Yes, this new Death Stranding trailer is even more confusing than the others

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A new trailer for Death Stranding was revealed at The Game Awards, and though it was easily the most concrete yet… it was somehow also more puzzling than the last two. Probably more puzzling than the last two put together, if I'm being honest.  But hey, at least we know what Norman Reedus' character is named now!

***UPDATE: ANALYSIS TRAILER ADDED***
We're not sure if this makes this less – or more – confusing, since every clue begs a new question, but we've asked our resident MGS / Kojima expert Dan Dawkins to analyse the new Death Stranding trailer, which you can watch below.

The trailer starts with Reedus talking about explosions giving birth to life and existence, likely referencing the Big Bang and the Cambrian Explosion (which wasn't actually an explosion, just a sudden appearance of many different kinds of lifeforms in Earth's history). Then we see his character, Sam, laying on a familiar sandy beach. This time he's wearing clothes: weird, rubbery future clothes that say "Porter" in multiple places.

Sam isn't traveling alone. The camera pans over to two of his colleagues, one of whom is pinned under a piece of equipment as the other tries to pull him out. Sam tells them to stop struggling - not even breathe - as invisible beasts pass by. These beasts leave the same big, creepy handprints that we saw in the first trailer for the game. Holding their breath works at first, but not long enough - eventually both of the others are killed in increasingly bizarre ways, and Sam is left with their cargo: a baby in a tank. Probably the same one we last saw Norman Reedus carrying in the last Death Stranding trailer? Who knows.

After both of his coworkers meet their demise, Sam wakes up nude, in the ocean, surrounded by what appear to be corpses. Then he's back on beach, clothed, but the baby is somehow inside his body? Giving us the thumbs up?

Like I said, it was a pretty puzzling trailer. And we still haven't seen any actual gameplay yet. Oh well, there's always PlayStation Experience.

Connor Sheridan
Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and was formerly a staff writer at GamesRadar.