Ever since the acclaimed game designer Hideo Kojima capped off his famed game Metal Gear series with Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, fans have been squirming in anticipation to find out what his next title would be. After a rather tumultuous and nasty breakup with Konami, Kojima was, for all intents and purposes, a free man. He could do whatever he wanted, and boy I’d be darned if it wasn’t something amazing. And then, in during E3 of 2016, we got…Norman Reedus holding a baby in a field of oil? What?

Needless to say, the press surrounding Death Stranding these past couple years has been nothing short of mystifying, with little to no gameplay introduced, as well as a very fascinating cast of characters that includes the recognizable faces Mads Mikkelsen, Guillermo del Toro, and Léa Seydoux. Simply put, with the handful of trailers that we’ve seen, Death Stranding has been positioning itself to be quite an action movie of a video game.

And the Death Stranding Release Date Trailer, which debuted on May 29th, 2019, has definitely kept up this tradition. One of the first things I was surprised to realize–which would have come to me a lot sooner if I was paying attention to the USA pin on Guillermo del Toro’s lapel in one of the previous trailers–is that Death Stranding actually occurs within the United States. That’s right; Norman Reedus’s character, who seems to be related to the president, is on a quest to reunite the United States, which have become either separated or isolated from one another due to the appearance of these strange spirits that are known as the “death stranding.”

The need to reunite the United States of America is likely why we’ve seen so many shots of Norman Reedus’s character just kind of running around. Equipped with various sorts of modern climbing technology, your job for huge portions of the game seems to surround traversing vast, decrepit landscapes while delivering packages with some sort of radio or computer equipment. Those telescope ladders and zipline tools look really awesome. The last time I felt this excited about the idea of traveling vast distances was when I sat down with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Death Stranding has revised that feeling for me in a big way.

Probably the funniest aspect of the “delivery” gameplay was watching Norman Reedus heft one of those containers over his shoulder and just straight up deck an enemy with it. Like woah dude, calm down. No need to get that intense. Frankly, I don’t know how compelling this style of combat looks to me at this point, but I have to admit that it got quite a rise out of me. While most games in the Metal Gear Solid franchise showcased really well-developed and intricate sneaking mechanics, Snake is always extremely handy in a fight, capable of going loud and dangerous when he has to.

From the looks of things, sneaking will take up much more precedence in Death Stranding,  especially from an environmental perspective, where the player has to use scenery and positioning to hide from enemies. Several shots from the Release Date Trailer show Reedus’s character hiding from soldiers and tanks as he traverses the landscape. This highlights the fact that Norman Reedus’s character, Sam, isn’t some sort of beefed out military clone made for combat; he’s just a regular guy doing what needs to be done to save his country. Of course, this is a Kojima game, so it’s unlikely he’s stay a “regular” guy for long.

This time around, we got a lot more face time with the great Mads Mikkelsen, who has been groomed as the antagonist in Death Stranding. In a previous trailer, Mikkelsen’s character was depicted as an intimidating villain, possessing the ability to rise skeleton soldiers out of oil for some reason. Honestly, it was really cool, and helps to heighten Death Stranding’s bizarre brand of science fiction and magical fantasy. However, this time around, we got to see Mikkelsen’s character painted in a new light, crooning to a “bridge baby” (dafuk is a bridge baby) in a very caring and soothing tone. Also, it seems that this character was originally a scientist of some sort, perhaps with a personal connection to the bridge baby. This was not the same way Mikkelsen’s character was portrayed in previous trailers, but from here he seems like a much more complex and relatable villain than your average schmo.

Now, onto the fact that I previously referred to a BRIDGE BABY. What the heck is a bridge baby? Well, according to this trailer, it seems like a bridge baby, one of which was depicted in the previous two trailers for Death Stranding, is literally a baby in a jar, essentially a tool that allows the people of the United States to traverse between planes of existence, as well as to see the evil spirits that now inhabit the land. That’s pretty cool, and it means that there are probably more of these babies than the previous trailers led on. Perhaps bridge babies will be an in-game item that you use as you go. But this opens up another question: Can bridge babies die? That would be truly horrible, and would make the little sisters from Bioshock seem like a joke.

Of course, these bridge babies are not the most mind-blowing aspect of Death Stranding. Without a doubt, the game mechanic that really left me scratching my head was the “Timefall” concept. I’m not entirely sure how it works, but it seems to be some sort of affliction or status that occurs, and when you’re in it, you experience time the same way someone might pass through a cloud. There’s a shot in the Release Date Trailer of animals, tanks, and people fading in and out of existence as Sam experiences an episode of Timefall. This mechanic looks really cool while also seeming to draw more upon the game’s lore.

Aside from Mads Mikkelsen, there are, of course, other enemies that you can encounter in Death Stranding. A lot of the enemies seem to be grunt laborers who work for some company–or maybe even from the government. What sort of party would want to keep the United States shattered? Interesting! Anyway, these guys drive around in little buggies and tanks, trying to capture Sam if they see him. The second enemy would be the strange ghosts that invisibly inhabit certain parts of the map. When they’re alerted, they will pursue you with unrelenting fervor. Finally, the last major enemy featured in the new trailer are called “homo demons.” You heard me right, homo demons. And I hope it means exactly what I think it means.

So, another revelation about the story of Death Stranding that this new trailer offers is what exactly is going on with the story. From what I’ve gathered, Sam is somehow related to the president of the United States, most likely a relative or a member of her cabinet, since he refers to her by her first name, Bridgette. Anyway, Sam’s mission is to “make America whole” for the sake of the entire United States, which apparently have splintered due to this epidemic of spirits known as the death stranding. Sam, on the other hand, seems opposed to this idea, stating that “America’s finished.” Of course, we all know that his final decision can’t be that resolute, since there is a game here to be played.

This, in itself, opens up so many questions. For one, what does it mean that the United States are no longer together? Has there been a schism, or is it that the death stranding has made it impossible to travel and communicate across certain distances, effectively crippling the infrastructure of the United States? From what I do know about Death Stranding’s creator and director, Hideo Kojima, this man sure loves his overarching themes. I would not be the slightest bit surprised if it turned out that Death Stranding was a game that had a central theme of communication or something similar, like technology. And if that’s the case…

If that’s the case, it would put Death Stranding’s gameplay into much greater focus. I thought it weird at first that people were entrusting the survival of the entire United States to one guy, but if the problem has something to do with communication infrastructure, it would kind of make sense. Why else would Norman Reedus be lugging things around all the time like some sort of UPS deliveryman? Think about it. We have become so dependent upon technology and the internet that very few of us can go a few hours, not to mention an entire day, without the internet. What would be the point of writing this article if I wasn’t able to post it up on the internet? As weird as it sounds, I have never been more ready for a game that’s literally about rebuilding the internet. I really hope that’s what Death Stranding’s about. It’s slated for release November 8th, 2019.

Oh, by the way, can I just say that I LOVE the fact that the Death Stranding Release Date trailer features a song by Apocalyptica?