As /u/Anderoid13 pointed out in their post earlier today, Kojima recently retweeted a trailer from an unknown developer for a game called Russia 2055. Having gone on the marketing journey of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, I smelled something fishy. So I did some googling, naturally. This trailer is reminiscent of the announcement of The Phantom Pain. For those of you who did not follow the launch of TPP, when the game was first announced, Kojima used a fake production company, Moby Dick Studios, as a stand-in for Koji-Pro. He even went so far as to create a website and to manufacture a fake name for the CEO of the company, Joakim Mogren. Joakim being an anagram for KOJIMA. So, we know this dude has been on some fuckery before.
While I'm not implying that any of the footage shown in the trailer is directly from DS, the following are connections to the previous Kojima ruse and potential connections to Death Stranding.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Invictus Volition is a virtually unknown developer, akin to Moby Dick Studios. They have no website, but a Twitter profile created in Sept 2018, a YouTube Channel created in Aug 2014, and an Unreal Engine Forums dating back to Jun 2015. Death Stranding was revealed at E3 with Norman Reedus in June 2016, so it's logical to assume that the game had been in development for at least a year. This puts the creation of all of these accounts well within the window of the concept and idea phases of Death Stranding, which I'm sure Kojima and co. have had in their back pocket since as early as summer 2014.
Invictus Volition's Twitter has made only 5 tweets since it was created. The Youtube Channel only has the aforementioned trailer. The Unreal Engine Forum account only has 4 posts, all within the last week. So each of these accounts have only been effectively active for only about a week. This leads me to believe that the developer has either just begun to promote a game that they conceptualized 4 years ago, or it's really KojiPro.
THE NAME OF THE STUDIO
Not only is the logo for Invictus Volition's studio just plain text, but the words themselves connect to Death Stranding. Let's break it down. Invictus is Latin for "unconquerable" or "undefeated". This may have a connection to Kojima's broken ties with Konami. He is unconquerable as he will release this new IP in spite of his troubles with Konami. Let's go a little further. "Invictus" is also the title of the famous Victorian poem by William Ernest Henley in 1888 in his first volume of poems, Book of Verses, in the section Life and Death (Echoes). The imagery in the poem has a direct connection to much of what we have seen of Death Stranding so far, even connecting to elements of the game's story and setting.
Here's the text of the poem:
Out of the night that covers me,Black as the pit from pole to pole,I thank whatever gods may beFor my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstanceI have not winced nor cried aloud.Under the bludgeonings of chanceMy head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tearsLooms but the Horror of the shade,And yet the menace of the yearsFinds, and shall find me, unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,How charged with punishments the scroll,I am the master of my fate,I am the captain of my soul.
I connect this poem with Sam "Porter" BRIDGES, who is capable of coming back from the dead. His soul is unconquerable. This is not a stretch, as Kojima made connections with British literature before with TPP. The motifs of Moby Dick in TPP mirror this connection.
As for "Volition", I have less to go on. Volition is defined as willpower or the power to make one's own decisions. This further reinforces the sentiment that Sam is the "captain of his own soul". In Death Stranding, your decisions have consequences, but you'll always come back. The player has the power to make the a better decision in their next "life".
THE VIDEO
The video is already very much something that we would expect from Kojima. Mechs, soldiers, and a landscape that looks strikingly like the post-apocalyptic world we've seen in DS. Something about the trailer seems-- off to me. The heavily blurred focus, post-processing, and details like hands and lighting are sloppy, but in a way that almost seems intentionally inconsistent. Along with overall impressions of metal gear with the mechs, some of the small details on the mechs look a little too similar to some tell-tale signatures of Yoji Shinkawa. We see these same metal disks as accents on Ludens, on MGSV Battle Dress, and on Sahelanthropus. On top of that the tripod walkers in the trailer look very similar to the "strands" present in the Death Stranding promos we have seen so far.
CONCLUSION
I know that there's not a ton to work with here, but my initial impression is that there's more than meets the eye with this trailer. Considering the marketing tactics of Koji-Pro, it isn't outside the realm of possibility that this trailer is somehow connected to Death Stranding. Then again, Kojima could be browsing the Unreal Engine forums and came across this trailer by chance, but I don't suspect that's the case, considering how busy he should be right now working on DS. More than anything, I'd like to see what the community has to say about this theory. Let me know if you think there's anything I missed, or if you'd like to reject my theory as grasping for straws. As is the case with most of y'all, I'm HYPED for Death Stranding, and it's fun to speculate about the things we haven't seen yet! Looking forward to your reaction.
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