No Longer Stranded

When I first met my fiance, I was introduced to the hit video game series, Metal Gear. For the majority of my life, I'd never truly been a fan of stealth-based games. Often, I found myself gunning (pun intended) for the type of gameplay offered by titles like Borderlands, World of Warcraft, and the Elder Scrolls series. But after watching her play through some of the story of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, I began to understand why she loved it so much.

The story. The art. The thought put behind every moment took me beyond just sneaking through camps to rescue prisoners. Instead, I fell head first into the world of Hideo Kojima and could only ask for more.

So like the rest of the world, I was thrilled when the release of PT, a first-person horror demo and teaser for the soon-to-be cancelled Silent Hills, was released and was promised to give us a taste of what Kojima had prepared next for all of us. After screaming through the demo a few times, I made the mistake of uninstalling it from my PlayStation. Oh, what mistakes we make in our younger years. With the announcement of Kojima's leaving of Konami, the company responsible for the release of the Metal Gear and Silent Hill game series, we were all devastated. Where would we find our narratives? Where would we see stunning artwork and worlds drawn from the mind of Kojima?

Fast foward to E3 2016. Kojima announces a new game, Death Stranding, which, as he stated, would have key themes about the connection between life and death. Since it's announcement, he has remained almost reclusive about any information regarding what the style of gameplay would be like or what takes place within the narrative. Each time a new trailer would be released, we were left with more questions than answers. Each time we would be gifted with new faces caught by motion capture technology, including Norman Reedus and Mads Mikkelsen, who would be playing major roles within the game. Hell, we didn't even know when the game would be coming out.

Until today.

As I sat in my office, scrolling through the possible job opportunities within Little Rock for summer work (a man's gotta eat) my phone buzzed. A pre-order uploaded to the PlayStation store for Death Stranding? That can't be true. But it was and boy, did we get a huge piece of the puzzle revealed to us.

Gameplay. Cinematics. Terrifying moments. Touching stories. The veil as been lifted ever so slightly for each of us and we now must simply wait until the holiest of days. November 8th. Until then, I'm sure you can find many speculating over the newest trailer and all of the information hidden within it. For myself, I am simply excited to see Kojima's work hit the market once again and to dive further into his brilliant mind.

For those who have not seen the release trailer yet, you can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piIgkJWDuQg

For anyone interested in coming on to talk about the game or Kojima, you can reach the podcast through this website's contact form or at nevertoooldpodcast@gmail.com.