The upcoming PS4 exclusive Death Stranding, developed by Kojima Productions, showed off some social features in 49 minutes of gameplay at the Tokyo Game Show 2019 earlier this month. The gameplay showed how you will see bridges, ladders and more that other players have built and you can even like them. With this type of feature, there’s obviously a chance to troll others, leading them to their deaths, but Kojima feels that players won’t use this feature for evil much, at least not intentionally.
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Hideo Kojima, the head of Kojima Productions, spoke about this social feature in an interview with GameSpot and seemed oblivious to the fact that gamers, especially with the anonymity that nicknames provide, can and will troll others at every turn. It is almost as if he’s never seen or played a Soulsborne game before, where notes of “hidden treasure” have probably led to millions of deaths.
Hideo Kojima explained that:
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”#1ce4ed” class=”” size=”20″]It might not be intentional. We do a lot of playtests in the office. So sometimes there’s a bridge that crosses a deep river, and people feel grateful, but it only goes to the middle of the river. Of course, you don’t give that bridge a thumbs up, but it probably wasn’t intentional. I pretty much feel that there won’t be much intentional evil. I want people to think about that as well if they fall [off that bridge]…”I won’t do that to someone.” And you might make the same mistake.[/perfectpullquote]
The chances of players not being evil too much in the PS4 exclusive Death Stranding is, without a doubt, small. There is just no way that players won’t go out of their way to troll others at every turn, by the thousands.
Hideo Kojima continued to explain situations in the upcoming PS4 exclusive that make him feel as if people won’t be intentionally evil to others all that much. You can read the explanation with examples below.
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”#b41ced” class=”” size=”20″] Say there’s a cliff and you go down a rope, but you need to go down further, but you can only reach a certain point. So maybe then I see your rope and your footprints and I felt really thankful for it. But if I go down, I might see that it doesn’t go all the way and think about the reasons you did that. The best thing would be to put a second rope so other people don’t fall in the trap. When I check people playing Death Stranding, a lot of people only play for themselves, and they just use it. And others, these people change the way they think when they place the ladder, and think of a different perspective: what if I put the ladder here, will it be useful? It’s interesting to see this, and especially [in] the footprints.
You might get lost and your footprints will scatter around, but when you find the footprints of others you might feel very happy at first. But you don’t know if that’s correct and you just follow it and it goes off a cliff, you know this person was probably lost too. So when you think about that you want your footprints to be accurate or correct. In Death Stranding, when you follow someone’s footprints, and then a person comes for a third time [to follow the footprints], the wilderness that was there will turn into a small path. People have a natural intention to follow the path, so it really depends on who you are playing with indirectly. The path might already be there if people are already following it over and over again. [/perfectpullquote]
It remains to be seen if people will go out of their way to troll others, leading them into traps in Death Stranding. However, judging by every online game where things like this are possible, the head of Kojima Productions might be in for a surprise when the PS4 exclusive launches on 8 November 2019.
In the words of Barney Stinson: Challenge Accepted!
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Do you think players will troll each other in Death Stranding or will they, for the most part, work together? Let us know in the comment section below and check out 49 minutes of gameplay in case you missed it.
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