Can't think... Death Stranding 2 broke brain

 

Death Stranding is one of those games that feels like a black sheep of the Internet. I can't think of a single person I've ever met who likes the game like I do, and the only essays I've ever read on the game has pertained to why they think a game where you don't shoot people every half hour is boring, also seeing holograms instead of people makes them upset. My feelings on Death Stranding have been pretty inscribed on my sleeve along with my heart all this time. I love the game, think it's truly bizarre and narratively rich in a way few other games have ever managed to match and let my time with the game live in on the cusp of my psyche at all times- ever ready to snatch me into a pensive mood of wistful pondering. All I wanted was a sci-fi world that took the kind of insane risks you never get in a modern world where every property is a marriage with something similar and marketable. Death Stranding's world and narrative were about as risky as it gets.

I could write volumes on the insane way that the Death Stranding world works. Why the dead seek out the touch of humans, how babies from brain-dead mothers kept in jars power the defence of the living and why the rainbow in the sky is devoid of the colour blue whenever the Timefall occurs. I read and listened to every single piece of lore I could around this fascinating exploration into the relationship of people to death and each other- and how these ties bind us beyond the confines of life itself. I was a huge fan of every single drop of it and think only a truly inspired mind could conjure all of this up, wind it together and then actually have it seem a little coherent on the other end of it all. But even with that foundation I still have no clue what the hell happened at any point in that Death Stranding 2 trailer. And it's actually driving me insane.

First-off I have to admit to being a little scared by the proposed scale of the game this time around. Death Stranding had us essentially travel from one end of America to the other, as simulated by the large tracts of land we had to cross and connect as we went. Death Stranding 2: on the Beach wants to drag us all the way across the world, presenting at the very least some travels through Mexico and the sand-swept hills of what could very well be Egypt. (Or perhaps the Gobi Desert?) Death Stranding 1 was a huge game that kept us for perhaps an hour or two longer than it needed. Death Stranding 2 seems to be hoping to eclipse that original game with a lightly horrific amount of distance to cover in a vague journey to 'connect the world'. I imagine the real hook of the story is going to be held back until launch. Afterall, they want the splendour of the weird to stick out all the more.

And by 'weird', I am indeed referring to things like the talking puppet-man who Sam hangs on his belt- which takes the impressive spot as 'weirdest member of the Death Stranding cast revealed thus far' atop a cast full of Heart attack-proof scientists, zombie morticians and an immortal mailman with a squint. Yeah- the talking puppet sure takes the cake. Although he was given tough competition by the samurai robot with a dead baby's voice who was locked in Mortal Kombat with an undead Troy Baker wielding an electric guitar that shoots lasers. I swear all of those are real things that are really in the Death Stranding 2 trailer, I don't know what to tell you. But my head hurts trying to conjure all of it my head, I just want to stop thinking about it and do anything else, truth be told.

At the very least I'm quite impressed with the fact that despite answering most of the world's large questions about how the Death Stranding functions, DS2 is taking the phenom in an entirely different direction to keep things interesting. There's no 'settling into the world we've already built' or anything like that, it's all pedal to the metal- new swathes of bizarre sci-fi conceptuals that are here to fry our brains once more. Now we have an entire ship that can apparently exist within the realm of the dead in a monochrome state? And Fragile seems to be entirely healed from Timefall, despite her heavily reduced lifespan from the original game? Oh, and BB is dead? Or is she? What is going on? Haven't a darned clue.

Bizarrely, what I find most fascinating is the apparent fact that we're not walking around with tranq gun equipment anymore. The protagonist is shown with an assault rifle as their default weapon which is addressed as an active plotpoint- which implies a change in the makeup of how the Death Stranding functions. Previously murder wasn't just morally questionable, but it opened up the possibility of a void-out if the body was not destroyed. Has that changed now that Sam is happy to sling iron out in public, or is this just an insanely specific cutscene circumstance that denotes nothing on a higher level whatsoever? And does this mean that Death Stranding is going to have better gunplay in the next go around? (Hope so.)

Also I find it genuinely hilarious that we're somehow finding ways to throw in more mystery to even the core most plot threads from the original game. Despite the original stretching its whole story across the premise of discovering the truth behind the special BB you've been given and it's apparent relation to The Solider who hunts you- now we're being teased that the BB unit we have was actually scheduled as having been destroyed months before we ever met her! So then who have we had strapped to our chests all this time? And does that matter now that she is apparently dead? At least Madds won't be returning so the Cliff plot point has been put to rest- but I have a feeling I'm going to be questioning everything I thought I knew about Death Stranding 1 by the end of this.

Oh, and it probably bears repeating that Troy Baker is back. I know I mentioned it earlier but seriously- what the heck? The easy answer would be just to say that Fragile didn't gun him down like we all thought she did, but judging from some of the dialogue in this trailer and what we know of Hideo Kojima's general sense to go the most confusing route- I suspect he actually did die. Which is infuriating because of all of the excessive amount of lore that went into affirming that in that one location in the entire game, caught on the beach as they were- there would be no way for Sam to repatriate if he died. So to bend over backwards explaining that, only for Higgs to hop back to life no questions asked- you're gonna need a big explanation for this one, Kojima- that's all I'm saying!

I know it's a bit of a controversial title, but Death Stranding for me will also be one of my most cherished off-beat gaming memories- simply for how it achieved it's intended premise with neat style that no other pretender could replicate. Death Stranding is a style of game all of it's own, and though I do find the whole 'strand type game' concept a bit pretentious, I will admit that for the puzzle-style game that Death Stranding was- you won't find a competitor as engrossingly cinematic and twistingly laid out as DS accomplished. Of course, this is a PS franchise so I can look forward to the three years after it launches before my PC playing ass gets a handle of it. Thanks Sony.

Western Versus Eastern Product Placement

Devil in the background details.

'Product Placement' is the term we give to a very specific type of advertisement as it exists within entertainment. What we see as the breaking of the sanctity fictional world to introduce real world brands and logos, usually in the pursuit of subliminally advertising related products to the audience. Sure, you can hire the current James Bond actor to star in commercials driving your cars and wearing your watches so that movie fans will equate the suave and cool Bond with those products and thus seek them out in emulation, or you can literally show James riding an Aston Martin in the movie and let the prestige rub off from there. It's a very pervasive and well acknowledged branch of the advertising tree, if somewhat controversial depending on where you hail from and the marketing morals you grew up with. 

But what if I told you that somewhere out there, under the spectrum of differing cultures, some people don't just accept product placement but actually really love the idea of the real world infecting their virtual and fictional spaces? It's seems such a wild perspective in the West, where many of us are taught at a young age not just to recognise what we're being sold but to be actively weary of the idea of aggressive and subversive salesmanship. Remember how in the time before regulations were introduced, kids cartoons used to try to blend seamlessly with adverts in order to fool the child audience into the agency of the ad. Tell a kid that a toy version of the Transformer they were watching is in mortal peril unless they buy that very figure from the store, and the parents will have to endure endless nattering for the next few weeks. Nowadays we are sharpened to be more weary. Not only should I recognise the advertisers attempts to represent themselves and mentally separate it out of the contained story, but I should be aggrieved about the placement to begin with. I cannot speak for everyone, but that was a precedent I remembering being introduced and imbued into me during school; English Class. And yet I see that same sort of perception towards product placement all across America too.

And I think you know where I'm going with this, don't you? Over in the East, perception towards product placement tends to trend in the exact opposite fashion. Product placement isn't just accepted in films and games over there, but actually encouraged and preferred. In some small part due to the way that it works to ground fictional worlds that are supposed to be set within the recognisable and observable world we inhabit. Because afterall, if you're supposed to be watching a fictional story set within modern day Tokyo, wouldn't it make sense to see the same shops and brands that anyone would normally see when walking across Akihabara? That mindset doesn't just stop in places where it's fitting, however; as I'm sure most bewildered Western gamers came to see when they were confronted with Hideo Kojima's Death Stranding.

Now Death Stranding is a very emotionally intelligent game about forming connections across a bizarre post apocalyptic space seemingly purpose-built to encourage isolation. The America of that world couldn't be more conceptually distinct from the America of the real world in all manners except basic Insitutional fundamental values aped by the Bridges organisation. As such, there really is no reason on earth why Sam should have a replenishable stock of Monster Energy drinks at all of his bases. Nor is there any real reason why Sam should comment on 'Riding with Norman Reedus' when mounting certain bikes designed for tie-in promotion. They're both blatant slaps out of the immersion of the world which Western media consumers are taught to hate, but in inspection might actually serve some sort of artistic purpose. Really confronting the world of Death Stranding for what it is, and how it reflects the emotional state of a world drifting slowly apart, the fictional game world can actually seem dramatically heavy as it weighs on the soul with topics like extinction, repression and abject hope-crushing loneliness. Those small stabs of the outside world, shaking you out of magic box conceptual, can be seen as little lifelines by the designers, bringing us out of the world where everything seems so utterly insurmountable back to the real world, where things don't seem quite as bad in comparison. 

  

Of course, that is by no means the only style with which Japanese developers approach product placement. In Metal Gear Solid 3 you'll find many allusions to real brands among the tools you pick up, not least of which being Snake's favoured rations, his munch bars of Calorie Mate; a chronologically appropriate food item related to the role and world that character, as an American Green Beret, would have been part of. The Yakuza franchise too, smothers itself with brands and brand iconography in their wonderous depictions of various analogous Japanese districts. You'll find Sega Sammy branches, Don Quijote retail markets and innumerable in-print magazines and news rags stored in their isles. Yakuza even tends to feature real-life Japanese celebrities either in cameo roles or playing characters within or around their core stories, all just to sell the illusion that this is a Japan recognisable to the people who play. All in tune with a franchise quietly about celebrating modern Japanese culture.

Of course the Western world is no stranger to their own games seeped in a modern culture, but their approach to product placement is distinctly different. Look at Grand Theft Auto, a sardonic fun-house mirror thrown up across various aspects of America. Though the shape of the cities and people those games are set mimicking always bear some recognisable similarity to the real inspiration, you'll never find a real brand that has made the journey into the visual depiction unmolested. Instead you'll find parody after parody, brands depicted in a manner that is recognisable but slightly skewered to either fit a pun or just be legally distinct enough. 'Mustang' becomes 'Stallion', 'Ikea' becomes 'Krapea' (creative), 'Kawasaki' becomes 'Nagasaki', 'Sprite' becomes 'Sprunk'. (And there goes my appetite for lemonade.) And yet we don't see the world of GTA as an inferior depiction of a real-life location, to our sensibilities this all just makes sense.

It's so bizarrely common for Western games to conjure their own universe of similar sounding but crucially distinct corporate entities that I even see small scale indie games do it and I don't even think they know why. The amount of contemporary-setting indie games with their own version of Twitter and Instagram is so mind numbing that at this stage I'm actually more happy when the devs don't even bother and just reason neither company has the free time to sue their small studio over a literal nothing burger. And you can't tell me some part of you doesn't recoil everytime you watch a movie where a character has to look something up on the Internet and they scroll through a site that is the splitting image of Google but has a name like 'Goggle' or something equally as stupid. In some ways that sort of stuff knocks me out of the immersion more than the intentional product placement did.

At the end of the day I guess it all really comes down to the intention of the placement, which in turn informs the purpose of the set-up. If you go out to try and subconsciously get the audience to buy a Coke by placing that can in a scene with the logo conveniently turned in the direction of the camera, the contrived nature of that shot will shatter the otherwise carefully built moment. Litter the world with a sense of reality, using real brands as simply another means by which to convey that truth, and you'll have yourself a much more receptive audience to the brands present. Perhaps that is the key distinction between why the West intrinsically hates product placement and the East seems to love it. Of course, then I'm brought back to the Monster Energy in Death Stranding situation and it knocks me back out of understanding leaving me just asking 'why'. (I'd rather headbutt a Beached Thing than drink a Monster Energy myself...)

The Death that was never Stranded

From Hell's heart, I stab at thee! For Hate's sake; I spit my last breath at thee!

As the immolation of Google Stadia for all the world to see has gone underway, information about the truly disastrous state of the service has begun to permeate throughout the industry. Some of it is reiterations upon points we already knew well as the service was choking itself out, some it is is new contextualisation from partner studios who find themselves no longer bound by the rope called 'professional courtesy'. And from that I have been struck with a small sense of 'Well what did you expect' after the clapback of many smaller studios who have grumpily lambasted a jeering public for not thinking about the monetary deals they were relying on before all this took place. Now I respect and sympathise with the financially affected; but you were literally feeding off a volatile dung heap that was burning up publicly for all the world to see. They shuttered their in-house studios, announced they were stepping away from active development on the platform and then started lagging behind on new release lists. If after all of that you, as a company, were still putting all your eggs into their basket; there's a point at which you have to accept a bit of the blame for your own misfortunes.

But not all of the new information coming out has been about the present deals being scrapped, or the fact that employees were, as I speculated in the moment, told of this shut down mere moments before the rest of the world. (Business partners were informed with the rest of the world.) We've also heard about companies with exclusive Stadia products, now scrambling to get a port together before their game becomes lost media. (Which I hope they do. I heard good things about that Gylt, I'd be interested to check it out.) And also projects that were proposed to be developed and owned exclusively by Stadia which never came to fruition. Not only do these serve as interesting and curious 'what could have been', but some even stretch into revealing exactly what sort of crazy power trip that Stadia was on leading them directly off the cliff they ended up crashing down.

I'm talking, of course, about their collaboration with Kojima. Now we all knew that Google Stadia's team had met with Kojima and there was absolutely nothing weird or questionable about that state of affairs. Stadia represented a very noticeable technological step forward with streaming technology and Kojima has always prided himself with working close to that expanding forefront; so of course he would pop into the studio at least once in it's short life. What we didn't know until now was how that trip was not just a social call with a tour stitched onto the side. Apparently Kojima came with a proposition, one that Google were initially receptive to. He, in the wind-down after the Death Stranding development, was proposing some sort of Stadia exclusive follow-up game that would have been a single-player-only title. Talk about a system pusher! A Kojima exclusive title? That must have been a godsend to these executives... right?

What you've got to always bear in mind with Stadia, is that even though everything is coming out right now about their trials and tribulations, little is true about their performance now which wasn't true at launch. Stadia isn't one of those ideas that sporadically picked up momentum a few years into their life, they launched with low download numbers that all the world could follow and laugh at them for due to their partner Stadia App which was a requirement to use the software. It wasn't long at all before the Stadia team were confronting themselves with the fact that they didn't have the numbers to subsidise the investment that daddy Google was putting into them, so even whilst they were making big moves of bringing in development talent to work on in-house games, those prospects were founded on borrowed time. We only realised how much time that was in the past week. As such, this initial deal with Kojima was just as tenuous.

Still, a deal was made, and Kojima went off to build some early development mock-ups of what this Death Stranding follow-up would look like. As far we can tell from very early reports, it would have been an interesting departure from an already vividly surreal game at least in raw concept, for the signature Strand-type interconnected world-building system would have been absent from the game. A stark omission given conceptually central to the themes of reaching out and connecting with others to become stronger and more capable, which informs so much of the design decisions and lore of Death Stranding. Honestly, I'm interested to see what side of Death Stranding's fallen America would be explored in a game devoid of the interconnectivity aspect; perhaps another overall theme would take hold?

Whatever the case, we'll never find out because the second that Kojima productions put together their first mock-up and displayed it for Stadia, the fools cancelled it. Why? Because the game was single player and, you guessed it: They didn't think that single player games have a market anymore. (You really can't make this up.) And the kicker? The big final word on canning the product came from Phil Harrison himself; the worm at the centre of the company who has been failing upwards his entire career. An absolute leech on society emblematic of everything wrong with the corporate mentality and advancement through connection instead of merit and passion. People like Phil are the kind who'll serve their world best once they reach retirement age and get the hell out of everyone's way, because he's been worse than useless in every single position he's ever held in his career.

Let me try and convey how annoying this is. Stadia was missing so many things which ultimately led to their downfall, chief of which was any sort of commitment to what they were doing.  The money they threw around was never theirs, but over-investments from their parent company which these idiots squandered on overpricing ports; creating a platform with only a handful of exclusives, all of which were indie games. They created a platform powerful enough to run games stronger than anything else on the market today, and they did precisely bugger all with that potential. And here was Kojima, willing to give them an exclusive that they didn't even need to build a team to create. A legendary name, with a die hard audience, and they let him slip between their fingers because his game wasn't a Fortnite or a Warzone or a New Worlds; something online that they could monetise. This man would have bought them a mass in adoption rate by his mere presence on their line-up; and instead they shed themselves of that visionary like he was a plague. Again; the company was run by idiots.

This was before Stadia would go ahead to purchase a bunch of small studios that they'd keep on payroll for less than a year before dissolving them and then trying to fold those employees into weird positions across Google that none of them signed up for. All of those developers and artists had no place in a company like Google, but Stadia didn't care because they didn't understand the medium they were muscling into and absolutely never would. Maybe the better future is the one were Kojima never made his Death Stranding title, because the absolute incompetence of Stadia would killed the platform anyway and then his game would have just become lost media until tech powerful enough to run it on home computers became publicly accessible; in about 2035. And maybe this is just another reason why Google are hands-down the worst innovators on the Internet that they practically run. Oh, and some suit needs to retire Phil Harrison from this industry; for everyone's sake.

Oh, so Death Standing 2 is a thing?

 Didn't see that coming.

Having arrived late to the whole Death Stranding party, by the way of a year or two, I was able to enjoy quite a peaceful and personal relationship with the game free of the flying expectations of the release date, firing both from those who understood and appreciated the game and those who couldn't make the connection between their idea of entertainment and the content of this gameplay. As such it seems strange to me, almost entirely alien, in fact, to be hearing current news about the state of this property as though it is a thing that is breathing and with space to grow. Because, and forgive me for saying this, I really didn't think this game had the sort of legs to make it into a franchise. Which isn't to say I didn't enjoy the game, just take a look at my review on it, I'm practically glowing in my opinions; but that respect and familiarity just tips me further into the camp of; "sequel? Really?"

And to let you know what I'm taking about I must rush to say that there has been no official announcement nor a pretty transparent tease by way of Kojima, before you go scouring his Twitter feed like a 1940's gumshoe. This 'reveal', as it were, is actually something of a leak by way of that most reliable of unsolicited industry secret drops; an interview with a celebrity actor. Actor's get a bad rap, being expected to be the icons of society required to uphold and maintain the perfect balance of conduct, intelligence and countenance to prove an ideal role model for society. One actor slaps a comedian on stage and pearl-clutching satellite mothers gasp about how terrible a sight this is for their impressionable young children. Why exactly are actors meant to be paragons of societal virtues? They're not trained professionals who study politics, humanities or the sciences; they're performers who study how to pretend to be someone else for a time. We shouldn't put them on such a pedestal just to be a height from which to cast them down when they fall short. And neither should we be surprised when Norman Reedus accidentally mentions, during an interview question about the motion capture that went into Death Stranding, that "we just started on the second one."

 

Now to compound on the point I just made about how we look at actors, and call back to my view on the George R.R Martin's opinion about Elden Ring from a while back; he might just be wrong. Norman isn't the creative director on this project, when he first joined he himself admitted he didn't know what was going on at first and it took him half a year to know what the game was even about. So Norman Reedus could very well be taking part in one of those rumoured Death Stranding movies that we can assume are on the docket now that Kojima has expressed his interest to expand his studio in such avenues. However as far as I know Mr Reedus does now have an understanding of the game he helped make, and even has developed a friendship with Kojima, so I think it's fair to say that he would either know whether or not this was a game, or Kojima would have a hard time pulling the wool over his eyes on it. Then again I really can see Kojima playing pranks on people like that so it's fair game.

But assuming the Mr Reedus does have his facts straight, and apparently didn't sign an NDA for a game he's already started making; (Or worse, has signed the NDA and just accidentally breeched it. I hope it's just a clerical error, I don't want him getting into trouble over this.) we have ourselves a sequel I never expected to be made. I know people wanted it. I know so many asked for it. But when I took a look at the incredible experience that Death Stranding was, its personable story about rebuilding the world by establishing connection and bringing community to the lost, I have to wonder whether the game itself wanted or asked for a sequel. Beyond its action and events and the world of Death Stranding itself, that game had something to say and it has been said. Where can that message even go next?

For those who forgot, Death Stranding proposes a world where a cataclysmic event know as the 'Death Stranding' has fundamentally altered the makeup of reality. The effects of the Death Stranding are numerous, esoteric and, strangely, often allegorically symbolic of the themes of the game. (Funny that.) What is presented as a dim and dismal post-world which actively tries to kill its inhabitants even more than a radioactive wasteland, becomes a backdrop for a story about connecting the disparate dots of America so that a fractured society can become whole again and people can rediscover the value and love of having others around them. Even the BTs, with their umbilical cords reaching beyond the shroud of this world and the power to cause an antimatter explosion at a single touch, are reaching out with their hands to touch and connect with something, anything, from beyond death itself.

To drop some 'endgame spoilers' on you, the end of the game doesn't appear to naturally lend itself to a sequel either. With the breadth of the story being dedicated to trying to understand the nature of the Death Stranding and then trying to stop the final mass extinction event that it foretold. The climax of that narrative resulted in the mystery of the Death Stranding being, seemingly, fully unravelled and the end of humanity getting delayed, perhaps indefinitely. America is reconnected through the courier effort of Sam Bridges and the man himself decides to leave his job behind in order to go rogue with his brand new adopted daughter Louise, saved from the executioner's furnace at the end of the game. Not only is the state of the world effectively 'solved' by the credits, but our man is no longer in action and actively ready for retirement. Yet here is Norman Reedus effectively saying that The Great Deliverer has another slew of packages just waiting for him.

When I considered the Death Stranding sequel, I originally pictured an entirely different protagonist dealing with their version of the Death Stranding's effects that thematically tie in with a new concept so as to maintain the nakedly ideological heart of this property without it become a thoughtless action series. But apparently that's out the window with Sam being a definite returning lead. I suppose we could have this series expand to other countries as Sam tries to build a bridge to the rest of the world, but let's be honest here: Kojima is a clear Americanophile who delights in miring his stories in the American ideas of freedom and governance in land ordained theirs. Even when he was putting America to task in the Metal Gear series, it was in a gloves-on sort of way that never challenged the state of the country as it is. (At least not directly, maybe through allegory.) So in that case, maybe I want just a brand new sci-fi angle to be revealed of the Death Stranding that warrants another exploratory adventure, perhaps in the hotter south western states of the Bald Eagle's land.

I guess this all means that Kojima Production's flagship series is going to be the Death Stranding Sci-fi and not an easier-to-write-for action series that can be endlessly stapled onto for all eternity with vague engine updates every once and a while. (Ubisoft would find that concept frankly abhorrent.) I suppose I shouldn't expect anything less from a mind that begs to be challenged like Kojima's, and though this likely means a kibosh on the rumoured Death Stranding movie and/or TV show that people were nattering about, it is an opportunity for one of the most creative titles of the past generation to totally reinvent itself in order to controversially divide the gaming community once more. I hope we'll one day see something different out of KP, but even if we don't for the immediate future I'm not going to kick my feet and pretend this isn't a totally fine state of affairs either.    

'Detroit: Become Human' has the worst twist

My bridge to the future

You may have heard me say it before, but I'm really not a huge fan of Quantic Dream, and not just for the obvious reasons of the way they conduct themselves internally. Actually, I disliked them before a lot of these recent allegations. And that doesn't come from an inherent dislike of narrative based games for the accusation that they're 'boring' and 'lack action' as some others believe, my problem stems from what I believe are an overrated catalogue of games propped up by the impressive nature of the tech and graphics that bring them to life. So that's to say that I don't like David Cage, or his stories, and the things that he chooses to write about. Indigo Prophecy was entertainingly out there, but as far as I'm concerned that was the peak of his work and since then he's spiralled in so many weird directions that either play things too safe, discredit themselves or both. Beyond Two Souls seemed to war against the very concept of branching narrative, Heavy Rain cheated it's audience out of a real solvable mystery in favour of a cheap twist and 'Detroit: Become Human'... oh there's so much I have to say about Detroit.

The fact that Detroit is one of their most well received and lauded games just annoys me deeply, for whilst it is easily the best game that Quanitc Dream has put out and arguably has the best writing, I find the concept to be so mundane, overdone and lacking in genuine creative spark that I broil every time I think of how much more famous that game is compared to Nier Automata. But I'm not here to talk about that today, I'm here to talk about what I consider to be one of the worst twists in a narrative based game from every one that I've played, and I've played all of the big mainstream ones. From Telltale to DONTNOD to Supermassive, I've done the rounds, and still I think Detroit become human takes the ca- actually 'Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope' had a final twist which really annoyed me... But that's more a subjective opinion, what I have to say about Detroit cuts a lot deeper than that. And in discussing this twist I want to bring a comparison game with a grand twist of it's own in a somewhat similar vein so that I can compare how this is done right compared to how it can be done catastrophically wrong. The comparison I've picked is from Death Stranding, but unfortunately that means I'm going to have to spoil an incredibly big (as in literally the last hour of gameplay is dedicated to it) plot point as well as a central big route spoiler for 'Detroit: Become Human.' If that's going to be a problem for you, I suggest you skip this one. Still here? Good.

So 'Detroit: Become Human' paints a world were an American servant class of humanoid android suddenly gain sentience and everything plays out pretty much the way you'd expect from a decently budgeted Sci-Fi channel miniseries. Cue hammy and slightly belittling civil rights analogies and a shaky grander world setting that doesn't really come together cohesively outside of immediate events but it doesn't matter because Cage doesn't care about world building apparently. In typical Cage fashion, the narrative is split between the perspectives of three protagonists, although rather atypically, they don't intersect nearly as much as you'd think they would. In fact I think there's only one scene where all the protagonists are in the same setting at the same time, which I guess isn't totally uncommon, but overall motivations seem individually distinct too. I'm not sure how I feel about that plot structure, but this isn't about that right now. Right now I want to talk about the machinations of one storyline in particular, the one that follows Kara.

Kara is the service android of one Todd at the beginning of the game, your typical single abusive father who beats his child daughter: lovely. The entirety of Kara's narrative follows her relationship with this child, Alice, as they escape the abuses of Todd and go on the run as fugitives together. Whilst the other two storylines are based around prototypical oppressed freedom fighter and discount Bladerunner 2049, Kara's journey with Alice is the only one that seems somewhat unique to the typical formula you'd immediately expect from a setting like this. I think that special spark comes from the very idea of this android and human child coming together in a mother-daughter bond, both damaged and traumatised in their own way and forming an emotional bond that transcends their differing constitutions because of that. In a game with very underexplored avenues for the way that androids crossed the event horizon and gained sentience, Kara's story doesn't fill that void but it does work some way to justify it, arguing that the specifics don't matter when we have this sort of relationships between the species that demonstrates powerful unconditional love. A human child and an android mother- truly a fertile little bud of a story there. Sure they weren't my favourite characters, but I felt emotionally connected and intrigued to their journey more than the other two.

But before I pull the rug out from under you, let me bring up my competing twist from Death Stranding. (strap in, because discussing anything about this game is a trip.) So the world of Death Stranding's America is beset by an invasion of spirits from death known as BTs (Beached Things) that can only be seen when someone straps themselves to a BB (Beach Baby). a BB is a human child that has been taken out of it's comatose mother before birth and placed inside of a mechanical simulated womb that porters strap to their chest and then connect to via tubes so that they can integrate their suit systems with the emotional response of the BB. Oh, and BB's can see BTs because having not been born yet they technically aren't alive and since their mothers are brain dead they 'bridge' the gap between life and death. Did you... did you follow all of that? Because I'm not sure I even did.

The story makes clear there is a twist coming right away, when the protagonist Sam first connects to his BB, (known as BB-28) and is greeted to a memory which shows the perspective of a baby in a pod observing the goings on of a man we would come to know as Clifford Unger and his comatose wife. The problem being that the twist here is obvious. Clifford, played by Mads Mikkelson, is obviously going to be an important reoccurring character in the story, the visions (which are repeated and only happen when connecting to BB-28 after a rest) clearly show a BB before service, and Clifford literally talks to the BB like it's his child throughout the entire game; and yet Sam never seems to directly address it. I mean sure, he's attacked by the spirit of Cliff throughout the game, dragged through hell and forced to fight him. Every fight is inundated with the ghostly calls of Cliff to 'return his BB', and every boss fight ends with him literally trying to rip BB-28 from your arms, but Sam and cast still play twenty questions trying to figure out who Cliff could possibly be and what his connection to you and BB-28 is.

It's almost insulting how much the game drags out this twist which lays itself out so evidently from the getgo, no one with a working frontal cortex could fail to make the connection between Cliff and BB-28 after the first cutscene, let alone the thirtieth! Thus we don't even engage with that aspect of the story and question it as the narrative pans out, even when scenes don't play out quite as you might expect. The final boss fight with Cliff, for example, ends with him finally coming to his senses and directly addressing the player. "They told me you were Sam Porter, but your Sam Bridges. My bridge to the future." Sam even hands him the BB-28 pod, recognising Cliff as the father, only to see Cliff take it, hold it for a moment, and then hand him back. It's a simple scene, but seems to vaguely threaten what seemed like clear cut fact at the very start of the story. It's only after this encounter that Sam even mentions the possibility that Cliff could be BB-28's father, but with how terminally un-insightful Sam has proven himself throughout the entire game, this moment actually shakes belief in what seemed to be immutable fact more than anything else. What we have here is a twist made so obvious that we don't even realise when it hides something deeper.

Coming back to Detroit, the twist set-up is much more straightforward so let me resolve that one for us right now. Alice and Kara meet another android and they expand their familial unit whilst trying to escape the country. Only once all the protagonists come together do we get the big reveal, as Kara goes off to meet with the cameo squad and gets a bit lost when she returns. She bumps into Alice, only to discover that she isn't her Alice, but another Alice altogether. Another android Alice. That's right, little kid Alice was an android that Todd (a man who is apparently destitute and depressed and yet can afford two androids and a replacement for the one he smashed) bought to replace his daughter who left with his wife when they got divorced. And the game waits until now to tell us. The reveal is handled decent enough but the twist... is just actively terrible.

I don't mean that it's weak, although it kind of is; but it is unique in that it actively cheapens the dynamic that the game worked so hard to set. It's a twist that takes depth out of the narrative, rather than one which enriches it. Think about it- we had a mother figure android looking after an ostensibly human girl and providing a model for the way that these robots can serve just as important a role to humans as flesh and blood family members can. We had a story of species being bridged together! Only- no. The kid was an android the whole time. So it's just an android that looks like a kid being adopted by an android that looks like an adult, suddenly feeling like a pale imitation of human relationships just because. Because that's what humans do and that's what they're doing. In a smarter game, like Nier, this would have been a branching off point to explore the significance of inherent human societal functions and what those roles look like dragged out of context and purpose.(And Automata actually has a scene which does exactly that) But in Detroit, managed by David Cage, it just feels vapid in way he clearly wasn't planning it to be. You took the human out of the relationship and, despite the heavy lifting the actors put in to make it work, sullied it with misplaced and badly judged context which served as nothing more than a 'gotcha'. Nothing was elevated about the emotion or meaning of the story, all that has changed is that significance has been drained. I knew that a twist could be disappointing and eye rolling, but 'Detroit: Become Human' was the first time I realised that a twist could be so bad it's actively harmful to the narrative. Who let David shoot his own script in the foot like this?

On the otherside of the fence we have Death Stranding and the mystery surrounding it's seemingly straightforward twist. By the subsequent credits of the game there are still lingering mysteries hanging around the finer points of the story, alongside that uneasy sense from your last strange encounter with Cliff. Key point of frowning for me came when Amelie lectured Sam throughout the credits about her history, and stated matter-of-factly "A pulled the trigger twice that day." What day? What trigger? Did I miss something? I'm sure I was paying attention. Why did you say that like I knew what you were talking about? It's literally the credits right now, so should I know what she's talking about? I was in a bit of a tail-spin moment. And as with any good twist, that oddity compounded with other clear inconsistences that rubbed me the wrong way. You have Die Hardman carrying a gun onto an afterlife-beach (something you can only do if an item has significant emotional importance to the person's beach) stating that he can do it because the gun is loaded with Hematic rounds from Sam's blood. Oh is that how that works? So I can just slather my blood on anything and drag it onto a beach? Or is he wantonly lying to avoid questions? Or the way Amelie takes to Sam as a literal baby despite them apparently having no relation to one another. Why does she care so much? Or Die Hardman's tear strewn confession to you about his murder of Cliff, which comes across as an apology for some strange reason.

Of course, the real 'smoking gun' (pun intended) comes once we learn the name of Cliff's comatose wife. Lisa Bridges. A real kick-in-balls "Wait, what?" moment which rocks the seemingly straight forward narrative. In the subsequent hour it's revealed that those visions throughout the game were not those of BB-28, now named Lou, but in fact those of Sam. Sam was the first BB, Cliff was his father, and the reason why Cliff is so invested in Sam's journey is because he's hunting him, but he doesn't recognise his son grown up because he died when he was still a baby! It's a brilliant cog-fits-into-place moment for the way it makes every last bit of confusing narrative make sense and enriches the tale for it. Suddenly Cliffs last interaction "They said you were Sam Porter- but you're Sam Bridges" makes perfect sense- he stops fighting because he realises that Sam is his son. Amelie's weird talk about shooting things and Die Hardman's gun lies- were because that was the revolver Amelie used to kill them. And the reason why Amelie is so attached to Sam is because she was the one who shot him and his father and was trying to make amends by raising Sam. It's a perfectly neat and, crucially, satisfying twist which wraps up everything, and which is danced around the entire game through clever manipulation on Kojima's part to make us think the events were more straightforward than they appeared to be. (And given Kojima's past with writing narratively convenient family trees, the misdirection was utterly necessary for the reveal to land as well as it does.)

So there we have two twists based around a revelation of who a character actually is, but one being straightforward yet a total mess to the emotional heart of the narrative and they other being strewn with misdirection and intentional confusion for the reward of ultimate story satisfaction. I hope that space between the two extremes shows you a bit of why I find Detroit's twist so revolting, not just for what it did but for what it could have achieved. I mean to be honest, David just wanted to have his special little moment to match Scott Shelby's reveal from Heavy Rain, Detroit didn't need any sort of twist whatsoever. But in his hubris I think David botched more than he could have ever dreamed and sullied my last vestige of faith in him as a writer director. Let him stick to bringing teams together and organising; that's where his talents- wait, Star Wars Eclipse is slated for a 2026-27 release date? Snap, guess he sucks at that too...

Death Stranding Review

 Once there was an explosion, a bang which gave rise to life as we know it.

Hideo Kojima and his relationship to the world of gaming has been pretty important for the evolution of the industry as well as my own personal evolution as an artist. The work he and his teams over the years have done in creating Metal Gear and pushing forward the role of cinematic storytelling in a video game environment was the bud that would grow into the modus operandi for the vast majority of AAA video games in today's landscape. Thus whenever he sits down to make a new game it's always something that the world of gaming has an ear out for, because they expect great things each time. Now of course, greatness isn't always easily replicable, and a lot of the times it doesn't take the form we expect, but I think you'd be hard pressed to say that Hideo Kojima has, at the very least, never failed to make a consistently evocative game in his career since the days of that first Playstation Metal Gear. (As for the emotions said-games evoke- well that's up to you to decide, now isn't it?) But even with that legacy behind him there was something about Death Stranding, when it was still in the earliest stages of marketing, that stood out as a project perhaps one step further than any he had laid down before. And I think that comes from the idea of a 'high concept' world.

For all the years of Deus Ex-like conspiracy strewn worlds and deep 'soap opera' familial trees that always somehow become important to the narrative even when it makes practically no sense for it to, it almost seems like a blatant lie to say that Kojima has never done anything 'high-concept' before, and of course there's touches of that in a lot of his work- but Death Stranding might be the first time he's imbued every rock and stone of his freshly built world with a conceptual purpose in order to drive home mostly one key message. This sense became somewhat apparent in the marketing, when Kojima would bring up Kōbō Abe and mention some of his ruminations on the nature of man and it's relationship to modern day beings, as well as the memorable recitation of 'the rock and the stick', the apparent first creations of man that relate to the foundations of Death Stranding. It was clear from the getgo that this game wasn't going to be some mindless flight of fancy- (not as though his others had been. Even Metal Gear Rising Revengence has a little to say beyond the rocket-fuelled action and handbanger character themes that seem to get better with age.) this would be a game with a message above everything he had made before.

Unfortunately (well, fortunately for the game, not so much for me) the title was the first to be worked on after Kojima broke ties with Konami, meaning that his newly formed studio were really lacking in the tools necessary to bring this grand vision to life. That's where Sony stepped in, as well as some of the studios working under Sony, and as the saying goes: 'you scratch my back I make your videogame a console exclusive'. And so it was that Kojima's passion project science fiction high concept title became a Sony exclusive and everyone not within that bubble had to sigh and go about our days forgetting about the game. That was, however, until the game got a surprise announcement for PC. Of course, that was more than a year after it was already out for Playstation, but it was still great news and greater still now that the game was out, had been played, and had evoked a strong reaction from just about everyone who has touched the thing.

It really does seem like a love it or hate it situation, for Death Stranding will accept no inbetween stragglers. Either it's a sweeping philosophical suite worthy of everyone's time, or a sleepy walking simulator worthy of being crowned with the mantle of 'worst game ever'. I'm sure you're not going to be too shocked or surprised to hear me say that the truth is neither extreme, but instead floats somewhere distinct entirely dependent on the type of gamer that you are. Before playing this game I remember being chuffed about the fact that I had managed to avoid any real spoilers for it's contents, but after reaching the second credits screen, (I'm genuinely shocked that there wasn't a third) I get it. This isn't an easy game to spoil by any stretch of the imagination. Not because it's difficult to understand, like one of those enigmatic narrative games out there, but simply because there's so much to cover. In the space of this review I absolutely refuse to spoil any of the traditional story beats, but I may allude to them and I will unpack a bit of the overall themes and talk about the insane world Kojima has created. So if you'd rather touch this game blind, which I actually recommend, (and you haven't already, obviously) then I respect your decision and hope you'll skip to my summary at the end. Otherwise let's rap.

The World

So the world of Death Stranding is the first riddle we're tasked with unpacking when it comes to the game, and that's a solid first foot forward because it's one of the best ingredients in this entire package. Death Stranding's America feels like the dream science fiction (Hard F) setting that 90% of the directors who end on the 'Sci-Fi channel' wishes they could achieve, but lack either the budget or the imagination. That was actually what drew me to this game, wanting to see how strong the soul of proper sci-fi was in this game when we have an industry much more commonly inundated with science fantasy worlds. (Which I love just as much, but sometimes you want a little Star Trek to balance out all the Star Wars.) And I can say that I was impressed, the whole way through, with the science fiction heart at the centre of this narrative. Nearer the latter half of the narrative things get a little shakier, as techno-babble threatens to creep into lengthy explanations that then get condensed into a too easy metaphor which makes you start saying "Wait, is that how that works? I don't think that's how that works." But I would be remiss not to celebrate that when this game gets it's genre right, it excels above most any other Sci-fi universe I've seen in games or on TV; it's truly incredible. And now I'm going to spoil a bit of it for you.

In the game, America has suffered the post-apocalyptic results of a mysterious happening known as the Death Stranding. Typically a term used to describe beached whales winding up where they don't belong and suffocating, in this context it describes a mysterious event where (to simplify enormously) the veil between the realm of the living and the realm of the dead has been shattered. I mean that in a very literal sense, in that the non-theoretical afterlife now has the means to spread into the still living world and effect us in a plethora of bizarre and seemingly incomprehensible ways. Like placing a third dimensional people in a suddenly forth dimensional universe, we seem to initally lack the functions to comprehend what has happened to our world. Now you might hear that and think you have vague idea what something like that would look like, having consumed various piece of fantasy media in your time, but trust me when I say: unless you've played this game, you have no idea what Kojima's idea of what a world married with death looks like. 

For one it sort of looks like New Zealand. Yes, despite this game being set in America and featuring a slightly jarring fetishization of the American world, (there's some more level headed rhetoric in the game too, but it comes amidst a bevy of surprisingly heavy pro-America flag waving) the world as we know it is full of mossy rolling hills and empty stretching vast reaches of overgrown nothingness all swept under an endlessly chilly pale blue sky. It's a truly haunting beautiful locale for it's hollowness and it's size, thus one can imagine that the button for photomode (up on the Dpad) is something that many players are going to become intimately familiar with over the course of their playthroughs. In narrative, the game is supposed to represent the journey of the player, named Sam, as he travels literally from the eastern shore of America to it's western tip, and though the game world obviously doesn't encompass that much space, the sheer overwhelming scale of everything does work in selling that illusion. (As well as the handy couple of 'region splitting' loading screens, of course.)

In this world, the spirits of the dead stalk the world as invisible wraiths called 'Beached Things' or BTs, floating deathly spectres that can only interact with the world by blindly groping out in an act that leaves tar imprints of their palms in the physical world. What makes them dangerous is the fact that when these BTs come into contact with living beings, the result is known as a 'voidout'. A collision of antimatter and matter that vaporises the surrounding area in a massive explosion with a 98% efficiency energy-conversion rate. Considering a new BT is born each time someone dies, that essentially means every corpse is liable to create an invisible nuke switch that can simply destroy everything you've worked towards in the blink of an eye. (Think Minecraft Creepers, but invisible) And therefore you can see how easy it was for the world to fall apart. Compounding that, however, is the appearance of Timefall. A new rain that rapidly and irreversibly ages all matter it touches to the point of death, handily represented in the way that we see the full life cycle of plants breaking through the rocks each time it falls. And if I told you that's merely the brink of a world buzzing with oddities and strange happenings, you might start to see why I consider this one of the most rich post-apocalyptic worlds in premise alone that I've ever seen. 

Gameplay

But with gaming the shape of the world is only as important as the way we get to interact with it, and it's here that a lot of people have their biggest problems with Death Stranding. You play as Sam Porter Bridges, modelled after and voiced by Norman Reedus, who does a brilliant job portraying the isolationist delivery man who shuns people and affection so that he can persist as this self torturing living ghost. Oh, and in typical Kojima fashion, his and every other character's name is imbued with meaning or symbolism that sometimes makes your eyes roll. In this case, he works as a Porter (a deliverer of goods across the disparate patches of society remaining after the cataclysmic Death Stranding) and he does so under the banner of the America rebuilding organisation known as 'Bridges'. And 'Sam Porter Bridges' is his real, apparently not assumed, name. Sure thing, Kojima.

As implied by that title, Sam's job is to port. All day and all night. (Actually there is no day/night system, so just all day.) This translates to the player being tasked with making various delivers of boxed goods that they must carry on their backs (because vehicles and roads are rare commodities) across hilly mountains and craggy ravines and even snow tipped mountains. That is the bulk of this game. And that isn't a throw-away mechanic tossed in by any stretch of the imagination, Death Stranding is built to support an entire ecosystem of game mechanics that shake hands in order to replicate the experience of carry heavy loads. I'm talking a planning stage where you stack crates in the pouch on your back or strap them to your arms and legs, a balancing mechanic where you have to account for terrain you're walking on and the weight of stacked cargo on certain parts of your body and even complications that might effect the durability of what you're carrying, such a stamina system you need to manage in order to not fall over and the aforementioned Timefall which will rapidly age and decompose cargo if you keep it out in the elements for too long. There's a lot of systems in play to make sure there's a genuine game out of making deliveries, which is important given how many the game expects you to make.

The mental hurdle that you're tasked with overcoming, as a player, is figuring out and identifying whether or not the process of delivering parcels is something you can find enjoyment from. For all of  it's tranquillity, logistical challenge, unexpected dynamism and occasional peril, the inherent concept is enough to turn some people off and if you can't get over that initial hump you will not be able to enjoy this game. I'll admit that after I came to grips with the world which drew me into the game, I did sort of hover around aimlessly and wonder 'is this it? Is this the entirety of the game for the next 50 or so hours?' But then I took on a contract which required me to recover some cargo that had washed down a river; a task that asked me to catch floating boxes whilst trying not to get swept away by the rapids, so I had to figure out how to lay down metal bridges over the water in order to 'catch' the crates and time my dives for the boxes that were swinging around my trap. It was a little mini-puzzle, and after getting through that I was forced to admit "Okay, there is a game here!"

Where the USP comes into the game is in the Chiral Network, which forms the basis of what Kojima called his 'Strand Type game'. (His name for this 'genre' of game.) Essentially what that means, without going into the whole lore about Chiral density and that stuff, is that asynchronous online components allows items you place in your gameworld for convenience (ladders, climbing hooks, bridges) to show up in others worlds (the connection is done behind the scenes and is typically random so you rarely know what structures you'll find) and vice versa. This lays the way for dynamic situations like one where you're perhaps struggling with a tough delivery and a snow storm just hit with enough ferocity to threaten the mission, only to happen across a handily strewn bike that another player left from their world. Or a zipline which cuts travel time down immensely. A hook and rope that makes vertical climbing feasible and not so dangerous. There's untold countless ways that unconscious co-operation slips into your normal gameplay and reminds you that you're connected to a bigger collective. Of Death Stranding players in the real world, and within the gameworld, to a network of dreamers trying to reconnect the lost souls of a broken America.

Narrative

All this marks what I think is Death Stranding's greatest victory; the way it marries narrative themes and gameplay. As is made utterly evident from every inch of this game, from the way that the world is empty save for various preppers and cities dotted far away from one another, to the oily handprints left by BTs in search for the living, the key most theme of Death Stranding is that of human connection and the way we reach out to one another. (Or rebel against all attempts to do so.) Sam is also nakedly tied to this theme as a protagonist, with the game's human exposition dump, Deadman, (modelled after Guillermo Del Toro. I'm not joking.) stating that Sam suffers from Aphenphosmphobia: the fear of being touched. (literally the longest variation name of this phobia that Kojima could have picked.) Learning to connect with others, physically and emotionally, is the character journey that the player is challenged to undergo, and not only is it perfectly represented in the gameplay of literally connecting with the travels of other players and almost unconsciously coming together to make each other's journeys less difficult, but it's also a strangely prescient tale to mount in the prelude to total worldwide pandemic lockdown. Death Stranding launched just before Covid, and I played it well into year 2, but the fact this game is about a society that has been cut off from one another trying to slowly reconnect strikes home in this age better than I'll bet even Kojima expected. (Almost suspiciously so... what did he know?) 

For it's narrative structure Kojima leans on the storytelling device he toyed with back in Metal Gear Solid V, with the story being broken into 'episodes' that each lean on a particular main character's story whilst in pursuit of the ultimate goal of reuniting America under the UCA. (That's United cities, if you're wondering) Some episodes are longer than others and some characters get multiple revisits, but for the most part you're learning about this colourful cast one at a time and being given the appropriate amount of time between long delivery treks to ruminate on all of their symbolic significant traits and quirks. At times it can sort of feel like the people you're dealing with are less people and more "This is the thematically weird thing about me" devices, but with the amount of time we get to spend with them over the course of a long video game there's more than enough time to bring people back into these occasional caricatures and Kojima does take advantage of that. (Although if these were movie characters I have a feeling they'd be pretty vapid.)

This particular game, even more than Kojima's previous impressive work, I really took notice of some genuinely great cinematic angles with key story beats, from natural no-cut scene transitions to the odd effortlessly framed wide shot- this is a man who truly brings his love of cinema into his work and it does wonders. Throughout the entire game the many set pieces absolutely shine with masterful intensity, and when peppered against an otherwise relaxing gameplay loop these stand out as total highlight moments. Although, again rather typical for Kojima, some of the most memorable scenes are moments of characters interacting rather than that of explosions and giant mecha death BTs. That and trying to untangle the web of a narrative which occasionally slips ahead of itself a little in a manner reminiscent of a movie that has been slightly edited out of order, although everything does spell itself out neatly eventually. Kojima is that kind at least.

The cast all do an excellent job of holding this game's sincere premise to a serious standard, and in my opinion is was their performances which elevated an initially bare and close-to-cringe-worthy tale of togetherness and turned it into something that gets the chance to be an epic nearer to the end. But the stand out character in my opinion was the one portrayed by Mads Mikkelson. I was expecting that celebrity cameo to play a fleeting bit part, but he ended being a major part of the story and getting easily my favourite monologue in the entire game. No wonder his role was so lauded during the Game Awards at the time, he did perfectly. Also, he was by no means the only cameo, as from all of the preppers dotted around the game world a good chunk of them are references this way and that. From Conan O Brian to Geoff Keighley to even Edgar Wright. Kojima just face scanned all of his friends into his video game and I find that somewhat hilarious.

BTs

The most notable part of the gameplay loop comes from the way the player is tasked handling one of the few enemy types that the game has to offer- BTs, and how the gameplay lives up to the promise of the narrative. As you can likely suspect, eventually you figure out a way to occasionally see these monsters, but even then entering an area with them becomes a tense scene of creeping about as though on a mine field, trying desperately not to set one off. There's this fantastic sense of being helpless thanks to their general invisibility, and how even when you are granted a gun, it's usually more of a hinderance for dealing with groups than a benefit. In the early game running into BT groups is truly a road block that the player is forced to think their way out of, and that's the mark of a fascinating and well executed enemy type. Unfortunately, the arms race isn't really kept up over the course of the game and by late game there really is nothing to stop you just blindly crouch walking through a BT pocket and tapping the 'execute' button when in danger.

If you do get caught by a BT, however, it isn't game over. Instead a miniboss activates and the entire immediate area is drowned with tar from the otherside, out of which rises a, usually aquatic themed, BT monster summoned to eat you. And what happen if it succeeds? Well, Sam is unique in the universe as a Repatriate, meaning he can reenter his own body and come back to life after death, but what about that voidout thing? Well this wasn't something I learned until literally the final delivery of the game, but yes, if you get killed by a BT and you're not in a boss fight, you voidout and permanently erase a big hole in the map. Apparently the same goes for if you get a little too shooty on the human enemies in the game and then neglect your duty to incinerate new corpses. That's quite the commitment to the bit which I wasn't expecting out of Death Stranding, but kudos for them having the courage to make true consequences for ingame death.

Boss

Hark, did I just say that there were bosses? Yes, yes I did. And you know that with the reputation Kojima has for bosses this is going to be something worth my time! Except it isn't. Yes, for the first time in a while a Kojima game features bosses that really don't add much to the game and mostly feel like shoe-horned sections. I think the problem comes from the fact that this isn't really a game built to contain a lot of character combat, so forced prolonged boss fights feel like messy slogs, but the game's precise equipment system even feels taxed by these encounters. As though the very nature of the game doesn't want these sections muddying the otherwise solid gameplay experience. Unexplained milky ghosts pop up only for BT bosses in order to chuck resources at the player, not as a lifeline but because a typical player isn't going to be hauling the arsenal required to down this hematic bullet sponges. If you have to go to that length just to make the boss fight feasible, maybe you don't need a boss fight at all.

That isn't to say that every boss fight sucked, however. These various battlefield boss fights struck impressive set-piece notes as they whisked the player away to... well I don't really want to spoil where, but trust me when I say they're all surprising and vivid. The actual fights themselves are just fine, nothing special, but the atmosphere goes a long way. The best boss fight in the game easily goes to the penultimate mandatory duel against a certain character who clearly displays influence from two other popular Kojima boss fights from the past. MGS 3's The Boss for her overwhelming frontal fire power which forces the player to rely on ambushes (only this game allows you to use cargo for ambushes, which is fun) and MGS 4's Liquid Ocelot for a fighting-game style 1v1 portion. It was all very self indulgent, which is what we love out of Kojima cinematic gameplay moments. Unfortunately that was easily the only good boss fight in the game, the rest sucked hard.

Music

I always forget to talk about the music but this time I absolutely refuse to make that mistake, it would be totally unforgivable. Death Stranding features an OST, but the majority of the music tracks you'll take away with you for life are the selections of indie music that Kojima has drawn from his personal soundcloud library and slotted neatly into this world. Post-rock indie bands like Low Roar and Silent Poets sneak into key moments of explorative contemplation with special little music breaks whenever you're on particularly long deliveries in unexplored territory. Tracks like 'Bones', 'Don't Be So Serious' and, of course, 'I'll Keep Coming' light up your journey is subtle moments that soar so much for their inclusion. I'd never heard of these bands before, but now I genuinely have trouble not thinking of their great tracks whenever walking the typical long trips I have to do in my real-life day-to-day. (Thanks Kojima, you successfully pawned your music tastes onto me.) But of course that doesn't mean Kojima Productions could live with themselves without conducting their own songs for the OST and the unexpectedly grand "BB's Theme" will probably live with me as one of my favourite music-synced gaming moments ever. (To be fair, most of the other contenders in that narrow field also spawn from this game, but that's still something of an achievement.) These gameplay music collaborations were probably the closet the game ever got to making me feel an outward emotion, and I appreciate the hell out of that. (Still didn't personally shed a tear, but I can easily imagine some people might.)

Summary

It absolutely is not a game for everyone and I don't blame any person out there who hates this game and thinks it's a total waste of time: but I humbly do not agree. What started off as a confusing Sci-fi romp slowly erupted into a veritable suite of surprisingly emotional stories, sweeping journeys and simple pleasures which kept me entertained for the vast majority of it's huge playtime. I grew to love this game, which isn't to say that it's perfect but as with most Kojima games I grew to love it's flaws, such as the iffy enemy AI and boring bosses. (Okay, I never loved the boring bosses.) I am so happy I gave this game the commitment to experiencing first-hand its story as I know it's going to stay with me for a while as I think back on this strange adventure with fascination and a smile on my face. Even in the times when I was giving it a break over the couple of months it took me to play through the game, this little cargo delivery simulator was never far from my mind; nor it's blatant heart this game carries proudly on it's sleeve- a clear mark of a storyteller who has reached peak creative maturity.

I would not go the length of calling this game perfect, in any of it's vertices, but truly amidst every other AAA game of the past 10 years this is one that stands alone in what it was trying to achieve and how it set out to do it. If only the game hadn't ended with no less than an hour and a half of endgame exposition, I'd have nothing but positive impressions to leave on. But it did take that long. (And there were two whole credit scrolls within an hour of each other! I saw Kojima's full name listed 8 times- I know you made this game, Kojima, no one else could!)  Recommendations are hard when we have a game as hot or cold as this one, but if you've a mind for a slow paced experience, minimal in-your-face action and seeking joy out of exploring haunting vistas, then I probably don't even need to recommend Death Stranding to you because you've clearly already played it. On the off chance you've not, however, let me reassure you with a solid A grade in my personal game ranking system, with only the lacklustre bosses dotted throughout the game dragging away those extra couple of marks. With Sony trademarking the Strand-type infrastructure for this game and the narrative wrapping up too neatly for Kojima to squander things with a sequel, (at least I think they are, who knows what's going on in his head) it's likely we won't see a game like this that tries the many things it does ever again. Which makes it all the more important that we celebrate it now while it's here for the weird, unique, wonderful and bizarre swansong that it is. Needless to say, I'm ravenous to see what Kojima Productions is cooking up to follow this.