A Death Stranding whale hint was teased by Hideo Kojima in a recent New Year’s message. The missive from the mysterious game developer is one of the few times he’s alluded to anything approaching a release date for his upcoming game.
Death Stranding is a perplexing game that’s under development by Kojima Productions. We’ve had several possible clues towards a potential release date so far. A store listing on Amazon and a later listing on Walmart Canada had both pegged the release at different points in 2019, but both of these instances were likely placeholder dates more than anything else. (Furthermore, the Walmart Canada listing was explicitly stated to be a placeholder.) Interestingly, Mr. Kojima had a very simple message posted in Japan’s Weekly Famitsu magazine regarding the status of his game:
“Is 2019 the year of the Whale? Please look forward to Death Stranding!”
One might think the Death Stranding whale hint is some sort of mysterious clue regarding the Chinese Zodiac. However, next year happens to be the Year of the Pig according to the way the calendar works. Furthermore, the whale is not one of the twelve animals represented in this system, nor is it in the Western Zodiac, unless you want to make an extremely liberal interpretation of Aquarius.
The Death Stranding whale clue is more likely related to one particular moment we’ve already seen. A notable scene from the E3 2018 trailer (as seen in our header image) had a large number of beached whales on the shore. As far as we can tell, these are the most prominently-featured whales in the publicly-released media so far.
Death Stranding is certainly an interesting project. It has several seasoned film actors attached to the project like Norman Reedus, Mads Mikkelsen, and Léa Seydoux. These actors are providing both voices and motion capture for their digital counterparts. We don’t really know what the heck a whale has to do with all of this, but Hideo Kojima is sure to blow our minds when we can see the game for ourselves. Let’s hope this is a hint that we’re getting it in 2019!
[via Twinfinite]
