Building Bridges, one tumble down the mountain at a time.
When Metal Gear creator, Hideo Kojima left Konami, it was unclear exactly what the man would do next. With the creation of Kojima Productions and assistance from Sony, Death Stranding was announced at E3 2016 with more questions than answers. Even after it was shown year after year until release, it was drastically unclear just exactly what it was. Since reviews started releasing just before its public debut, the game was met with a decisive response, with many scores on far ends of the rating spectrum. Regardless of the varied opinions of the game, Death Stranding is unquestionably interesting and something altogether unique.
I’ll preface this review by stating, I am a massive Kojima fan. I’ve completed every single Metal Gear game released, all the way from its simple beginnings on the NES, its side adventures on the Game Boy Color and Vita, to its most well-known escapades on a variety of home consoles. Metal Gear Solid 4 is one of my top 5 games ever made, featuring a moment in the late game that emotionally affected me more so than any game had ever done before. That said, I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect from the legendary game designer now that he has left that beloved series behind. While Death Stranding isn’t exactly what I envisioned from Kojima in a post Metal Gear world, It’s still a very well designed, engaging, and thought-provoking discussion of what videogames can truly be.
Part of what makes Death Stranding so intriguing, so immersive, is frankly, impossible to convey in a review without diving into everything the game offers. It’s also impossible to know exactly what part of the game will hook you, bore you, or make you stop and think about the messages conveyed here. Kojima is vastly detailed in his world-building, the lore, and every tiny little facet that has gone into creating this rich and narratively dense world. Death Stranding is also the most movie-like game he has developed, despite his varied attempts before. The total hours of cutscenes featured in the game borders around 7 hours, so it can almost come off as a mini-series more so than a movie in that regard. My total time on completion of the story was just over 43 hours, but it’s easy enough to spend double that should you take part in every single delivery and look to build as much as you can to assist other players on their own personal journeys, but more on that particular part later.
I’ve read a few Death Stranding reviews that range drastically in their scores, some stating that the game is a masterpiece, to well, a piece of something else. While I can certainly understand why some may find a failure in Kojima’s first Konami-free release, I’m more on the side of the fence that sees the game as something truly special. While I certainly have some issues with the game, and you’ve no doubt already glanced at my score, I found Death Stranding to be a marvel of excellence and a truly riveting experience. Sure, I have some issues with the pacing, some aspects of the overall gameplay, and a drawn-out final act, but as a whole, Death Stranding is quite simply, superb.
Following the delivery exploits of Sam Porter Bridges, played by the Walking Dead’s Norman Reedus, you are tasked with connecting the world through a communication system called the Chiral Network. This mission was undertaken beforehand, but it was never completed, and thus, you set out to finish this mission. This is following the events of a Death Stranding, an event that has caused the worlds of the living and the dead to be intertwined and something that has caused untold destruction across America, crippling the once beautiful nation. Kojima starts out by building the lore quickly, sometimes faster than you are able to digest it, but it does get to a point where you’ll start to grasp exactly what is going on, or at least to the point of understanding several aspects of it.
As you attempt to cross America, you’ll have several encounters with Beached Things, which are also known as BT’s, who are ghostly apparitions from the other side that seek out living beings to devour. BT’s can be identified with the use of a BB, a “Bridge Baby” that occupies both worlds and allows Sam to navigate his way around such dangers. These are not the only science fiction aspects of the story as in typical Kojima fashion, they are simply the precursor to even weirder things. Sam himself has the ability to sense BT’s, but he requires a BB in order to actually see them. This awareness of BT’s is due to his level of DOOMS, a type of supernatural ability that causes his connection to the dead to be heightened. Other characters, such as the mysterious Fragile, also have DOOMS, but her level offers up other unique abilities that Sam does not possess, such as being able to teleport. DOOMS also causes the sufferer to have Chiral allergies, causing them to shed tears, as well as having a stronger connection to the Beach, a place that acts as a staging ground from the land of the living and for what comes next, a location crucial to the overall narrative.
There is a great deal of setup that places Sam on the path of connecting the world, a task he initially refuses during the start of the game. During a mission to dispose of a body, as the death of a person can cause a massive explosion called a Void out, your transport of the body is attacked, and while the events that transpire are tragic, it’s here where Sam will be introduced to BB, a fated meeting that will shape his life from then on. Sam’s quest will place him in the path of several unique individuals, all sporting bizarre names like Die-Hardman, Dead Man, or the rather unique character in Heartman, who will dump a ton of exposition on you when spouting the phrase “Do you want to know why they call me by this name..”. Thankfully, the characters are all interesting and incredibly well performed, so these moments are not as tiresome as they could have been. Mama, a character that takes a while to actually meet in person, is probably one of my favorites due to how complicated and beautifully tragic her story is. Out of the entire cast, I don’t think a single character felt wasted, poorly executed, or out of place.
As for the story, that’s about all I’m going to dive into as explaining it any further is going to expose some massive spoilers and reveals that should be experienced on your own. I’ve read over what I’ve written a few times already and it still feels like I’m giving too much away. That said, I thoroughly enjoyed what Kojima has delivered here, alongside a wonderful cast of actors, and while the last two chapters have some poorly paced moments, the story itself is massive in scale, but a deeply emotional ride as well. There are plenty of twists and turns that are hinted at throughout, with some powerful performances that had me tear up for a moment or two due to some of the best voice-over work and facial capture the industry has ever seen.
Going into Death Stranding, I wasn’t sure if I was going to really care for Sam as I’ve never been a big fan of Norman Reedus. I stopped watching The Walking Dead several seasons ago and he’s never been an actor that I’ve really enjoyed. While I’m still not convinced he was the only person that could have played Sam, I do have to say his performance here is quite good, if a bit underused sometimes. There are countless moments when NPCs talk to him and he just won’t respond, and it feels like they are having conversations with him that don’t feel like they are actually talking to him, but rather, at him. His co-star, BB, is a character you’re either going to adore or find a nuisance. BB will get stressed easily, and you’ll need to stop and soothe him in his containment unit, and this is something that is required of you fairly frequently. BB is frankly adorable and offers up real emotional stakes for Sam, far more than much of the narrative does for him personally.
Sam’s journey is one of great importance, and while you have the support of these vast characters, and those you connect along the way, this sojourn across America is lonely, isolated, and while you are haunted frequently by BT’s, it’s also surprisingly peaceful and relaxing. This is where I feel some may say the game is boring, uneventful, or that it’s the shining example of a walking simulator. Now, granted, I can see all those things myself, and you’re not wrong for feeling that way, but there is so much around you to keep the game engaging and keep you determined to push on. How you see these things or what you want from the game will make or break your experience with Death Stranding. This is certainly not a game for people that are wanting constant action or the type of game Kojima has produced in the past.
While Death Stranding can be described as nothing but a series of fetch quests, it’s the journey you take on and the connections you make that encompass what the gameplay of the game is at its core. As you deliver packages and cargo to your destination, you’ll connect them to the Chiral network, which in turn grants them the ability to return that favor and help others. Whether it’s delivering a sewing kit to a cosplayer or tracking down a loved one thought dead, you’ll meet a vast assortment of characters that are looking to help others in their own small way. This assistance is further enhanced by other players, who can have a very real and impactful presence in your game, despite never setting foot in it. As you deliver packages or recycle components you find along the way or finish a delivery that a player was unable to, you can use those awarded materials to construct bridges, generators, ziplines, and more in an effort to make your traversal easier. These things that you construct are usable by others and vice versa. In fact, as I entered into the second main location, I found it present with numerous highways already built and bridges that made my deliveries that little bit easier. As I would encounter paving stations along the way, in need of materials, I would seek them out and chip in, doing my part so that that new highway was a step closer to reality than before. It’s an impressive system that encourages co-operation to the faceless people you’ll never see.
Death Stranding’s gameplay is built around walking or driving from location to location dropping off or picking up packages. This is honestly the bulk of what you’ll do. There is also a method to stacking and equipping what you’re taking with you, maintaining the carry limit of what Sam can endure, or crafting special apparatuses that can allow him to carry more, or make that trek up the mountain that little bit easier. What is also impressive about the cargo Sam carries are the marks on his shoulders that show this strain, this burden that has been placed upon him. While you can auto-adjust your cargo load, sometimes a more personal touch is in order to make your journey a bit more bearable, or in the case of delivering pizza, ensuring it isn’t stacked vertically and thus ruining the food itself.
Despite the game being more centered around delivery, there are combat and action elements littered throughout, but many of these are avoidable should you travel safe and navigate through the numerous threats. There are times where combat is unavoidable, whether it’s normal floating BT’s, or larger creatures that flood the environment around you, or even MULE’s, a faction of cargo thieves that get a high off of stealing cargo from others. Each of these threats can be disposed of with various weaponry, but with the case of MULE’s, you’ll want to stick to non-lethal attacks like close-range combat as killing them will increase the BT presence in your game.
Combat and story aside, your enjoyment of Death Stranding will be largely measured on how you’ll take to the repetitive nature of delivering packages and navigating its world. As you take an order from the various terminals you’ll come into contact with, you’ll then be given a destination to take it to. While some of these shipments require a gentle hand or a timer attached to them, you often just have to get it there before it’s too busted up to be useful. This will have you trudging across deep water, vast open plains, or up and down the side of a steep mountain, and sometimes all three. The path you pick is often up to you, allowing you to find your way on your own terms. You may bring you a variety of tools with you such as climbing rope or ladders to bridge the gap above or below you. Often, you’ll see these tools already present in your world, left there by other players or NPC’s. Each of these items can be “liked” and the same can be said of what assistance you’ll leave in the world for other players as well. Apart from these items, players, as well as yourself, can leave signs indicating a steep incline, rockslides, or just that little bit of encouragement to keep you focused. For as simple and throw away these gestures can seem, they are rather enjoyable and sometimes very thoughtful. Coming back to a previous area to see your bridge have over twelve thousand likes can certainly put a smile on your face.
As you fall or stumble, and you will, your packages will take damage. To counter this, you’ll need to maintain a balance by holding the straps on your cargo as you sway left or right down slanted ground, or when you almost trip over from the numerous obstacles in your way. The world itself is a hazard, with sharp rocks and uneven ground everywhere you go. Steep inclines will make you work harder for that balance, and even if you maintain that balance, you’ll also need to beware of the rain. Continuing towards the weird, Death Stranding features what is called Timefall, a rain that causes each drop to age what it touches. The longer you stay out in the rain, the more likely your cargo or transport will become damaged or rusted, so you’ll need to seek cover in a nearby cave, or craft a shelter to wait out the storm. For as devastating the BT’s can be in sheer numbers, Timefall is as equal a threat as well should you attempt to deliver in a constant downpour.
Sam will have stamina to maintain and after a long trek, his overall stamina amount will weaken and while you can refill most of it with your canteen, you’ll want to stop at one of the many private rooms offered to you. These rooms are often at the larger bunkers, but after a while, you’ll be able to craft them wherever there is Chiral network coverage. Here, you can rest, earn back stamina, wash up, as well as showering and using the facilities in which your urine and defecation can be used in a variety of ways to harm BT’s. In fact, Sam’s own blood is a tool that can be used to power your weapons as BT’s can take damage when approached with a variety of your bodily fluids. The private room also has some other features such as customizing your backpack, equipped items such as glasses or hats and having Sam show off his toy collection, in which he seems particularly proud of. You can also utilize the game’s fast travel system from it, but you’ll have to keep in mind that you cannot transport goods this way and you’ll have to use it empty-handed.
To make travel a bit easier, at least to a certain degree, Sam can use bikes and trucks to cover great distances. These run off batteries which will require a generator or sticking to the charging lane on highways, but more or less they will get you where you need to go quicker. While not suitable for climbing mountains, I’ve certainly attempted to get my three-wheeled bike in places it probably wasn’t meant for with some maneuvering and some jumps, but the vehicles are rather fun to experiment with. I do have some issues with how they control and how they sometimes want to move in directions I’m not facing, but I came to rely on them heavily to push through an order quicker than hoofing it across the map.
One of my biggest complaints with Death Stranding comes with the menu and inventory management system and the way it can overcomplicate the simplest of actions. Accepting orders, crafting an item and then equipping it can take several menus to navigate and many of these menus use a single button, whether tapped or held down, to complete entirely different actions. Even plotting a path to take when on an order uses a series of tapping and holding a button down along with the left stick to navigate a path with a series of straight lines. Had you simply clicked a button and moved the left stick to create a path, it would have allowed for more accuracy when trying to direct a path through the curving and winding roads. While the map is looked at from a top-down angle, you can push the touch bar on the controller to swivel the view to see the heights of the geography, but the movement of the controller requires far too much tilting to really make it comfortable to do without almost turning the controller entirely over. While I understand that the complexity of what Death Stranding allows you to do or take with you, I really wish the menu systems were easier and more intuitive to use.
Another aspect that requires more input than needed is skipping animations such as showering, fast traveling, and the rewards screen. Showering, for example, requires you to skip four seperate cutscenes to bypass the entire process. Fast Traveling has a similar situation where you’ll need to skip additional scenes as well. At first, these scenes are entertaining but given you’ll see the exact same series of animations a hundred times or more, you’ll find yourself skipping every single one of them over and over again, needing to bypass multiple scenes for a single action. Much like Red Dead 2, Sam has a few animations that tend to last a bit too long, making precise movements a little hard to move him around when you simply want him to adjust the tiniest amount away from a structure to grant some likes, or when you’re teetering on the edge of cliff and trying to correct yourself. While the animations in the game are motion-captured to a very realistic degree, it does border on the ‘real’ versus ‘fun’ argument that you’re either for or against. There are moments where the actions require a very real approach and then you have moments where your cargo will disappear into the back of a truck the moment you get inside the vehicle. While I’m glad that you don’t have to stop and stock the truck every time, though you can stock a truck with items you don’t want on your person, some aspects of the game strays away from realism to offer quicker solutions to keep the game fun instead.
After each delivery, you are presented with a rewards screen, or rather, a series of a menu’s that you’ll keep hammering down the button to skip through. While there is an auto-skip feature, there is no way I’ve found to just bypass them entirely. These screens tell you about your delivery, how well it went, how many likes you received during them, and numerous other details. It will also keep you up to speed on the various levels you’ve increased to certain stats. The main problem I have with them, apart from again, being unable to skip them entirely, is that they can often pop up after incredibly emotional moments and just suck the air out of the room with your “Awesome” rank notification indicating a job well done after something tragic has just occurred. Had these rewards screens been placed later on after these scenes, or just ditched entirely around them, then I would be a bit less frustrated with their inclusion.
Using the same engine behind Horizon: Zero Dawn, the Decima Engine, Kojima Productions has crafted a visually breathtaking experience. Its cast of characters and its gorgeous locations are to be commended. The visual detail on its people is staggering, such as when they wipe away their tears, or the way they move around, such as when Deadman is conversing with Sam, is just incredible and makes every interaction more believable and emotional. Whether it’s the subtly of Léa Seydoux’s character, Fragile, the softness of Margaret Qualley’s Mama, or even the deviousness of Troy Baker’s villainous role of Higgs, every character is a joy to watch performed and just gaze upon their stunning character models. Sharing in that graphical splendor is the world Death Stranding takes place in. There is a variety of biomes that exist in the few areas you’ll traverse, each in varying in size and scale. This might be the most photorealistic world ever created in a game and while it can certainly feel empty and devoid of much to do, that is largely the point as this is essentially a doomed America that is needing that life put back into it.
There are certainly supernatural visuals to the game such as when BT’s have detected you and you’re suddenly sinking into a black tar, having ghostly hands gripping at you, causing you to lose balance, or when you’re grabbed by the ankle and dragged across the environment, forcing a showdown between you and whatever climbs out of the black fluids at your feet. Seeing the ghostly haze of a BT is one thing, but when you’ve damaged it, it becomes a shower of violence as it fades away, covered in your blood. There are certainly other visual moments that are staggering in their weirdness and feel very Kojima-like, so what I’ve mentioned so far is barely scratching the surface of where this look and feel of its enemies and confrontations go from a visual standpoint.
I mentioned before how good the voice acting is and that shouldn’t be understated. While there are few actors only used for their likeness, with other actors filling out their voice, the music is also equally stunning as it’s used to fill in the gaps of emotional moments, or played to the effect of accompanying you on your journey. Much of the soundtrack is occupied with Low Roar, an ambient folk-rock band that features in over 20 of the game’s songs. Indie pop band, CHVRCHES, even wrote an original song titled ‘Death Stranding’ for the game, a song that even made Hideo Kojima himself tear up. While I personally am not about to race to download Low Roar or CHVRCHES discography anytime soon, I will say that every single piece of music chosen for the game hits emotional highs and compliments the game almost perfectly.
Death Stranding is a game that most certainly is not mainstream or something that everyone will get on with, but it certainly is a game worthy of discussion and meaning. You don’t need to understand every message or theme the game is composed of, but rather just take it in and focus on what you enjoy out of it. Finding that perfect path, helping in the construction of that highway you know is going to make your life, and those around yours, easier, is something truly beautiful. I understand that many will see boredom in what the game offers and that’s fine, I understand totally why you may think that, but for me, I found an enjoyable peace in that ‘boredom’. While I wouldn’t state that Death Stranding is the birth of a new genre, it certainly looks to form connections better than most actual multiplayer games have truly attempted to do. It’s sad, it’s happy, and it can border on the bizarre, but Death Stranding is certainly special and is something doesn’t come around that often.
Death Stranding was purchased by the reviewer and played on a PlayStation 4 Pro.
All screenshots were taken on a PlayStation 4 Pro.