Going off of nothing but gut feeling and general game knowledge, I believe that the handcuffs will be one of (if not, the) the most major gameplay element(s) in Death Stranding. Before we even saw Norman Reedus or a baby, we saw the handcuffs. They are clearly important and I think the gameplay is going to be majorly centered around them. (This is all completely unsubstantiated but I thought I might as well put my thoughts out there for the hell of it, so judge my reach. And If nothing else, enjoy the lil’ bit of art I did here.)
CONTEXT-
After hearing Norman’s recent comments on the podcast, one thing that struck me for some reason was how insistent he was when he said that it was a “connecting thing.” I am obviously aware that it has been known since the beginning that Death Stranding would be about connections, but there was something about Norman’s purely baffled tone over the word “connecting” that made my mind go off on what we could actually be connecting. We have also always had that reassurance that the game would feature traditional gun-centric gameplay, but Norman’s tone makes me think we may be getting more “rope” than expected. I don’t think the “rope” is exclusively referring to the umbilical cords.
I predict that the gameplay will be somewhere around 80% “rope” and 20% “stick”. I could also see the “stick” being entirely optional (Knowing Kojima, we might even see minor in-game consequences for using the “stick”. u/Egamis theorizes that we might see something similar to The Sorrow in MGS3 or the shrapnel horn in MGSV and I totally buy it). But no matter what, I am convinced that every major game mechanic will be designed around the idea of connecting. Of those mechanics, I think the handcuffs will be primary, and if not, secondary.(If the cuffs aren’t the most central, it’s probably gonna be the umbilical cords, but who knows).
GAMEPLAY WEIGHT-
To use The Phantom Pain for reference, I think the gameplay-weight of the handcuffs (meaning physically, how much of the gameplay time is dedicated to using them) will be slightly more than that of the Prosthetic Arm, and slightly less than that of the holdup/interrogation mechanics. I think it will be “upgradable” and have different functions (as well as have visual and thematic importance to the game) like the arm does. However, while the arm was “important” in TPP, it wasn’t guaranteed that you would use it even once on any given mission. I feel like you’ll be using the handcuffs pretty often. I think the variety of different uses will be closer to the holdup/interrogation mechanics, but I doubt you will use them quite as frequently as you would hold someone up. So I feel like it will be in the sweet-spot between those two.
WHAT THEY MIGHT DO-
This is all just completely blind guessing, since we have no idea what the game will even look like in action, but I thought I might throw out some spitball-y ideas (that will probably all be wrong).
1) You cuff yourself to others (enemies, npcs, corpses, other players, dead Sams, all of the above?) and it now functions kind of like an escort mission. Think something along the lines of holding hands with Yorda in Ico only more committed to the connection. The only function is to transport the cuffed person. Whatever function that would have is a mystery.
2) You smack that cuff on someone and briefly have intimate 1-1 control over them. You control both Sam and the cuffed person and you move in sync as if you were one person in two bodies. You now have partial access to whatever “abilities” the person has. The cuffed abilities are just dedicated to a couple of buttons like L1 and L2 or whatever, so otherwise you can still do Sam’s stuff. Think like if in Mario Odyssey you could capture something but still do all of Mario’s other moves, and now Y does something new. So whatever the Death Stranding equivalent of that is.
3) The cuffs aren’t just for people. The blue lights on the BRIDGES truck in trailer 3 reminds me of the blue light on the thin cuff. Could the cuffs serve as a “key” to drive vehicles? You cuff yourself to the wheel or something? Maybe it’s not just vehicles, but many other kinds of technology in game require you to cuff yourself to it. It would be treated like a skeleton key for BRIDGES tech.
4) The handcuffs are where we see the online-functionality. Maybe you randomly link up to an invisible and nameless other player and share your experience through second-hand interaction. Maybe your two games are linked and things you do in your game directly affect their game and vice-versa, you just never actually see them. Like you can kill an enemy in your game that is going after them in their game. So to them, the enemy would just magically die thanks to their ghost-buddy. You would get basic cues from the handcuff (visual and gameplay effecting) and it would be your only source of communication with them.
-Maybe the light on your Dualshock doesn’t represent your health, but the health of the player you are linked to. And then from your game you can send health to them or something when you see they are in the red.
5) Maybe instead of killing, the goal in combat is to make your way up-close-and-personal to the enemy and cuff yourself to them so they are “liberated” of the source that makes them attack you, then they are on your side. The goal of the game is to un-possess all of the enemies from their evil influence so that there is peace in the world. That’s what Norman meant when he said the game is the opposite of “Kill everyone, win the game.”
6)It's something that we can't comprehend at this point without any knowledge of the rest of the game. Idfk I’m just guessing here. My point is, I feel pretty confident that the cuffs will be major in the gameplay somehow.
STRAY THOUGHTS-
-In trailer 1, the cuff is shown to have a single red dot on it. In trailer 3, the cuff has the blue lightbar on it. These are the exact ways that the Dualshock 3 and the Dualshock 4 respectively showed that they were on, and showed who was player 1. Could the lightbar cuff be an upgraded form of the red dot cuff to represent the upgrade from Dualshock 3 to Dualshock 4? That would give a reason as to why there was no lightbar on the cuffs in trailer 1 and 2. They just didn’t get the upgrade. If this is true, could we see earlier stages of the handcuffs that represent the Dualshock 1 and 2?
-If you look closely at the handcuffs, you can see that on the larger cuff there is what looks like a release trigger. Could this be signifying that the cuffs may not last forever, and you need to get new ones once they “run out of juice?” If you didn’t have to take them off and put them back on, I can’t imagine why it would have such a prominent trigger for what I assume is a release.
-In Horizon: Zero Dawn, they are referred to as the “Stranded Shackles,” but if I were to guess I would say that is not what they are called in Death Stranding. Just a Horizon name. Probably called Glowy Cuffies.
-Going along with the idea that every major gameplay pillar in the game is about connecting, I believe that every element of the core gameplay was shown in the first trailer. Usually game reveal trailers end up serving as a summary for the identity of the final game, so I assume that once we play the game, trailer 1 will no longer be viewed as a cryptic and artistic teaser, but people will say, “Oh yeah he really did show us all the basics here.” I know it’s pretty much a no-brainer, but I bet the handprints, the handcuffs, the baby, the naked, the dogtags, the umbilical cords, and of course, the dead, will all be central pillars of the actual gameplay that makes up Death Stranding. Redundant at this point, I know, but I guess I never thought about what it could all mean literally in-game.
Thank you for reading this bullshit, I hope you got something cool out of it. I can picture what I imagine Death Stranding’s gameplay to look like as if it were a dream I can sort of remember, but not really. I hope I could effectively express what I imagine through words, and if not, I don’t care :) I would love to hear more theories on this so by all means, go nuts.
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