Hideo Kojima posts teasers for new Death Stranding trailer

Anyone who has followed Hideo Kojima since the Metal Gear days knows he loves a mystery, and May 2019 was no different. Yes, that’s right: Kojima posted teasers for a trailer. There were two short videos announcing that a new Death Stranding trailer would be released on May 29, and each carried a message that fans rushed to decipher.

The first teaser was called “Create the Rope“:

The second, “Help Us Reconnect“:

Death Stranding was Kojima’s first game after leaving Konami. Kojima Productions was founded as an independent studio in December 2015, and the game was revealed at E3 2016 as a PlayStation 4 exclusive, made in partnership with Sony. So, at the time, the general bet was that it would hardly come out on other platforms. The cast had heavy hitters: Norman Reedus as the protagonist, plus Mads Mikkelsen and Léa Seydoux. For those who remember Silent Hills, the canceled project that would have brought Kojima and Reedus together, it was almost a reunion.

The phrases in the teasers matched the game’s premise, which would only become clear later: the player is a deliveryman who must reconnect isolated communities in a world overrun by supernatural threats. Kojima called the genre a “strand game”, a game of connections between players.

What came next

Death Stranding came out on PS4 on November 8, 2019 and received a perfect score, 40 out of 40, from Japan’s Famitsu magazine, the fourth game directed by Kojima to reach that mark. And the exclusivity forecast did not last long: the PC version arrived on July 14, 2020, through 505 Games. The Director’s Cut came out for PS5 in September 2021 and for PC in March 2022. By March 2021 the game had sold 5 million copies, and in April 2025 it passed 20 million players. The sequel, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, arrived on PS5 on June 26, 2025.

Source: Kojima Productions, via Eurogamer.