Release Date: 08/11/2019
Played On: PS4
Available On: PS4
Time Played: 62h 7m
Progress: Completed / 73% Trophies
Developer: Kojima Productions
Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment / 505 Games
Hype is a dangerous thing, and it's the main reason I was never looking forward to Death Stranding in any way at all. I'm completely sick of hearing about Kojima and how he's the golden god of game design. It seems like everyone on the internet has been creaming themselves over the potential of his latest game baby, which is enough to turn me off entirely - and for the most part, it did.
From the surreal trailers that made no sense, to the proclamations from Kojima himself about how he's inventing a whole new genre. Everything I ever heard about Death Stranding in the lead up to its release made me want to ignore everything about the game. I mean, if you create something and have no idea how to describe it to your audience, then there's definitely something wrong with the project. It's clear that Kojima still has a hard time describing this game to the press, but I fear it's because the reality doesn't sound half as exciting as the abstract concept.
One thing to note, is that I'm not a huge Kojima fan anyway. The only other game of his that I've played was Metal Gear Rising: Revengence, which I thoroughly enjoyed. However, I don't have the years of Metal Gear commitment that many other gamers seem to have, and that seems to account for their rabid fanaticism over everything Kojima touches. Like I said, I really enjoyed Revengence, but it wasn't enough to leave me salivating for more.
Despite all that, I don't actually mind it when others get super excited about a thing that I have no reference for. If anything, it's that excitement that encourages me to pay attention in the first place. How are we ever meant to be turned onto new things if we don't have a look at what makes others excited? The danger is falling into a hole of hype that actually contains very little in the way of substance, and Death Stranding has always felt like a major build up to an inevitable disappointment. Hence, I stopped paying attention a long time ago and it was only with the event of early reviews that I started taking notice again.
It's funny how the smallest thing can pique one's interest in something that had otherwise seemed uninteresting, especially when it's billed as the downside to the overall experience. As I watched a couple of reviews for Death Stranding, I found myself intrigued by the otherwise derided "walking simulator" aspects of the game. The more I watched, the more I was sold on the concept, which had nothing to do with Kojima's nonsense press releases and the hype train that continuously followed this game's development.
For those who are still unaware, this is a game about travelling and connecting geographical locations to an expanding network. We get to play as Sam Porter Bridges, who is a delivery boy (porter) for a FedEx type of company called Bridges (every character has a dumb descriptive name). Our job is to carry packages from one location to another, which also ends up being the main activity of the game as it will take up 90% of the time you end up spending in-game.
We find ourselves in a futuristic world where technology has evolved to the point where we're using parallel universes to transmit data. Turns out that everyone has an actual afterlife in a location called a "beach". Good old humans managed to find a way to access beaches, giving them the ability to move from one place to another at super speeds, as well as transmit huge bandwidths of data across large distances. It's like the ultimate WiFi signal, except it travels through what is essentially the afterlife, so something's bound to go wrong.
Eventually the land of the dead started getting mixed up with the land of the living and an event called the "Death Stranding" happened. I'm not entirely sure, but my best guess is that this event blurred the lines between reality and the beach, allowing spirits or "BT"s to enter our world and basically start messing everything up.
At the same time, there are some people who possess a supernatural ability called "DOOMS", which really means the ability to detect BTs, which are otherwise invisible beings. Of course, our protagonist Sam has DOOMS, even though it only manifests in a small number of the population. For those who don't have DOOMS, there are "BB"s to help them out.
A BB is a "Bridge Baby" in a bottle that you can hook up to your suit and it will detect the presence of BTs as you get closer to them in the world. There's a whole lot of lore behind BBs that runs deep into the main story of the game, so for our purposes let's just stick with the fact that they are BT detectors as they can sense the presence of dead in the world.
To round it all off there are "MULES", who are humans that love collecting and storing packages in their camps. Run into a MULE camp and they'll try to attack you and steal all your cargo. Then there are a load of ancillary characters who do little more than provide points of interest for Sam to travel to and from.
Oh, and in case all the jargon hasn't already overwhelmed you, Sam is what's known as a "Repatriate". This is essentially how the game handles death and respawning, as Sam is a very rare human who has the ability to come back to life when he has been killed. There's something about how his spirit can travel between the beach and his body, so respawning is okay. Make sense? I doubt it, but that's kind of the point.
I'm not going to go into any more detail about the plot, other than to say that it's entirely a big pile of nonsense that makes very little sense at the end of the day. As far as I can tell, this is typical for a Kojima game, but I found it frustrating in parts and was left feeling angry in others. There's a distinct mix of heavy handed storytelling and abstract nonsense that can ruin your day pretty swiftly. It also doesn't help that when the cut scenes come, they come with a vengeance. There were times when I realised I'd been watching a cut scene for over half an hour without any gameplay. Again, I think this is considered normal for a Kojima game, but it's not something I find endearing at the best of times. If you have to beat your audience over the head with your plot instead of let them discover it organically, you're probably doing something wrong, and this game loves to beat you over the head.
However, the narrative in Death Stranding seems like the kind of story that will appeal to some folk, but not everyone. The silver lining is that there's enough in the plot to justify some of the more creative moments in the game, which is actually appreciated. Some of the late game chapters are full of creative ways to tie the story together and I enjoyed experiencing each challenge as it arose. What really lets Death Stranding's story down though, is that there are two seemingly unrelated plots going on at the same time.
What ends up happening is that there are key moments in the game when you're taken right out of one narrative, only to be thrown into the deep end of another. To make matters worse, this jarring swap between stories gets repeated a number of times without anything new to add to the experience. Finally, once you reach the end of the main plot, you're given the joy of seeing how hard Kojima can try to squeeze the secondary plot in via long cut scenes and incredible leaps of logic.
I say this as someone who loves the abstract and surreal elements of storytelling. I even think video games offer a unique and special way to tell the weirdest of stories, so I'm always primed for another creative adventure into the unknown. While Death Stranding manages to create a compelling world and science fiction narrative, it falls completely flat when it comes to the payoff. The entire game feels like one big setup that never reaches a conclusion. Instead there are a bunch of characters running around in the end-game trying to tie plot lines together with flimsy threads.
At this point I feel like I should highlight that I actually enjoyed Death Stranding on the whole. Thankfully this doesn't have to be a story-focused experience, so it's quite easy to ignore the nonsense and get down to gameplay. I may not have enjoyed the plot very much at all, but I did enjoy the world that's been created to explore and run around in.
Plus, you're going to do a lot of running around in Death Stranding, as the main gameplay loop consists of some basic steps that are repeated throughout the entire game. Early on, you're given the lofty goal of setting up a network that will span the entire United States of America. Turns out that there are package distribution centres and people's homes all across the land that need supplies delivered to them, so why not get the delivery boy to hook everyone up again?!
Hence, the loop is this: pick up some cargo from a location; travel across hazardous terrain to the cargo's intended destination; deliver cargo and connect the new location to the ever-expanding network. You can also find cargo abandoned across the landscape, so picking up extra boxes along the way can add to your final score, but essentially the whole game is about moving things from one place to another.
Mechanically speaking the game is all about traversal, as Sam manages to carry way more than any human should be able to, and that makes getting around a little difficult. Pile the boxes high and you'll have to counter shifts in weight as you cross uneven ground and climb mountains on the way to your destination. This is even more demanding when you have to take various equipment with you like ladders and climbing ropes, which all add to the overall weight on Sam's back and the possibility to lose balance along the way.
Fortunately, this is the part of the game that I found ultimately interesting and compelling enough to carry me through to the end. It might sound simple on the surface, but navigating difficult terrain with a pile of boxes on your back can actually be quite the puzzle. Do I use my last ladder to scale a cliff, or do I lay it down as a make-shift bridge over treacherous water? Did I remember to bring a spare pair of boots, because my current ones are about to deteriorate and I won't be going anywhere barefoot. These kind of elements are what ends up making a game about a glorified delivery boy interesting. After all, when there's the possibility of death on the table, things get a little more exciting.
What actually makes delivering packages exciting, is the landscape we're given to traverse and overcome. There's no doubt that Death Stranding is a very good looking game, so it's a pleasure to travel across the landscape and find out how it will change over large distances. Thankfully the progression during the game is handled well and just as I was getting used to a certain area, I'd find a reason to continue on to the next.
Some areas feature beautiful wide open fields of green rolling hills, while others are littered with canyons and sheer cliffs that require some particular methods to cross. Eventually you end up crossing mountains and poking your way through snow storms. The real plus is that every environment has been beautifully rendered and features a landscape that feels natural and difficult to cross.
The thing that kind of works against the progression through each landscape, is that Sam's own abilities increase at a rate that seems to outrun challenges from the start. Over time different equipment and vehicles are unlocked that significantly help Sam carry more cargo across tougher landscapes. By the time I got to the really challenging parts of the world, I was already well equipped to handle them with ease, which feels pretty nice to have that power, but it's a bit of a letdown to lose any challenge that might have come up naturally.
By the final half of the game, I found myself wondering if I should take the easy way to my destination, or if I should go the hard way to spice things up a little. It says something about the game that I would choose to hinder my own abilities, just to have a bit more of a challenge along the way. Some of the best moments I had with Death Stranding were when I was overcoming a difficult part of the world, but after a while I had to invent those difficulties for myself.
I suppose the point is that I found the overall progression in the game to be a little too generous. At the start, I was terrified of running into BTs and I tried to avoid MULEs as much as possible. By about a third of the way in I was actively seeking out both enemy types as a way to farm resources and get everything I needed to build structures and connect locations.
I'll get to the most annoying part of the game in a minute, but it's important to note that despite the progression and easy enemies, exploring and traversing the world is where Death Stranding is at its strongest. A good thing to note, as this takes up the vast majority of time spent in-game. There's something extremely satisfying about overcoming some rough terrain and completing the task of carrying a bunch of boxes to their intended location. Whenever I hooked up a fresh node to the network I breathed a sigh of relief, as the hard part had been conquered.
For each new location on the map, you're required to travel outside of the existing network's range and proceed on your own. While inside the network we're given a whole lot of assistance that makes getting around super easy. Leaving the relative safety blanket of being within the network and venturing out into the unknown lands beyond, is a lot of fun. There are no sign posts and there's nothing to help you if you get stuck. Until you reach that destination and connect it to the network, you're on your own and all you can do is tackle once challenge at a time.
Unfortunately, the most annoying part of Death Stranding comes into play as soon as you connect the network to a fresh node. This is also the aspect of the game that Kojima described as being an entirely new genre, which is stretching reality quite a bit so take that with a huge grain of salt. The thing is that when you're within an area that's connected to the network, the world is populated with structures and signs left behind by other players. Not only has this been done before and is far from an entirely new genre, but it ends up converting what was a beautiful, desolate landscape, into one that's cluttered with everyone else's junk and influence.
The idea is actually pretty cool when you break it down. If I place a ladder in my game, it might show up in another player's game and make life easier for them. There were many times when I was climbing up or down a mountain and found myself making use of someone else's climbing rope that they had left behind. What's more, the actual ground in the game will become worn with use if multiple players take the same route, creating organic pathways through the world that indicate possible directions to follow.
There are a number of structures that can be built as a kind of "community" assistance program, such as bridges spanning difficult sections, or boxes where players can store and share equipment with each other. This stuff sounds good in theory, but especially in the later game, there's really no benefit to finding someone else's structure in place where you don't want it to be anyway.
Additionally, everyone has the ability to place signs anywhere in the world that can warn others of danger ahead, or give them an encouraging pep talk that refills their stamina. The problem with these signs is that they end up being everywhere and I found most of them annoying; like having advertisements barking at me while I played my quiet little delivery game.
Speaking of advertisements, the product placement in the game is so abhorrent and opaque that it borders on the ridiculous. Essentially every time you drink from your canteen, you're drinking Monster Energy Drinks, and your own bedroom is filled with cans of Monster. It's so stupid and on the nose that I can't bring myself to say anything else about it.
Anyway, even though there are occasional times when someone else's structure will be in the right place and be useful, I didn't find anything that I wasn't prepared to build for myself. This part of the game is meant to have this romantic impact about how we're all connected and how building the network means that more of us can share with each other and not be so lonely along the way, but that's not how it felt.
Instead, all I saw was a gorgeous landscape littered with other people's stuff. At times I actively avoided the obvious path forward, just to get a break from the onslaught of crap left lying about. Maybe the first time I found another player's vehicle somewhere convenient was a good feeling, but by the time I'd run into ten other abandoned vehicles that people had left in the middle of the road, I wasn't feeling it anymore. At times I spent much of the game moving other players' vehicles around to get them out of the way that I felt like I was a valet driver instead of the super delivery boy I'd come to enjoy.
Although what really gets my goat about this entire system, is that Kojima has the arrogant balls to say that it's all part of a brand new genre that he's invented. Sorry my dude, but this is the same kind of connected world that we can find in other games, most notably in the Dark Souls games where they've been doing this stuff for decades. Not only is it nothing more than an iteration on an existing idea, but it's the worst part of Death Stranding and I wish I'd had the forethought to disconnect my game from the internet before I started playing. I'm certain that I would have had a much better time if I did everything I could to avoid the "connected" nature of the game's world, which is antithetical to the entire premise of the game!
It amuses me then, that I actually enjoyed Death Stranding overall and would happily recommend it to anyone that was interested. The saving grace is that the terrible parts only make up a fraction of the whole, so there's plenty of enjoyable exploration and discovery to have along the way. Funnily enough, all the elements that were pushed about the game that are meant to make it unique and interesting, are the parts that I found annoying and that got in the way of the good stuff. The part that I enjoyed most was the part that puts a lot of people off: the delivery boy simulator aspect.
There's something simple and beautiful about crossing hazardous terrain and discovering a world that's dangerous and isolating. The game falls over itself trying to give you enemies and challenges along the way, but it should have chilled out a bit and let the landscape speak on its own. Turns out that Death Stranding is at its best when you're left alone to overcome challenges however you want.
It's hard to deny that this is a unique game experience that's full of creativity and high concept goals, but it never really hits the mark on any single aspect. Often it feels like Death Stranding is trying so hard to prove itself, that it forgets itself. There are so many parts of this game that could easily be removed, not to mention cut down significantly and balanced properly, but perhaps that would alienate those hardcore Kojima fans who were hyped beyond belief for this game.
As someone who started off as sceptical as I could possibly be, it's a compliment to say that Death Stranding won me over in spite of itself. At times it felt like the game was doing everything it could to make me give up with frustration and disgust, but there was enough of the good stuff to keep me pushing on to see everything the game has to offer.
Of course this is far from a perfect game, but it's also a lot better than I was expecting and that has to be worth something in itself. I won't be telling everyone to rush out and experience the masterpiece that is Death Stranding, because it's far from an essential part of anyone's library. However, for those of you who have seen a bit of gameplay and find the terrain traversal kind of interesting, this might be something for you to dip into when it's on sale.
For everyone else who thinks Kojima literally shits gold - you'll probably be enamoured with the more ridiculous and nonsensical parts of Death Stranding. If nothing else, this game definitely feels like something of a unique take on existing mechanics and systems. Let's just stop trying to make out that this is an immediate GOTY contender, when it barely deserves an honourable mention.