Despite the best efforts of game developers and publishers in revealing trailers and footage behind closed doors, there will always be someone leaking it online for everyone else to see. In the words of Thanos, it’s inevitable.

Thanks to YouTube channel RePorter Bridges (via Gematsu), we now have our first look at the secret Death Stranding ‘Briefing’ trailer. According to Kojima himself, it is supposed to explain what the protagonist, Norman Reedus’ Sam Porter Bridges, will be doing in the game and the basic gist (or premise) of the game.

In the grainy trailer, we can see Sam meeting with Amelie and the masked individual Die Hardman in what seems to be the Oval Office in the White House. Their discussion indicates that the United States of America has fractured and broken apart in the game’s world for some as-of-yet unknown reason.

Amelie and Die Hardman want Sam to travel west and reconnect Chiral Network terminals scattered across the nation along the way to reconstruct country as part of the new United Cities of America. This is what probably what launches Sam on his journey and expedition through the open-world we’ve seen in trailers so far.

This is in addition to saving the physical body of Amelie from the clutches of an evil organization called the Homo Daemons, a militant separatist opposing faction. The Amelie that’s talking with Sam and Die Hardman in the trailer is some kind of astral projection or hologram.

Sam also mentions that he’s not a ‘Strand’ anymore, thus refusing Amelie and Die Hardman’s request. It will be interesting to learn more about who the Strands are and what they do. It all frankly still sounds like incoherent nonsense at this point, but we’ll likely know more when we finally get to play the game.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlmJ8vhf3A8&w=560&h=315]

Death Stranding is slated to release exclusively for the PS4 on 8 November 2019. For more details and information on Death Stranding (and the collector’s edition contents), head on over here.