I've spent a good 50% of my gaming time over the last 7 weeks playing Death Stranding. You could say there are minor spoilers here, but the story is convoluted and you'll likely forget the actual spoilers if you're going to start playing this. My final delivery and platinum trophy clocked at just over 118 hours.
If you watch over the shoulder of someone playing Death Stranding, AKA Reedus and the Fetus, you would see a gloomy, depressing world as whoever is balancing things on Sam Porter Bridges' back from point A to point B. The core gameplay is making deliveries as you maintain balance over challenging terrain. The context is that these deliveries are helping humanity survive after some kind of doomsday situation that resulted in mass casualties and lots and lots of isolation. The world is populated by these scary ass spirits of the dead, but the creator Hideo Kojima has his own terms and thoroughly-developed context for the setting. The latest mass extinction, or Death Stranding, has given non sentient life a chance to come back, resulting in a smattering of plants and trees, and it looks like America had something of a tech revolution before most of us died. Another part of the gameplay involves 3D printing equipment and structures such as ladders, weapons, bridges and power generators. To craft these items, you need resources, which you can scavenge for, haphazardly come across, or get access to as you complete deliveries.
Death stranding is all about making connections (strands, right?). As you reconnect America to a technical/spiritual network, you're building trust and relationships with people. So it all looks depressing until you get to know these survivors and they've eerily accepted everything in stride. My first question was why the (stranded?) survivors you meet hadn't all gone crazy in their isolation, or crazy at the sight of this 'porter,' who starts delivering packages. Well, that's explained in the game's archives of interviews and emails that, one-by-one, explain the whole context of everything that ever existed. I probably spent an entire 2 hours over the game's length reading at least 50% of these and building context because it's very interesting and thorough. Additionally, other Death Stranding players are connected to you and able to leave items and structures for you to use. This feature is justified in the game's setting and is one of my favorite parts about it.
In its storytelling is a wonderful exploration of existentialism, spirituality, death and trauma. I feel like these are intricately worked into the characters and world, whereas playing Sam, you also experience fear, optimism (Keep on keeping on!), and empathy. The strange part is that Sam doesn't really exhibit fear of the scary things, but shit, shadows come alive and grab you, and that's scary to me as a player!
If you're already on board to traverse land, build things and balance cargo for at least 60 hours (double that for the platinum), then Death Stranding might get on your nerves in a few ways. The length is one thing, but I chose to get the platinum as opposed to just playing for the story. Fine. Next up is the fact that after making deliveries on foot, you eventually get vehicles...that are absolutely frustrating to drive. In a game chock full of details and realistic movement, the vehicles throw all of this out the window. You have trucks that are able to drive over large rocks, and then suddenly start swerving all over the place, not even responding when you cut the gas. One redeeming thing about vehicles is that satisfying BUMP when hitting thieves who are trying to get at you. Ol Sammy B gon' rip thru ya slum, kid!
The not-so redeeming thing about them is that for all the 3d printing and communications tech, the world didn't install radios in the vehicles. This points to my least favorite part of the game: the hidden music. I spent about 40 of my 118 hours inside of a truck making deliveries, with no option whatsoever to listen to the soundtrack. Someone at Kojima productions decided to curate a soundtrack of 40 songs, only to hear 10 of them over the whole game. The song selection is great, but the only way two ways to listen is the game's musical cues, most of which I ran through before the songs got more than a minute in, or listening to them in a room in game while reading emails. Also, the game blocks PS4 access to Spotify, so you'll need your own sound source to listen to anything besides the truck engine or zipline sound as you suffer through one of the poorest design choices I've heard of. What the hell is the point of this? Final Fantasy XV has an extensive playlist that you're allowed to play as you drive around or walk around, which of course seamlessly blends in with the other sounds in the game. Death Stranding wants you to listen to 10% of the soundtrack or while reading emails, not during the 80 hours of transporting cargo back and forth. Grrr!
There is occasional collision detection problems, which are frustrating, but no game is impervious to these. However, the gameplay focusing specifically on traversing this or else you damage cargo adds some stress to it. My last gripe is about the map missing out on a really useful feature. Almost any game with a map allows you to filter it for certain objects and keep you from being overwhelmed by information. The aforementioned player community sharing of objects and structures means that you could be looking at 100 objects in your vicinity, and currently you can only filter your map for weather and network connectedness. This is a major oversight to managing navigation.
I can say that the story and context were worth a story-focused playthrough, even if the 10 million hour-long ending is full of repetition. No other game has made me think of my and humanity's place in the universe and in history. Also, go listen to the soundtrack on Youtube, since the game won't play it for you. Before I go, shout out to the game's motion capture. The first Uncharted game ran head-to-head with Kong for best-done face capture, and the Uncharted sequels have since left movie mocap in the dust. Gemini Man was supposed to be the latest and greatest tech, but they never did Will Smith's upper lip justice. The challenge is most likely blending CG with real world, but whatever. Death Stranding has the best motion capture I've ever seen. If you told me the sequel was coming with better vehicle physics and some encouragement to explore the soundtrack, I would hungrily sign up.
Also, here's a GameInformer interview with Hideo Kojima explaining some of the choices he made.
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