Hideo Kojima posted a mysterious new trailer for Death Stranding, teasing something new for the game in 2020. While the video may hint at new DLC, it could just be Kojima paying tribute to the Oscar-winning film 1917.
The 45-second trailer shows protagonist Sam Bridges running through a World War I battlefield as the words “Coming 2020” appear on-screen. Fans of the game will recognize the scenery from one of the game’s early sequences where players first encounter Mads Mikkelsens’ Cliff Unger.
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The trailer seems to imply that a World War I themed DLC could be coming this year, but one detail brings the seriousness of the trailer into question: It has been cut to look exactly like the trailer for 1917, Sam Mendes’ World War I film which just won three Oscars.
The video opens with a plane crash, staged to look like a key scene in 1917. The following shots of the main character, Sam Bridges, running through the mirrored warzone moments from the film. Even the way the on-screen text appears is a reference to 1917’s stylization.
It’s difficult to tell if Kojima is teasing anything serious here or just goofing around. Kojima is a noted cinephile (directors Guillermo Del Toro, Nicolas Winding Refn, and Edgar Wright all appear in Death Stranding), so there’s a chance that he’s just paying tribute to 1917 with a little joke. A Fortnite style crossover event seems very unlikely, but you never know with Kojima. He did, after all, find a way to bring Monster Energy drinks to a post-apocalyptic landscape.
There’s a slight chance that the video isn’t even related to Death Stranding at all. Kojima recently revealed that he plans to make movies, so the cinema reference could just be a wink towards his transition to film.
Even if the trailer is a little tongue-in-cheek, DLC isn’t out of the question. Last November, a Reddit thread claimed that a paid content pack would come to Death Stranding in summer 2020. Even if Kojima is teasing DLC here, it still may not validate that rumor, which claimed that the update would use scrapped assets from the game’s development. That rumor goes against the World War I setting in the trailer, which heavily features previously seen locations.
Kojima is a notorious goofball who loves playing around with fans. He might just be making a joke following the Academy Awards, but it wouldn’t be surprising for the game to receive an update considering how much promotion went into it. Death Stranding is coming to PC sometime this year, so extra content could line up with that release.
