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Death Stranding 2 is a critical success and will be a contender for Game of the Year, but the franchise is not taking a rest. Creator Hideo Kojima’s post-apocalyptic world is already slated for a live-action movie, an animated movie and a recently announced series coming to Disney Plus.
Death Stranding: Isolations is an animated series coming in 2027 and available only on Disney Plus. The announcement for it says the show will tell a “completely new story” separate from the game. As a fan of both games, I am all for learning more about the world of Death Stranding.
The official series synopsis is:
Somewhere in North America, just as Sam Bridges walks through the continent in order to save America, the someones are also trying to deal with their isolation in their own way. An old man trying to realize salvation through ways outside of the connection advocated by Bridges. A female warrior who tries to kickstart a world of constant fighting. A boy with a grudge against Bridges. A girl who embraces loneliness.
On the precipice of the end of humanity and the world, their fates and hopes converge, as another story of Death Stranding begins.
The synopsis of the series says the show will focus on four people who are surviving while Sam Bridges is out trying to reconnect North America, which likely means it takes place during the event of the first Death Stranding game. This makes for a different timeframe than the live-action movie that will focus on the Death Stranding event, making it a prequel to the games or the animated movie, Death Stranding: Mosquito, which appears to focus on MULE, the hostile group that steals from the Bridges porters, so this movie could come in between the first and second games.
What Isolations can do, as the name implies, is focus on the loneliness in Death Stranding. Kojima said his feeling of being alone after leaving Konami played a part in the game’s themes and the importance of connecting with others. What exemplifies that in the game are the people found in the bunkers across the country.
In the game, Sam visits underground facilities that are home to tens of thousands of people, like Capital Knot City, which can be assumed to be the game’s name for Washington, DC. The preppers, however, are individuals who have their own little homes underground, which can consist of a whole family or, in many cases, just one person. These people are completely isolated from everyone except for maybe a lone porter like Sam who comes by.
It’s these stories that make me so interested in Isolations. In the games, we only meet these people via missions. The first interaction with Sam has them excited to see him and requesting him to bring them an item as part of a mission. In some cases, completing these missions unlocks more of the person’s story, but not much, as they’re not that important to the game. Their existence in the game is to give players more to do and new equipment for Sam to equip.
Some examples of the more interesting preppers include the prepper referred to as the Elder from the first game, who came to the country as an immigrant, but grew distrusting of the government as he believed it didn’t care for those not born in the country. There’s also the Veteran Porter, who gave players a bit of background on the series antagonist Higgs, as well as some insight into being a porter, which we don’t get much of in the game.
Death Stranding: Isolations may not have the action of Mosquito or tackle the major mysteries explored in the live-action movie. It could still deliver the kind of background stories that deepen the game’s lore, which is what fans like me are most excited to see.
