I am not sure how exactly one talks about this game without delving deeply into spoiler territory. That said I am going to try my best not to as I talk about my experiences finishing the game. The term “finishing” is about disingenuous as you move into a 15th chapter that to the best of my knowledge cannot be completed after you have received your proper “narrative ending” to the experience. I will talk about that more, but on its core Death Stranding is a game about connections. Right now we find ourselves living through a period of time where human touch and a connection to others is more than a little strained. The time following the event known as the “Death Stranding” is much the same.
The United States of America is no more, and all that is left of this country is a number of scattered Fallout style bunkers, with a few inhabitants in them. You play Sam Porter Bridges, and your job is to deliver much needed packages to these far flung settlements, and as the story progresses act as a way of connecting them all together and joining this remote network. Joining the network allows for instantaneous sharing of data along with access to what are effectively way higher tech 3D printers allowing these distant settlements to start making much needed items. Each time you bring another settlement online, it also has the side effect of sharing more fragments of information with the network as a whole and discovering new types of items that you can fabricate for your own use.
As great as these fabrication machines are… they can’t deal with anything organic and as a result your role as the “Great Deliverer” continues to be exceptionally important. You play a minor role in the lives of these settlers that you interact with, and once they join the network they stay in fairly regular contact with you in the form of emails. Sometimes they tell you that there is something that the need recovered and delivered and other time they send you a formal work order through the network of terminals that you interact with at each location. I said the game was about connections and as you travel through the world you feel more and more engaged with the inhabitants surrounding you.
The game wouldn’t were if it were just about a bunch of distant connections. Instead the game introduces you to a cast of strangely named characters that you develop a more significant bond with. This cast becomes your team as you attempt to solve the mysteries of the Death Stranding and halt what you ultimately realize is the sixth extinction of the world. Your mission pivots from connecting the world to ultimately saving it. You begin the game as a character that has no use for anyone but himself, and is effectively running from all the bad things that have happened in his life. You end the game with a realization that we need others in order to make it in this world and that humanity is in fact worth saving.
So much of this game is lonely vistas as you carefully trudge across the hostile terrain, and during this time your only companion is the games soundtrack that kicks in at significant moments. I remember thinking when I started the game that it was a weird game soundtrack because it more or less defied all of the normal beats that I expect from game music. However after having finished the game, I appreciate the auditory experience all the more. It largely reaches a crescendo in the final acts and as the credits played… I found myself weeping just from the release of emotions that the music brought on. There is a theme that gets played that I would probably cry right now were I to hear it.
Playing this game was a deeply emotional experience for me, and I am not certain it would be for everyone. Right now this game feels all the more poignant because of the time we find ourselves living in. Humanity is constantly divided by what feels like a very finite line between two opposing sides, and at the same time we are effectively forced to shelter indoors from an existential and unseen force that we can’t easily evade. While we were not at the time of this games release… we are effectively living the Death Stranding. Our Stranding is not one where the world of the dead starts to bleed into the world of the living, but instead of an invisible enemy that seeks to rob us of everything we knew as normal.
The game gets a little heavy handed with its narrative, and the last “chapters” of the game are effectively long extended cutscenes. However I would not change a single beat of how this game unfolds. Everything that I experienced was needed at the moment I experienced it. I’ve never played another Kojima game, and I know he is an incredibly divisive figure. That said Death Stranding is a masterpiece of narrative design, and one of the first games I have played that abolished the line between video game and interactive movie. I am not sure the story works without the gameplay elements and the gameplay elements don’t work without the lengthy cutscenes. The whole package felt amazing to experience, but it was also a deeply personal one.
I cannot guarantee that the unique blend of isolation and connections would mean the same thing to you as it did to me. You might bounce hard after the first time you are asked to painstakingly transport a difficult load across a minefield of things that will likely make you fall over and damage all of your cargo. You might find the fact that you end up carrying extra boots because you wear them out tedious as hell. I enjoyed the mechanics of solitude and the narrative journey brought on by interactions, and that paring for me worked. In the end I have no clue if my experience with the game was unique to me or if it will be translatable to others. Whatever the case this is currently at the top spot for games I have played this year and is likely going to be one of my candidates for the AggroChat games of the year show list.
I’ve written many times how hard this game hit me even without having the pandemic to make it very relevant. Someone who is personally isolated, learning to make connections and trust other people, learning to love and care for a child, This game hit way above its weight, and I felt angry at all those people who casually dismissed it as a walking simulator and wanted more Metal Gear where every interaction is with someone you will kill.
I’d add the clarification that Metal Gear always rewards you more when you use less-lethal means. It’s a major plot point of the 5th one, even. Kojima has always used Metal Gear to comment on violence and the inhumanity of war. He’s not always great at it, but I played the entire 5th game killing less than 20 or so people when I was actually playing the game and not just running around annoyed. I agree, though, that the disdain people had for this game was a bit… baffling. I think they pushed the action and horror elements way too much in advertising, which didn’t help.