Kojima Productions head Hideo Kojima appeared at Sony's pre-Tokyo Game Show press conference to talk to a Japanese audience about his next game, Death Stranding, saying the open-world action game aims to connect players.

Kojima described most online competitive and cooperative action games as featuring "sticks" for players to use in combat. Death Stranding, he said, will also feature sticks, but also ropes for tethering and connecting players. "At the end of the day I want to offer an action game where people get connected with different elements, not just clubs," Kojima said through a translator.

Granted, Kojima has said many of these same things before in describing Death Stranding, which was unveiled just a few months ago at this year's E3. Today, however, he showed cartoonish concept art featuring cute illustrations of collaborators Guillermo del Toro and Norman Reedus connected by tethers.

Kojima did reveal one new detail: Kojima Productions plans to support 4K resolution and HDR color with Death Stranding, new features of the PlayStation 4 and its Pro counterpart revealed last week.