Last week at San Diego Comic Con, legendary game director of the Metal Gear series Hideo Kojima and Drive and Too Old to Die Young director Nicolas Winding Refn teamed up for panel discussion on different elements of the upcoming title Death Stranding. The pair revealed the official cover art for the Death Stranding‘s different PlayStation 4 editions, and showed a trailer that focused on Refn’s character in the game, Heartman.
The Heartman character trailer is now viewable to more than just San Diego Comic Con attendees. In the trailer, more information is shown about Refn’s rather aptly named character Heartman, who apparently has to reboot his life every 21 minutes due to a supernatural heart condition. While “dead,” Heartman has the chance to search for his family, but he only gets three minutes “on the beach” before his AED, or “automated external defibrillator,” brings him back to reality. From the trailer, he’s put in a lot of attempts so far.
Heartman is a member of the BRIDGES organization and a researcher of the “Death Stranding” event, which from the new information in his character trailer seems to be some kind of apocalyptic collision between the world of the living as we understand it and the world of the dead.
Heartman’s entire life is relegated to the 21-minute cycles, but everything from “defecation, ablution,” reading books, listening to records, and appreciating short films can be compacted just fine into that slice of time. No games, though–at least, not in the trailer.
All of Heartman’s divertissements, he tells us, come before the game’s “Death Stranding” event, implying that maybe human pursuits like art and music can no longer be created. His books, gramophone, and Charlie Chaplin film (on DVD, but still) are relics, especially in contrast to the neon gadgets that very literally structure his reality. Heartman might be a character that helps form a “Strand” between the time before the “Death Stranding” happened and the time after. The game is apparently all about connection.
Nicolas Winding Refn is a member of an all-star cast that includes The Walking Dead‘s Norman Reedus as protagonist Sam Bridges, Mads Mikkelsen, Guillermo del Toro, Léa Seydoux, and others. Death Stranding is for sure going to be unique experience, and is set to release on November 8th, 2019 for the PlayStation 4.