Death Stranding

Postman-Apocalyptic Pat

Death Stranding is a game that defies conventions, it doesn’t follow unwritten rules laid out by an industry that nowadays over relies on gimmicks, lacks creativity and favours profits above all else. Hideo Kojima’s virgin voyage, free from the clutches of Konami, is a middle finger to this industry and the former gaming giant he helped create, but also sometimes feels like a middle finger to the player (figuratively and literally - more on this later)

To properly review Death Stranding, first we have to look back at the events that transpired leading up to the development of this game. Hideo Kojima is quite rightly regarded as a god amongst men in the gaming world. His much beloved Metal Gear Franchise (note I say his, not Konami’s) is indisputably the reason for his seat in the Pantheon of game developers. For decades, fans of all ages have followed Snake’s trials and tribulations, endured endless hours of cutscenes, listened to a myriad monologues and vehemently adhered to the concept that Kojima can do no wrong. Kojima must be aware of this sentiment so unanimously agreed upon as it often shows in the self confidence and quite often self indulgence of his more recent titles. When Konami decided it would be more profitable to focus on mobile gaming with heavy in game monetisation, Kojima was pushed out. He likely had one or two choice words to say about this decision, being the purist he is, but even a god can’t stand in the way of profit.

Kojima went from Konami’s Golden Child to an unwanted vestige of the past, almost overnight. The subsequent fallout was ugly and public, in equal parts. Konami went on to try and bleed the last they could of the Metal Gear franchise, without Kojima, resulting in the bizarre and frankly irrelevant “Metal Gear: Survive” being released, much to the chagrin of the once proud series’ father. Kojima said in an interview: “The Metal Gear games are about political fiction and espionage, where do zombies fit in with that?” and “That's nothing to do with me!”

Kojima faced his darkest days yet stating at the Tribeca festival: “I was creating games for 30 years and I was very confident about creating games. But [after the Konami split] I had nothing to start with. It was from scratch. No office, no staff, no materials or things to work on, no machines,". What he did have, however, were human connections, people that believed in him and so with their help and with healthy funding from Sony he set up Kojima Studios and set to work on an entirely new title.

Ever the poet, Kojima used this concept of strong connections between people allowing us to overcome insurmountable odds, as the very backbone of his maiden title, Death Stranding.

Still with me? Good, but now comes the hard part, actually breaking down, critiquing and ultimately rating a game like Death Stranding, whilst remaining as objective as a reviewer can. DT is a game destined to divide, even loyal Kojima fans will find themselves struggling to pick a side, you could make a strong argument that this game is terrible, you could also make a strong argument that this game is revolutionary, ahead of it’s time, an inspired piece of emotional story telling. The fairest course of action is surely to lay out the facts, examine and remark upon each aspect of the whole and ultimately let you decide.

Let’s start with the story, again a challenge in itself, how does one surmise a story that continues developing across every hour of it’s 40 to 50 hour campaign, that continues to twist and turn well after the credits have rolled, all whilst not giving away spoilers?

Here goes nothing, you play as Sam Porter Bridges, an aptly named porter who begins to work for a company/political entity called Bridges. This kind of ham fisted detail is rife in DT’s story, you’ll need to make your peace with that. The world has quite frankly gone to shit, since the “Death Stranding” an event that saw entities from the after life or “The Beach” (a kind of personal waiting room for newly detached souls) find their way back in to the corporeal world, trying to reclaim their recently deceased body (or any body for that matter), if successful they trigger “voidouts”, which we learn are equivalent to multiple nuclear explosions, wiping out any nearby life. To make matters worse, a newly discovered element (perhaps brought through from the Beach), Chiralium, has polluted the atmosphere to such an extent that rain water will immediately age anything it touches, this phenomenon has been given the apt moniker, Timefall. Inverse rainbows warn wary travellers of incoming timefall, or worse. All in all the concept of going for a leisurely stroll, let alone re-establishing society, is not an attractive one, thus the mundane task of transporting goods from A to B becomes a little more arduous.

DT is set exclusively in America, a once United Nation, now reduced to a nomadic state, “preppers” have hermetically holed themselves in to shelters, solely relying on the delivery of goods to keep them alive, whilst others have come together in rag tag groups to form small “cities”. Right from the start you are charged with bringing these people on to the “chiral network” (a method of communication that uses “The Beach” to send huge amounts of data instantaneously), thus uniting them under one banner once more, doing so will almost always require fetching or delivering something for someone. What’s so impressive about this narrative is that it is completely bizarre, over the top sci-fi fantasy, that somehow remains grounded in a completely relatable reality, that boils down to the consequence of human greed and the desire to push innovation despite the cost, not unlike the very real issue we have today with Global Warming. The same can be said for the concept of the “chiral network” and in game characters scepticism of it, their unwillingness to join it, we can liken this fictional scenario to the reality we have today with social media and people living their “best” lives online for better or worse. In fact, in Death Stranding some porters become so obsessed with the “likes” they receive for delivering cargo that they develop “MULE” syndrome, where their only function in life becomes cargo, even if obtaining that cargo means robbing its original owner.

That’s it, that’s all you need to know, the reason I’m so unwilling to tell you more is because the primary enjoyment I got from playing DT was unravelling the story. It is deep, incredibly deep, sometimes early in to the game it doesn’t quite deliver emotionally when it wants to and yes, it’s eye rollingly cheesy at times, with characters named Heartman, named so because he has a dodgy heart, Mama, because she has a kid, Die-Hardman, because he’s hard to kill and Clifford because he, wait, what? I could go on, but the point is, this genuinely could be one of the finest pieces of story telling in gaming history. It’s an absolute mess, by the way, you get 90% of the answers to your questions in the last hour, which is essentially a movie, post credits. But when the screen, finally, goes black you will be left staring at your gaping face in an epic “what the…” moment, it’s the kind of story that stays with you for days, weeks, months even.

You’ll be pleased to know that the baby (affectionately named Lou) in the jar that is now synonymous with the name Death Stranding, actually is entirely pivotal to both the plot and game mechanics and its story is heart wrenching, as is the connection our protagonist Sam (played by Norman Reedus)forms with it. We come to learn more about the whole pickled foetus situation, through a series of “flashbacks”, witnessed through the baby’s eyes (the baby or babies I should say, are called BB’s, yep ham fisted)

These scenes are masterfully done, often seemingly benign, but deeply emotive, Mads Mikkelsen voices Clifford Unger perfectly and really adds a lot of depth to a seldom seen character for the most part. In fact the voice acting of the main characters is sublime across the board, Norman Reedus’ gruff portrayal of Sam, a seasoned porter, happier surrounded by death and wilderness than the warmth and comfort of company, is incredibly minimalist but effective, you can’t help but feel connected with him. Troy Baker adds his name to an already star studded cast and as always delivers a captivating performance, bringing a lease of life to what is otherwise a rather uninspiring nemesis whose motivations for wanting to bring about humanities annihilation remain pretty much unexplained until the last 30 minutes of the game. In a somewhat strange addition, legendary directors Guillermo Del Torro and Nicholas Winding Refn lend their likeness to characters Deadman and Heartman respectively, but don’t actually voice them, none the less these characters are also beautifully voiced, thoughtful, nuanced and never over done.

What aren’t great are the myriad strangers you talk to through the course of the game, who appear as holograms to thank you for delivering their package, or berate you for trying to coerce them in to joining the “chiral network”. The voice acting here is laboured and lacks subtlety for the most part and often felt like a forced addition to try and break up the loneliness and monotony between multiple deliveries. They just weren’t necessary and only really served to bring me out of my immersion. Even a brief cameo from Conan O’Brien couldn’t lift my experience of being lectured by a hologram.

As before mentioned the story is immense in scope, if not at times disjointed and poorly paced. It’s so big that you constantly teeter on the edge of thinking Kojima has finally gone insane, that the narrative is nothing more than the mad ramblings of a genius consumed by the brilliance of his own mind, but once you finish the game, you walk away thinking he just might have pulled it off.

Despite Kojima’s penchant for a lengthy cut-scene (I’m looking at you MGS4 and your 71 minutes) this is infact still a game and therefore we can’t attribute DT’s merit solely to its story.

This is where DT will really divide the masses, as we’ve established, you are a porter, delivering packages is your MO and it will be your objective to do just that for at least 75% of the 40-50 hours you’ll spend playing. Sound boring? Well, fair enough, on paper it does sound pretty boring, but somehow it really isn’t and there are a number of key factors for this.

Firstly Kojima’s vision of post apocalyptic America is beautifully realised, 10 minutes won’t pass before you find yourself admiring another vista, a waterfall crashing into a ravine, or simply the lichen and moss covered rocks as you clamber over them. There are distinct regions in DT’s map, that don’t represent real geographic areas of America, but offer a fresh aesthetic and new challenges when it comes to traversal. You’ll climb snow swept mountains, finding yourself caught in sudden whiteouts, you’ll need to cross great rivers and descend precariously down cliff faces, loose shale scattering beneath your feet. Each microbiome is gorgeous and has a tangible effect on your ability to complete an order.

This barren beauty is taken to new heights when the soundtrack sporadically kicks in. You may have just fought through hell to reach the top of a mountain, only to be rewarded with an incredible view of a lush green landscape below. Suddenly this ethereal, melodic music will fade in, letting you know that everything is going to be OK (until the song ends) and escorting you safely over your last few hundred metres. The soundtrack features lots of little known artists, the best of which is perhaps Low Roar, described as an “Icelandic post-rock/electronica project by American expatriate Ryan Karazija”, the songs selected for DT could not be more fitting, they all seem to say “yep, our world is fucked but look how pretty it is without us in it”.

Successfully completing an order requires a whole host of equipment, ranging from ladders, climbing anchors, container resprays and later on an armory of lethal and non-lethal weapons to keep your enemies at bay. This gear can be carried in a number of ways, fitted on your back mounted rack, strung on your boot clip, stowed in your utility pouch, you can press triangle (PS4) at any time in your inventory menu to automatically organise your gear in the most efficient way, but sometimes it’s amusing piling it all on your back until you have a teetering Jenga tower, the weight of which constantly trying to pull Sam over.

Using your “Odradek”, a shoulder mounted scanner, you can scan terrain to identify potential slip hazards, dangerously steep inclines, or deep water that would sweep you away. It’s incredibly frustrating to admit, but I loved the simplicity of delivering orders, organising my inventory, deciding where to deploy my climbing anchor before abseiling safely down a cliff face or wading through a river, waist high in rushing water trying not to lose my footing.

There is a self confidence in this simple gameplay that is clearly evident, the MoCapping of Norman Reedus is phenomenal, watching him struggle to keep himself upright under an enormous freight, or keep his footing as he hot foots down the side of a cliff face feels very realistic, combine this with the haptic feedback through the DualShock Controller and it’s hard not to become immersed in such menial labour. The design of Sams’s equipment, from the various upgrades of his boots, down to the cargo itself and the different ways it can be stowed, is excellent. Watching different distributions effect Sam’s movement and even the sound of metal scraping against metal or the creaking of the joints supporting the load, is really satisfying. If this were a postman simulator, it would be an irrefutable 10/10.

You are incentivized to take non essential orders from NPC’s in the game, by receiving access to steadily improving gear and weaponry to help you on your journey. What I love is that none of the gear you get is needed to actually complete the game, bar a few items you obtain very early on, but serve to make your life a lot easier. You can equip yourself with power armour that allows you to massively increase the amount of cargo you can carry, or an all terrain exoskeleton (essentially robotic legs!), that help you move through heavy snow or over rocky mountains with ease. You can even build entire structures on the fly, from bridges to cross rivers, to zip lines spanning 300 Metres that allow you to quickly traverse difficult terrain or hostile areas.

There are a small selection of vehicles to choose from to help you on your journey, from nippy trikes to sluggish 4x4’s that allow you to stow huge amounts of cargo. The problem is these vehicles have horrible handling and very little of the terrain you traverse is particularly suitable for vehicles, I can recall countless times where my vehicle got stuck on a insignificant looking rock, or refused to stop accelerating, plummeting into a ravine, completely destroying my cargo. You’ll find yourself opting to go on foot more often that not for this reason.

By far the worst aspect of Death Stranding is the combat, especially combat against humans. Early on in the game your biggest human threat are the MULE’s, they have set up camps sporadically around your delivery routes and if they spot you they will hunt you down and steal your cargo, dumping your unconscious body somewhere nearby, you will then have to sneak back in to their camp to reclaim your goods. Before you get later in to the game, you have very little equipment to deal with them, other than a “Strand”, essentially a rope you can choke them out with, which means if they do spot you and catch up to you, you end up in a protracted and frankly repetitive fist fight. Combat is incredibly easy, requiring you to dodge with one button before spamming punch for the same 3 strike combo, over and over again until you have knocked them all out. Of course, you can circumnavigate them, if you take a huge detour, or if you have opted for a vehicle you will most likely be able to drive straight past them (as long as your vehicle decides not to misbehave).

What is unique to DT and an aspect I thoroughly admired is the lack of need to actually kill anyone, I finished my entire playthrough without killing a single person. There is a very real reason for this, kill someone and fail to take their body to an incinerator and their body will go in to “necrosis” and they will turn in to a “BT” (Beached Thing), there are several non lethal weapons available in DT which always make this option plausible.

Later in the game you are more likely to come against terrorists, these guys have no qualms about shooting you with lethal rounds and are heavily equipped and armoured, but their camps are very rarely situated close enough to your routes to cause you problems and I only came across one order which actually required me to intentionally engage them.

By far the most interesting encounters in DT are with BT’s (Beached Things), souls that have found their way back from The Beach, looking for their body. Whenever you stumble across an area where BT’s are present, the game will go into a brief slow motion and your Odradek will stand to attention, glowing an ominous Orange as it sniffs out lost souls.

BT’s are invisible to all, but thanks to our BB (Bridge Baby), we can catch a brief glimpse of these ghouls when we scan near them. Your Odradek will point roughly in the direction of the nearest BT and as you get closer it will begin to signal more frantically, once you are practically on top of one it will begin to spin violently. It is a very effective mechanic and fills you with unease. There’s a section of the game where you have to complete deliveries through BT territory without your BB, you are essentially completely blind, these few hours are terrifying and impart a new found sense of appreciation for little Lou. Again, your best course of action is often to sneak straight past, but as the game progresses you will unlock an increasingly powerful arsenal to deal with them.

Speaking of dealing with them, this wouldn’t be a Kojima game without an obligatory boss fight or two and Death Stranding doesn’t disappoint, at least in that sense. However, the boss fights are rather disappointing. You’ll be pitted against gargantuan BT’s that have assumed the form of an earthly beast, be it a Whale or some wolfish monstrosity. They look incredibly cool and equally intimidating, but they are about as harmful as a kitten that recently had it’s claws filed. Taking these guys down doesn’t require any particular strategy, you just have to shoot them over and over and over again until their health bar turns to zero, they have very limited attacks and actually preempt them by briefly entering a slow-mo state as they wind up. The encounters with regular BT’s are far more tense and in some ways more challenging, by the time you are fighting your 5th or 6th BT on steroids, you’ll find yourself simply going through the motions, waiting for the fight to end so you can resume having fun clambering over rocks and wading through rivers. There is one exception to this however, you will at certain moments in the course of the game, find yourself transported to historic battlefields, frozen in time, doomed to spend eternity in a state of conflict. These moments are among the highlights of DT and really serve to punctuate an otherwise very slow and methodical game.

DT is absolutely a single player game, an immersive experience meant to be enjoyed in isolation, but it has one of the most unique approaches to incorporating an online element that I have seen. In DT you share your world with other porters, occasionally you will see real NPC porters on their routes, but what I really mean by this is other gamers. Find yourself out of resources and struggling to cross a particularly deep river? Well a helpful player may have built a bridge over it a little down the way, or they could have left a ladder for you to easily scale a cliff, or a climbing anchor for you to abseil with. You can share vehicles, equipment, resources, even complete their orders by reclaiming their dropped cargo, all with complete strangers. Using someones structure will award them with a “like”, basically the in game currency in lieu of a post apocalyptic economy, that primarily boosts your “XP” and gives you access to benefits like the ability to carry more cargo (huzzah!). The same goes for you, you may be mid fight with a BT in the form of a giant Octopus when you get a little thumbs up on your screen because someone used your zip line. Again there is an undeniable self confidence in the execution of this mechanic, it’s no gimmick, it absolutely has a tangible effect on your experience of the game and is not merely an afterthought.

However, it’s this same self confidence that often greys the line with arrogance, or self indulgence rather. At times DT can feel incredibly padded and this is largely due to the pacing of the story. You are left almost completely in the dark until the final hour of the game, which as before mentioned is basically an hour long cutscene. What feels like the epic conclusion to Death Stranding, the climax of your journey, ends up being the prelude to one of the most protracted playable end game credit rolls.

I won’t detail exactly what it is, as to do so would be to spoil the story, but it almost feels insulting and if you don’t endure it you will not get to what is arguably the crowning moment of the narrative. Throughout the game, Kojima is constantly breaking the fourth wall, not with a chisel, but with a wrecking ball, you can almost picture him operating it. During what are seemingly sentimental and emotional cutscenes, characters will break from their revelry to look straight at you and give you a big cheesy thumbs up (like, read the room dude), awarding you some “likes” in the process.

During your down time, you can rest in one of the “private rooms” available (to reset your stats like stamina etc). Players can have some real fun here, zoom in on Sam whilst he is sat in bed and he will flex his guns for you, choke himself, give you a little wink of acknowledgement and even give you the literal finger. Which is fitting, as often DT does feel as though it is figuratively giving you, the player, the big fat middle finger. After spending the last 40+ hours slogging it all the way from East to West, connecting all of America in the process, you are told in a cutscene that you now have to come all the way back, no pit stops. Sam’s gruff response pretty much speaks for us when he says “No way am I hauling myself all the way back there”. Let me be clear though, you are.

It would be easy to fill volumes, trying to dissect a game like Death Stranding and even if you did, you still wouldn’t have done the reader justice. Perhaps it’s Death Stranding’s simplicity that makes it so hard to describe, or perhaps it’s because there is no precedent from which we can draw comparison, even loosely. Death Stranding is not perfect, that is for sure, it has glaring issues that are sure to frustrate and disillusion some players and even its strengths aren’t going to be to everyone’s taste. It’s for this reason I’m not going to give Death Stranding a score, it wouldn’t be right, what could I possibly be basing that score on and what am I saying about other games whose own score would be lower or higher than DT’s? What I will say is this, in my opinion this is a game you are duty bound as a gamer to try, if you are unsure it’s for you after reading everything I have said, I would implore you still to find it heavily discounted and risk it. Even if you don’t enjoy it, you will have played something new and more importantly something brave.