The recent discovery that Death Stranding is no longer listed as a PS4 exclusive gave us hope—a faint hope, yes, but hope nonetheless—that a PC version would be announced at Gamescom. We did not get that. What we got instead, during Geoff Keighley's Open Night Live show, was a tale of invisible breastfeeding, metal wombs, and Norman Reedus' weaponized piss that grows giant mushrooms.
The Death Stranding segment of Opening Night Live begins with the introduction of a new character named Margaret Qualley—Mama—whose baby was born on "the other side" and is thus invisible. They remain connected by an invisible umbilical cord, which makes Mama sad because that means she's stuck in that room forever.
After that we meet Deadman, played by Guillermo del Toro, who drops a bunch of exposition about babies—BBs?—and "stillmothers" and why the unborn infants have to be returned to a metal womb for a reset/recharge every now and then. He also tells Norman that BBs are "just equipment," and so he shouldn't get attached to them because they tend not to last very long away, and once they're used up they die.
You might think that's a little weird, and you're not wrong. But we're just getting started.
After a bit more on-stage chat, Kojima agrees to show off some gameplay, which begins with Norman waking up from a nap and immediately having an obviously much-needed piss. He waves it around like an eight-year-old signing his name in the snow, grows a mushroom—more on this later—and sets off on a hike to make his delivery. Mission accomplished, he immediately faceplants off a cliff and lands on the baby—good thing it's just equipment! He shakes the baby to soothe it—not too hard though, because that makes them angry and can also cause irreversible brain damage or death—and then we find out that Geoff Keighley himself is in the game. Not his voice though, he wasn't allowed to talk.
No explanation for that is given. Matthew Mercer, voice of Overwatch's McCree and DM of popular D&D show Critical Role, plays Keighley.
For some reason, Kojima made a point of explaining that you won't be able to see Norman Reedus' dong—if you try to sneak a peek, he'll turn away like the bashful boy he is. Norman also won't whip it out in front of other NPCs, apparently. At that point in the conversation Keighley decided he might as well ask if the Reedus dingus can be used as a weapon, and the answer, big shocker here, is of course it can.
"Yes, it could be used as a weapon, but also it could kind of, it will be one of the key, and you'll find out later," Kojima explained through his translator, who clearly did not sign up for this. "You saw the mushroom growing, so if everyone kind of does it at the same spot, you will have something good later on. Of course, that's not the main part of the game, okay? The main part is to connect the world together."
The whole thing was weird as hell and twice as awkward, and in the end we didn't even get the happy surprise of a PC announcement. But even when the show was over, the shenanigans weren't: The Opening Night Live video on YouTube was accidentally blocked by a Ubisoft copyright claim. It's back now.
Death Stranding comes to the PlayStation 4 on November 8, and PC maybe sometime after that (we still think it's fairly likely). We'll be at Gamescom all week covering whatever other absurdities take place.
