Death Stranding- The Experience of A Lifetime
It’s been 2 years since Hideo Kojima’s enigmatic thriller, “Death Stranding” arrived in the hands of players. Preceded by mysterious marketing and a general sense of “what the fuck is going on”, noone knew what to expect from this game. And unexpected it truly was. Death Stranding was simultaneously met with harsh criticism as well as tremendous praise from both sides of the camp, leaving everyone else scratching their heads in confusion even more.
With “Death Stranding: Director’s Cut” arriving soon, a.k.a its definitive edition, I thought it’d be a good time to revisit Kojima’s post-apocalyptic delivery simulator, and see how it holds up.
What is Death Stranding after all?
Death Stranding is an open-world post-apocalyptic adventure set after a mass extinction event almost wipes out all of humanity. You play as Sam Porter Bridges (played by Norman Reedus), who is a deliveryman. In this world, Porters have become a key component to humanity’s survival in order to transfer goods between each other, since even the most basic activities such as taking a hike can result in the deaths of hundreds of people.
Why, you ask?
The world of Death Stranding takes place after an event knows as, well, the “Death Stranding” has taken place. Worlds of the dead and the living have collided, to disastrous effect. No one really dies anymore, and the “ghosts” of the dead are stranded on a plane between this world and the next, aka “The Beach”. The stranded spirits are hence referred to as Beached Things, or BTs, and any contact between a human and a BT results in horrible consequences, in the manner of a mini-nuke.
As Sam, your job is to trek across the ruins of America and connect up cities along the way to a “chiral network”, a fancy internet that is the key to rebuilding America. Along the way, you’ve got to deliver tons of packages, including pizzas, drugs, construction materials, sensitive medical equipment, and even a nuclear bomb once!
The Incredible World
The first thing you notice when you load into Sam Bridges’ journey is the amazing open world around you. It’s an unforgiving world, filled with rocks that you can stumble upon (quite realistically, by the way) and sprawling rivers that can wash you and your cargo away in an instant. Yet, at the same time, it feels like a world that beckons you to explore. A place that has been made anew by whatever disaster has occurred and is ripe for exploration.
In terms of environments, Death Stranding features a wide variety of biomes and weathers as you trek across the United States in your quest to unite the world. Vast, green rolling hills, red hills and Mars-like terrain, snowy mountains filled with blizzards, Death Stranding has it all, to great effect. The visual fidelity is on another level, providing one of the most realistic environments in a game to date.
Isn’t it just a walking sim though?
Death Stranding is so much more than a walking simulator. While yes, most of the gameplay in its early stages looks like walking, it is actually a complex test of inventory management, and properly arranging the cargo and tools you carry, as well as navigating the harsh terrain around you. We’re used to being able to effortlessly glide across the terrain in most open-world games, but not here. Each step has to be carefully calculated to conserve stamina, take the shortest route possible, avoid uneven areas where Sam might trip, and so on and so forth.
There are tons of ways and tools at your disposal while on Sam’s epic journey across the country, allowing you to create your own unique experience. You can invest tons of materials into creating superhighways, construct zip lines for vertical and horizontal travel and even hoverboard down in the mountain region.
Death Stranding also has its fair share of combat. It’s natural to expect hostile enemies in a post-apocalyptic world, and this is no different. Here, you can find hostile porters who go by the name MULEs, and their only objective is stealing your cargo. It’s during these encounters that Death Stranding incorporates more classic stealth and combat sequences. Sam has a ton of weapons to choose from, both in the lethal and non-lethal variety. There are rope guns that tie up the enemy, Taser guns in the new Director’s Cut (exclusive), lethal/non-lethal handguns, assault rifles, smoke/stun grenades, etc. You can come across these enemies scattered throughout the world in specific camps where they’ve got loot boxes filled with cargo stolen from other players. It’s up to you whether you want to retrieve this cargo and deliver it yourself for more points.
However, one of the most harrowing and scary aspects of Death Stranding ARE the BTs. These creatures of the undead appear in rainy areas, and can pull you down if detected. Death Stranding then turns into a creepy game of hide and seek. You use your BB, which functions as a BT-detector. Scan your surroundings and move carefully, lest you be spotted by these invisible monsters. But if you do get spotted, that’s when shit goes sideways. Inky beings rise from beneath the ground and pull you down with them, damaging you and your cargo in the process, triggering a boss fight with a giant BT. Either defeat this monster and temporarily clear the area, or trigger a voidout and leave a giant crater.
This introduces the risk/reward factor in Death Stranding with the BTs: either take it slow and safe and sneak past the BTs in stealth, without risking your cargo, or take a giant risk (and a hit to your cargo) and go for a guns blazing (and potentially nuclear) encounter with a giant monster. Your choice.
When you think “multiplayer”, you often think of crowds of people scuttling about a map and ruining each others’ fun. So when you think about multiplayer in a game like Death Stranding, you find yourself rolling your eyes and dreading the swathes of hostile players about to invade your world.
Not here, though.
Death Stranding features one of the most innovative multiplayer systems I’ve ever seen in a video game to date; instead of players themselves entering your world, their items and constructions appear instead. If player XYZ from Canada builds a bridge over a chasm in their world, there’s a chance that the same bridge will appear in mine. This is done as part of the “Social Strand” system. Build a structure, and other players can reward you with “Likes” if it helps them. This promotes a cycle of players building structures that help themselves and other players, further pushing the theme of the game’s story, which is all about building connections with others and standing together as one.
Story
Death Stranding is what you’d typically expect from a Hideo Kojima story; it’s long, convoluted, confusing, and absolutely entertaining. Staying true to Kojima’s storytelling style, the first few hours of Death Stranding are absolutely crazy, adding to the bewilderment of the players but also explaining a ton of stuff thanks to its exposition-heavy cutscenes.
After an encounter with some BTs with Lea Seydoux’s character and an accidental BT-nuke serving as the tutorial, you’re quickly introduced to the world of Death Stranding. Sam is tasked by his sister Amelie and his mother Bridget (who just happens to be the President) to travel across the country to construct the chiral network, which would be the key to saving America and unearthing its lost history. It serves as a decent motivation for the player to lug 100s of kilos of cargo across waystations, distros, and the odd shelter.
Sam is also equipped with a “BB”, which is essentially a baby in a pod that helps to “detect” BTs and avoid them. BB serves as a great companion for Sam across this epic journey across a wasteland of terrorists and the wreck that was once a country.
Weird but interesting characters is sort of Kojima’s trademark, Death Stranding isn’t without its fill of quirky but lovable characters. There’s Deadman (portrayed by Guillermo del Toro) who acts as your doctor/tech support; Heartman, who stops his heart every 21 minutes to roam the land of the dead, and Fragile, a teleporting courier played by Lea Seydoux.
Death Stranding’s story may seem on the surface as an overcomplicated sci-fi story to just serve some “Uber-Eats” style gameplay, but it’s way way more than that. It’s a deeply heartwarming story about the essence of humanity and the lengths you’d go to preserve it, as well as the importance of human connection and bonds. Without each other, our existence is meaningless and miserable, and Death Stranding perfectly conveys that. You are Sam Porter Bridges, the connector of the world.
Worth it, or an overrated bore-fest?
In a time where most AAA open-world games tend to blend together, Death Stranding is a much-needed refresher from the norm. It provides gameplay that is not only simultaneously challenging and engaging, but also in line with the themes of its story and message. In a time where making new connections with people may seem like a thing of the past, Death Stranding came to me with a message of hope, reminding me that this is only temporary, and taught me the value of connections. Give it time, and I believe this to be a truly heartwarming tale that will leave you sobbing by the end of it.
Death Stranding is available on Playstation 4, Playstation 5, and PC. Reviewed on Playstation 4 Pro.
Overall score- 9/10.
