Death Stranding – Will It Have DualShock 4’s Touchpad Gameplay Functionality?

When it comes to games made by Hideo Kojima, there’s no such thing as “reading too much into it”. Every tiny little detail matters, it’s all there for a reason. Exactly for this reason, there’s been a popular theory going around that in Death Stranding, the DualShock 4’s unique capabilities – more specifically, the touchpad and the LED lights – will actually be used quite prominently in the game itself.

It actually makes a lot of sense. If you look at the trailers closely, you’ll notice that the incubators in which the babies are kept have a texture that is very, very similar in look to how the touchpad on the DualShock 4 feels, so there’s every reason to believe that perhaps the touchpad will be used to interact with the incubator in the game itself. There’s also the possibility that maybe the touchpad will be used to control the mechanical arm on the back of the characters that we saw in the third trailer of the game (since it definitely looks like there’s some sort of link between the arm and the baby).

Then there’s the handcuffs that various characters have been seen wearing in all three trailers. The handcuffs seem to be emitting lights of different colours in the trailers, ranging from blue to yellow to red, and it seems like these lights will function in the game (and in the game’s lore) as health indicators for the people wearing them. Will these lights also be reflected in the LED light on the back of the DualShock 4?

It certainly seems possible, since it would be in line with how Kojima likes to make use of the hardware he is working on in unique ways (remember Psycho Mantis in the original Metal Gear Solid?). The question, though, is that if this is indeed true, how will these mechanics be used in the game’s PC version, where players won’t necessarily be playing with a DualShock 4? Tell us what you think in the comments section below.