Hideo Kojima is presenting gameplay footage of his latest title, Death Stranding, in several volumes this week at the Tokyo Game Show, and the first sizeable chunk dropped in the early hours.

First, we we’re given a 7-minute ‘Briefing’ video, where Norman Reedus’ Sam Bridges is given the mission to travel across a broken America and reconnect it. He also is asked to bring back an old friend, played by Lindsay Wagner.

Later, Kojima ran commentary (in Japanese) on a 50-minute gameplay stream which laid out the finer details of what Sam is doing on his journey, and what he may encounter along the way.

Highlights include playing the harmonica to the delight of Sam’s Bridge Baby, a failed attempt at being stealthy in an enemy encampment, a delivery trolley being used as a hoverboard, and an epic battle against a giant oily creature.

The PlayStation Blog helpfully provided a breakdown of the footage and the various mechanics found within. You’ll have to prepare the right equipment for traveling, and depending on what you use, Sam’s mobility will be different. You can plan a route via the map, noting interesting areas, and ensuring you know what dangers you might face. Around the game world, there are items left by others, and you can leave them a ‘like’ (this seems to be to do with Death Stranding’s strange multiplayer). Sam does a fair bit of walking, but the footage also shows him commandeering a truck, and a motorcycle on his travels. He gets downtime too, including the aforementioned harmonica-playing, but he also takes a mudbath with his Bridge Baby and sings to it. Bless him.

A bit of everything then, and with more footage to come this week, we should know a lot more about how Death Stranding‘s gameplay ahead of its exclusive PS4 launch on November 8