Death Stranding is the next big epic from the creator of Metal Gear Solid, Hideo Kojima. As you’d expect it’s big, ambitious and kind of weird. It’s an open-world action game, though Kojima has suggested that in the same way that the original MGS games weren’t classed as ‘stealth’ because no-one had a word for what they were doing yet, Death Stranding is in a category that we don’t understand yet. That’s a pretty lofty thing to say, but it’s fair that there’s a whole lot going on in Death Stranding that calling it an open-world action game fails to capture. In Death Stranding the world has become fractured, plagued by supernatural weirdness that keeps humanity isolated and living in walled cities. The player’s job, as Sam Porter Bridges, is to do the work of bridging those gaps and reconnecting our fragmented society. Thematically, Kojima is interested in what he refers to as ropes, the things that tie humans together but also the connections between life and death. When Sam dies, he reemerges in an upside-down, submerged world. When he returns to the land of the living any damage he did when he died persists persists in the wordl. There’s also a type of rain called ‘Timefall’ which ages anything it touches, and the ability to wander outside your body. So, yes, weird. The game has a cast that qualifies as ‘all-star’ not just by videogames standards, but by TV and Hollywood standards too. Norman Reedus, Mads Mikkelsen, Léa Seydoux, Margaret Qualley, Tommie Earl Jenkins, Troy Baker and Lindsay Wagner have all provided not just voice work, but extensive motion capture too. While pinning down exactly what Death Stranding is may be the work of a lifetime, you can be sure that it’s going to be strange, ambitious and epic.