What can you do in the span of 21 minutes? For a lot of people, two-thirds of half an hour is too little time to spend doing anything worthwhile. For Death Stranding character Heartman, played by auteur director Nicolas Winding Refn, it’s a way of living, as his arc revolves around dying and being revived every 21 minutes.
It’s the focus of the newest character spotlight trailer for Death Stranding, in which the Heartman converses with Sam (Norman Reedus) about his predicament and what it means to live in such a short span, only to be revived endlessly. It’s a very interesting trait and character detail, one which is shaping up Death Stranding to be quite the trip in and of itself. Check out the two-and-a-half-minute trailer below, after which you’ll note that there’s only about eighteen minutes left to spend if you’re in the same boat as Heartman.
It’s always the little things that get me. While the recent gameplay trailer and other promotional releases for Death Stranding hyped up Kojima’s fanbase to no end, this is the first one I’ve seen that genuinely interested me. The motion capture work is on full display here, and I really have to commend the developers’ extremely amazing usage of the Decima Engine – the lighting, animations, and the textures all look clean and crisp, as does Refn’s excellent delivery of his lines.
It also raises some very interesting questions about the nature of Death Stranding, and how this circle of dying and being reborn plays out. The past trailers and various information from Kojima himself noted a lot of things with these themes, but it seems like Heartman’s character is something akin to a wrench in the system – something to shake things up, as it were, and his curious predicament as something of a man who’s very familiar with the nature of death can be of enormous help to Sam’s journey.
I also enjoyed Refn’s portrayal of the character immensely, something I was really surprised with considering my only opinion of him is behind the scenes. Then again, if there’s an aloof character that needs playing, there’s no better candidate than the director of Valhalla Rising, Drive and Only God Forgives.
Death Stranding will be released exclusively on the PlayStation 4 on November 8, 2019.
