teased the game as an autonomous new horror title called the phantom pain developed by a fake indie studio called...
moby dick studios. damn! now, another crucial question to this whole puzzle is where does this trailer take place? people have suggested that it might be iceland for a number of reasons that seem convincing at first. iceland has black beaches, it's subarctic, so there are whales, dolphins and crabs and in addition to that kojima had tweeted in 2014 when he was supposedly working on silent hills about him scouting locations in iceland and the band that plays the song in the trailer is based in iceland as well.
but i have an alternate theory about the location and i personally think it fits even better. so, although iceland does have black beaches, this landscape didn't really strike me as typically icelandic. it's way more distinctive of antarctic regions. the waters are full of ice flows but at the same time there's a solid land mass. meaning it can't be the north pole, because only the south pole is covered in solid ground. on the beach we do not only see black sand (and dead animals) but there are also these orange glowing spots which look a lot like lava pools. this clearly points to an active volcanic region in the south pole. there are only two active volcanoes in the antarctic.
one is mount erebus, which is far off the coast of the mainland so we can count that out. the other one is... deception island. i mean come on, the name alone already sounds so kojima doesn't it. deception island is a so-called caldera of an active volcano. meaning it's a crater formed by the collapse of an emptied magma chamber that was at some point flooded by the ocean surrounding it. which gives it the shape of an atoll, with an opening into the ocean. now, take a look at the trailer again. in the distance we can see a large land mass coming in from the left and also from the right which leaves a clearing into the ocean
- just like deception island. historically this place has been an almost symbolic focal point for nature exploitation for centuries with whalers and seal hunters establishing an outright industry several times over the last two hundred years. each time for a period of several decades until all the natural resources were viciously depleted. deception island even happens to be one of the few renowned locations of a whale graveyard - a spot to which whales and other sea animals for reasons still unknown to naturalists feel mysteriously drawn at the end of their lives. which makes such locations predestined for the eponymous death strandings. ok, and here's another observation: those crabs we see in the trailer, they are a subspecies of the king crabs
- liocarcinus vernalis to be precise. now king crabs have gained a very seedy reputation in the last decade or so since this species has been forced to practically overrun the antarctic due to rising ocean temperatures caused by global warming. their presence severely endangers the delicate ecosystem of the antarctic continental shelf because it is not equipped to handle such a massive invasion of foreign predators. which once again underlines this overarching theme of mankind's inexorable desecration of mother nature. ok, let me catch my breath for a moment because that's still not all. let's go back to william blake one more time, ok?
"the armour's iron brace" refers to militarism: the drive of our species to potentially destroy ourselves through endless acts of war. so here we have the "iron brace" strapped around the protagonist's wrist. i mean, it could just be a coincidence - a stretch - but it's at least noteworthy how a lot of the imagery used in blake's poem can also be found in the trailer. assuming these handcuffs do represent this "iron brace", standing for the war mongering nature of mankind it would indicate that normus reedus' character is in a way a representation of all of us. an idea which has already been hinted at! think about this promotional image of kojima productions' homo ludens - the supposed company mascot.
now, kojima has said numerous times that it is not going to be a character of the game itself but a representation of all of us, the next stage in human evolution, the homo ludens - the "playing man". but without any doubt the face inside this mask is undeniably norman reedus. so even though it might seem like a stretch, it does fit the narrative like a glove, doesn't it? that the protagonist, who even has norman reedus' real tattoos rendered on his character model is a symbolic representation of humanity as a whole. and lastly, what about those five floating figures in the sky? four with open arms, and one in the centre with its arms crossed.
now, auguries of innocence, as we've said, has this theme of impending punishment for injustice against innocence and it reinforces the notion that a heavenly entity is watching over our deeds inevitably judging mankind. now, the last one is particularly interesting. the cherubim are a caste of angels who directly attend to god in abrahamic religions. according to the book of ezekiel they represent the righteous government of god and are the executioners of god's righteous and holy judgement. originally there were five angelic beings with lucifer being the highest, the anointed cherub, until he sinned and became satan.
he is supposed to be the central of the five figures when they fulfill their role as judges, looking down on the mortal realm and observing until during the end of days they cast upon us their final judgment.... rapture. thank you guys for watching. i hope you had a lot of fun with this video - i certainly had. now, before you rush down into the comments section telling me that there is no way i can know if all of this is really true... i know. but that's not what all of this is about. it's about having fun with a game we practically know nothing about at this point
only by obsessively digging into a single trailer alone and trying to get everything out of it. so that's why i hope that you just enjoyed it and maybe even learned a thing or two. if that's the case, then please leave a like, participate in the discussion in the comments, subscribe to my channel for more monsters of the week episodes and if you want to support me with the show then please consider donating a dollar or two on my patreon - it is really highly appreciated! so until next time, remember... the truth is out there!
