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‘A Quiet Place: Day One’ helmer Michael Sarnoski to direct adaptation of popular video game ‘Death Stranding’ for A24 and Kojima Productions
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- Authors
- Justin Kroll
- Published
- Apr 7 2025
- Word count
- 380 words
I'll state the obvious question. Will they get Norman Reedus, Mads Mikkelsen, Margartet Qualley, and the rest of the pretty awesome cast, or will they recast those roles? I wonder what the original contarcts for those roles say.
I never played the game, didn’t look like my cup of tea. But oddly, I could see myself watching this, if the reviews are good.
Give the game a shot. I think almost everyone who fell in love with the game felt exactly that same way going into it. It's a ridiculously hard sell on paper, and even on video it does not seem appealing. Kojima's magic touch is how he nails the interactivity, and it really does make all the difference with Death Stranding.
I could not stand this game. I got 2 or 3 hours in and if I had to guess, probably half or more of that time involved the most clumsily written, batshit crazy cutscenes I've ever seen. I really wanted to like it. I like weird, atmospheric shit. But apparently I'm just not really on board with Kojima's brand of crazy any more.
On the other hand, I do actually feel like a film version of this could be a lot better. It'll be filtered through a director and presumably some less unhinged scriptwriters, and honestly the part of the game I played seemed to be halfway to a movie anyway.
Edit: I just realized this comment might come across as kind of hostile, so I apologize if that's the case 😅. I just really didn't get Death Stranding.
The cutscenes are definitely out there, even by Kojima's standards. Also the game has the worst character names in his entire career. FFS, "Die Hardman"???
But that experience of getting out of the tutorial area (which is very long too, about 6-8 hours) and then literally feeling the thesis of the game is incredible and impossible to communicate. We can hear about, you know, "jolly cooperation" all we can but I don't think any other game has made a player feel what collective cooperation towards a shared goal actually feels like as effectively. I think that's what hooks people so emotionally about the game.
Maybe the problem was that I didn't stick with it long enough to get out of the tutorial area, but honestly the game just seemed to really want to waste my time. I've had a lot of issues playing games that have very long cutscenes or tons of dialogue as I've gotten older and busier - I tend to want games that get to the damn point. Hemingway not Faulkner, if that makes any sense.
Also, "Die Hardman" was objectively funny and made me laugh, but the tone of the game was so serious that I just couldn't get a handle on what the hell it was going for, lol.
That is absolutely the impression the game gives by the end of the tutorial, that is totally a normal thing to feel. It's part of the theme since you're basically playing out the problem that the rest of the game is a solution to. YMMV on whether the payoff is worth it but the people who enjoy it seem to fall quite deeply for it.
I found it hilarious that not only is there Die-Hardman but also Deadman introduced in the same act (maybe even same series of cutscenes?). Naming that bad is a conscious choice for a certain sort of campiness I'm about.
I think the game captures the vibe of "back in my time" that old people often speak of. I don't know if it's a thing in other countries.
My mom grew up in a rural town east of Bangkok. She walked to a school next to a temple a kilometer away on dirt road. Water doesn't come on tap - people stored rainwater for that. Today the same town became a factory town. They have elevated toll roads, a few 7-11, a robot barista vending machine and a hidden picturesque coffee shop in the middle of shrimp ponds.
Death Stranding is like that - in the third delivery you go through BT infested mountain to deliver to the wind farm. Once you make the delivery and they connect to the network you'll see bridges from other people for sheltering from rain, signs for BT locations and safespots. The journey back is a lot less eventful thanks to all those community members making it better for everyone.
Didn't expect to like Death Stranding much, but it ended up being probably my favorite video game ever.
A Quiet Place: Day One, however, was a supremely bad film. I am disappointed with that director choice.
You should watch his first feature Pig with Nicolas Cage, much better