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.

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.    

Kojima and Sony

False alarm?

Not so very long ago there was something of a false alarm bell ringing across the industry as the ever trolling head of Kojima Productions, the man himself, decided to have a bit of fun with Twitter. He posted a picture of the Sony Games logo with a bunch of games behind it, totally without context, and just sat back as the denizens of his Twitter followers, well documented to pick apart an analyse anything he'll post from blurry pictures of legos to a list of western books he's currently reading, drove themselves wild coming to the, apparently obvious, conclusion. Clearly KP were preparing their audience for the announcement of the upcoming merger between Kojima Productions and Sony! How presumptuous to- oh wait. The actual tweet was of the PlayStation logo with a collection of PlayStation exclusive titles behind it, and Death Stranding stuck into the corner. Okay, I can see where the confusion is coming from.

Now to be fair, Death Stranding was a PlayStation exclusive title, but it came to PC later. And when I squint at some of the other titles behind this logo, sure most of them are from Sony owned studios (Sony is very cautious about sharing their toys) but there's a couple there that I either can't identify or don't appear to be exclusives at all. There's a sports game I can't exactly pinpoint because ya-know: sports games, am I right? And then there's a medieval looking game which I have no clue abo- oh wait, that's Demon Souls, isn't it? Yep, that's another exclusive from an exclusive studio. So pretty much Death Stranding, and maybe that sports game, are the only two pictures here not from a company in bed with Sony, conclusions were pretty inevitable to draw.

But Kojima is adamant, their studio is independent and will continue to be so for the future; although I have to wonder why that's even a point to belabour. I mean sure, Kojima Productions is independent today; but why are they independent? What is the reason for not signing up to the Sony wagon and becoming their exclusivity pumping machine? This is a genuine question, by the way, I'm not an expert on this particular facet of the industry, and my observations here can be only surface level. On one hand, independence allows Kojima Productions to have full control over what they make, although Kojima has claimed that Sony were hands-off during the development of Death Stranding anyway. The company would be pressured to make their games exclusive to PlayStation, but then Kojima tends to lean that way anyway, as he did with Death Stranding and has done with Metal Gear Solid titles whenever possible. And independence gives Kojima freedom of schedule; which is the only point I can't possibly refute, I suppose.

The relationship between Kojima and Sony reaches back far, to the point where their love affair has made identifying the distinction between them difficult. Who remembers back in Metal Gear Solid 4 (a game still exclusive only to PlayStation, which has not even been ported to PC yet) in which Snake uses a PlayStation controller in order to control an UMG drone? Or the scenes both in that game and MGS 1 where Psycho Mantis speaks specifically about PlayStation hardware and how he can manipulate it with his mind? (Which leads to some very cheesy, but iconic, fourth-wall breaking moments.) Death Stranding was even made with the express help of Sony studios, and was the headliner for their Direct showcase for a couple of years. All this time it's been hard not to see Kojima and his production studio as something of unpaid interns at their offices.

So what this incendiary tweet was likely referring to, if we use the ol' 'extrapolation' parts of our noggins', was probably some sort of upcoming collaboration between the two companies come the next PlayStation showcase, which of course means another round of watching the two lead acts of the romcom frolic around in the montage trying to pretend there's any legitimate 'will they won't they' in this paint-by-numbers script. Once there was a time where the prospect of these two powers joining up would have worried me, but since Sony has started to chill out on the whole 'porting to PC' thing I've lost my personal compunctions. By all means, let the Kojima heads into your web, Sony, I'm pretty sure the Venn diagram of active and excited Kojima fans and PlayStation owners are a circle at this point, the only weirdo outliers are people like me, so I say let the two elope and be done with it.

But of course, Kojima doesn't want to make that official step, because that would threaten to endanger that enigmatic anonymity that he enjoys so. I've never met the man, but from the distance of the internet, he feels like the type to not really appreciate having a boss. He'd rather be the mad scientist on the fringe of the industry, tinkering away on his little passion projects and playing the Wizard behind the TV screen when he wants to. There's a performance to the man that seems integral to his every choice and decision. I mean just look at the whole Bluebox thing with their game Abandoned. For months they were sized up as secret Kojima sleeper agents thanks to their difficulties with communicating to the Internet, and all it would have taken would be for Kojima to tweet out once that he was in no way involved with them, and that suspicion would have had a credible cradle to put the conspiracy to rest in.

I've played Devil's advocate before: 'he's known to lie to his audience here and there and thus his word would only inflame the issue', or 'he didn't want to draw more attention to the issue through addressing it himself and potentially cause more flaming Bluebox's way', but nothing I can conjure holds water. Whenever Kojima has lied he has done it in a comical and see-through way, such that it doesn't seem vindictive, but humorous in hindsight. (Except for the Raiden in MGS2 thing. That was cruel.) And as for drawing attention: this story was the talk of every game's journalist site for half a month, there's no signal boosting that any worse! Which says to me that he just loves the story, he loves the drama, and he won't sacrifice that for his smoke and mirrors stage presence. Even when a single statement could have done a world of good for a studio with terminal foot-in-mouth syndrome. 

Hideo Kojima is the phantom of the opera, a virtuoso recluse who wants the attention yet shuns the spotlight, at least until the stage is set to his exact specification. And there's just something so darn entertaining about a story with no straight answers, now isn't there? I love the show as much as the next fan, I'd be a fool to pretend otherwise; but in that same vein it can be oh so frustrating trying to pin down the man-who-refuses-to-be-categorised. Is he a loyalist or a loner? A showman or a no show? Yet at the end of the day does any of that even matter when he puts out great games? I suppose not. Unless Bluebox ends up getting themselves actually crucified with their genuine inability to convey a straight message; he could have really helped with that one.

'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.

Kojima starts a movie studio

 Seeking new horizons

Hideo Kojima is an... interesting figure to say the least. Starting off a career making games about penguins and going onto to create international superspy thriller games that do such a good job aping famous movie franchises that the latest James Bond movie literally stole it's super virus threat concept from 'MGS 4: Guns of the Patriots'. He's a lover of movies and will tell you so exhaustively, and that can be handily seen from any game he has got his hands on and the famous film maker techniques he brings into the development room in order to sell his oft fantastical and/or high-concept storylines. He has revolutionised video game storytelling mostly for the better, although in doing so he did (I assume unwittingly) embolden a generation of game directors considerably less talented and creative as him to try and copy his style, which has handed in abject disaster from time to time. And now, he's finally opened up a movie studio which honestly feels like it's been his endgoal all along.

This news came just as I personally was finally getting the chance to play his science fiction epic 'Death Stranding' for the very first time, so I can say for myself that it was hardly a seismic shock to my system or anything like that. Death Stranding is pretty much an otherwordly high concept (high budget) sci-fi TV show that borders on cheesy with it's premise but wows so much with it's creativity that you can't help but respect the whole package. And yes, I did just call it a 'tv show' instead of a 'game' because I'm just under 10 hours in right now and the actual game portion of the game feels like a pale shadow compared the world and story underneath it all. This feels like a small screen product haphazardly ported through the Chiral network into our home consoles, (or in my case: the computer) and given he's even arranged the story beats of this narrative into 'episodes', something he did in MGS V as well, it's no secret that the man holds tight his bias towards traditional viewed media. Making movies has been a long time coming.

And to be clear, I'm not saying that his games need to be moved into the film and television space, and in fact I think the many existing movements to do so largely miss the entire point of the property in question. Take the apparently still-upcoming Metal Gear movie that is in the works. I understand the appeal, since it's jump to 3d the Metal Gear games have been defined by their cinematic quality cutscenes which, oftentimes, are the primary way in which the narrative is carried forward. That cinematic quality comes from their framing, positioning, scene composition and even the nature of scripted language that leans closer to the dramatic. (With the iconic Kojima wordless exclamations thrown in there for good measure) A laymen might loom at all those elements and go "There's already a movie here, we just need to stick it on screen!" but they would be missing the point.

Metal Gear Solid isn't a series created to make a satisfying passive viewing experience to players, it's an active interactive experience bolstered by the trick and tips of cinema in order to justify it's narrative and make it seem more worthy, thus enriching and heightening the stakes behind the gameplay. All of those cutscenes with their dramatic angles and monologue-style-dialogues have no interest in satisfying the viewers desires, they merely tee up the gameplay sections where the real knock-out punch lies. Metal Gear would be nowhere as universally loved without it's gameplay, meaning that any attempt to translate that series into a movie format will need to figure out how to handle transforming all of that gameplay too. So what is the gameplay in question? Stealth? Yikes...

Here's my thing with that; watching someone stealthily sneak around a base is never going to be interesting to watch, because it's an action exemplified and rewarded by nothing happening. Sure, there's tension to be had for the 'will he get caught or won't he' portion of the stealth, but there's only so far you can stretch tension and I can only imagine a scene like that working maybe once in a movie. The promise of Oscar Issacs playing Solid Snake it at least a solid pick, but I can't help but feel if the K man himself were involved in the production of this film, he'd have picked a more visually interesting narrative to adapt, like Rising Revengence, or even just invented a brand new story to further the Metal Gear storyline. Not because he's a genius, but just because he understands what mediums are best served in what ways.

This studio is set to be a new division of the impressively forward-thinkingly named 'Kojima Productions', and it said to have a key interest in expanding the reach of Kojima Production's various games. I suppose that means despite my joking, Kojima isn't going to turn around and become an indie movie director out of the blue and leave gaming behind for good, but with his reputation I don't think such a career move would either be a surprise or even something that any would try to stop him from doing. His team would probably follow him into hell and back and Sony would still fund it just so long as they get to stick their production logo on the poster. Instead we can expect projects tied into current and future KP properties, maybe some wild projects here and there and probably a decent amount of production work for industry friends. Remember, Kojima and his people are respected artists, I can imagine their visual eye being sought by some of Kojima's many movie world friends from time to time.

But does this mean we're going to be getting a Death Stranding movie in the near future? I wouldn't discount a short movie, perhaps even an animated one, diving into the simply sumptuously dour circling-oblivion world-scape of Death Stranding. It would almost be a disservice not to return to a world this meticulously sprawled in some strange fashion. But I think what we're much more likely to see is a bunch of content for their upcoming projects, like that horror game we know they're working on. Afterall, horror sometimes has a hard time translating to gaming, but movies- pfff, that's a breeze. I wouldn't at all be surprised to see a small-scale movie project made to promote the company's upcoming Silent H- I mean, 'untitled horror game that we know nothing about'... yeah...

It's nice to see someone I respect coming into their true selves even after a career as fulfilling and wild as his has been so far, showing that one can never quite be content and the pursuit of happiness is a doomed exercise in never-ending voracious hunger that will rule you from death to birth in singular obsession. Hmm... there's probably a considerably more positive take away from that. How about a cookie cutter "You've never too far along to start something new and shoot for your dreams?" Yeah, that sounds boiler-plate and greeting's card worthy, doesn't it? Personally, I'm just excited to see a mind as provenly deep as Kojima's, and a staff as talented as his, getting their chance to spread their bizarre talents to yet another medium so that they make an entire new audience tear out their hair for the first act whilst screaming at the screen "What the hell is going on? What is that, why is their name so dumb, why is this narrative so unexpectedly sappy, and why have I seen Kojima's name pop up 5 times in the credits within the first ten minutes?" Indie movie watchers have no idea what they're in for...