Microsoft’s official PC Game Pass Twitter account has been teasing the arrival of Death Stranding all week, and now it’s official: Death Stranding arrives on PC Game Pass on August 23rd.
Spearheaded by Hideo Kojima, the developer best known for his work on the Metal Gear series, Death Stranding initially launched as a PlayStation 4 exclusive in 2019 before its PC release two years ago.
Death Stranding will arrive on Microsoft’s PC Game Pass service next week. Death Stranding’s arrival on PC Game Pass boosts the service, but it doesn’t mean the game is closer to an Xbox release. Sony published Death Stranding on PlayStation in 2019, but 505 Games published the PC port. Sony still controls where Death Stranding lands on the console, so it’s unlikely we’ll see it appear on the Xbox version of Game Pass.
As Kojima’s first game since Kojima Productions split from Konami in 2015, Death Stranding is an open-world action game set in the US following a catastrophe. You play as a courier that delivers supplies to cities and battles away creates that have appeared on Earth.
It’s no surprise to see Death Stranding appear on PC Game Pass. Microsoft’s official Twitter account for the subscription service has changed its profile picture multiple times this week with images depicting scenes from the game. Kojima Productions is also working with Microsoft on what Kojima previously called the “game I have always wanted to make.”
The new IP will use Microsoft’s cloud technology, and Kojima said it’s a “never-before-seen concept.” However, the new game has no working title or release date, and it’s unclear exactly when we’ll see Kojima’s Xbox Game Studios game.
The game stands set in the apocalyptic United States, where a cataclysmic event known as the “Death Stranding” caused “Beached Things” (“BTs”). They are invisible creatures from the “Beach,” lands thought to be unique to each person typically visited during near-death experiences. They are said to be the connection to the afterlife—to begin roaming the Earth. BTS are created from the dead thru necrosis, and when they engulf a living human being, they create an explosion on the ranking of a nuclear bomb, known as a “void out.”
They also create rain known as “Timefall” that rapidly ages and deteriorates whatever it strikes. These events harmed the country’s infrastructure, leading its remaining inhabitants to confine themselves to remote colonies comprehended as “Knot Cities,” which form the remaining “United Cities of America.”
These colonies have since depended on the services of a company understood as BRIDGES, whose porters brave the BTs, bandits, and terrorists to furnish supplies to the cities. Bridges also perform various governmental operations on behalf of the UCA. If they gain a mental connection to a “Bridge Baby” (a “BB”)—a premature child contemplating a state between life and Death—it is feasible for a person to sense the presence of a BT. Porters hold a BB with them, stored in a pod affecting the womb of a “stillmother.”
Depending on its stringency, a state known as “DOOMS” also allows a person to inherently sense, see, or even regulate a BT, as well as presenting a variety of powers, like teleportation or travel to other people’s Beaches. Finally, there are also individuals known as “repatriates” who can travel back from “the Seam.” It is between the world of the living and the Beach—upon Death. These people can effectively return from Death, though their deaths will still drive void-outs if killed during contact with a BT.
Death Stranding is an action and activity game in an open world that contains asynchronous online functions. Kojima directs Death Stranding as the first “strand game,” an original genre represented by the game’s incorporation of social elements. Kojima compared this genre to how his before game Metal Gear—now deemed a stealth game—was named an activity game during its release because the stealth genre had not been set.
The player regulates Sam Bridges, a porter for a company understood as BRIDGES. The player is entrusted with delivering supply cargo to various isolated cities known as KNOTs, remote researchers, and survivalists while connecting them to a communications system known as the Chiral Network. The company and recipients evaluate the player based on their performance, including whether the cargo was supplied and if it is intact, among other elements.
These worths are, in turn, used to raise the level of the player’s statistics, such as resilience and weight capacity, and increase their reputation with individual locations and characters. How cargo is loaded by the player and the overall weight being carried, affect Sam’s ability to navigate through the backgrounds.
The player’s primary opponents include otherworldly creatures known as “beached things”, MULE, and Demens, MULEs who have started killing porters to declare their cargo. In addition, BTS is surrounded by a rain known as “time fall,” which harms the player’s armor and load by speeding up their breakdown. BTS is usually invisible, but Sam’s suit is furnished with a robotic sensor referred to in-game as an “odradek” that indicates nearby BTS, and the player can then scan the area to reveal them.
As Sam is a “Repatriate,” he is carried to an underwater world called the “Seam” if he is destroyed, where he can “swim” back to his body to resurrect himself. However, being beaten and consumed by a BT also results in a destructive blast known as a “void out,” which permanently impairs the location of the Death with an untraversable crater.
As players extend the coverage of the Chiral Network, they can access maps of areas and operate blueprints to produce consumable items and structures with the Portable Chiral Constructor, including bridges, ropes, and power generators utilized for charging battery-powered gear.
The Network is the ground for the game’s online functionality, where players can leave reserves, structures, and messages. It can be viewed and used by other players, although Timefall will eventually destroy structures after some time. The player can also retrieve cargo lost by other players to conclude their delivery. The player does not directly confront other players in the world.