Hideo Kojima Relates Death Stranding to Trump, America, and the European Union

According to Hideo Kojima, Death Stranding is partially inspired by President Trump, the current state of America, and even the EU. That's right, most games are inspired by the classics or maybe other forms of entertainment, but Death Stranding is, somehow, related to Trump's America. In case you didn't notice, a central theme of Death Stranding is division. "It's about America," confirmed Hideo Kojima, but it's also not about America. Kojima notes the map doesn't look like the map of America, because he wants players to think about where they're from when playing the game.

"It's about America, but I made that map deliberately not correctly America," said Kojima while speaking to Game Informer. "Maybe it looks like Japan from that angle. I want people to not think 'America,' but 'where you are.' Because it depends on who is seeing it. And of course, it's in the future, and everyone's connected by Internet, but everyone is fragmented. That's kind of a metaphor as well."

If any of this sounds a bit vague, it's because it is. Whatever the case, in the game, you play Norman Reedus-faced Sam, who has the job of connecting the country to a super communications system.

"When you connect, you can use UCA services, but at the same time, they're retrieving your information 24 hours a day," said Kojima. "It's like 1984. Some people may not like that, and say 'I'm not going to connect to UCA, because we're going to repeat the same thing that we did.' Like Trump, or the EU, these things. It's a metaphor."

Again, what this exactly means is anyone's best guess. Obviously, Death Stranding and its themes aren't easy to explain, which makes me even more excited to play it, but increasingly less confident Kojima and his team are going to pull this one off.

Death Stranding is set to release -- via the PS4 -- on November 8. At the moment of publishing, there's been no official word of any additional ports.

For more news, media, and information on the highly-anticipated PlayStation game, be sure to check out all of our previous coverage of the title by clicking right here.