Death Stranding is the latest invention from Hideo Kojima, the most mainstream developer on the scene . We do not want to stop at reviewing his career, but on our website you have some articles at your disposal since, as it is an analysis, we want to focus on the title to be analyzed , although keeping his work in mind.
The action is set in a post-apocalyptic world in which there is a purgatory (called Playa) that is corrupted and does not allow souls to pass to the afterlife. These souls are trapped in the world of the living causing chaos and devastation, they are called BT or EV (stranded entities), and the cataclysm destroys the continent.
Sam is a freelance delivery man, since he left his past behind and is unable to bond with anyone . In the middle of a delivery he is required by the president of the UCA (United Cities of America) to travel from east to west and reunify the nations through the Chiral Network. This is a massive network that aspires to connect all regions , that the information contained in each node / refuge integrated in the network flows freely and in the process obtain more information about the Death Stranding and its antecedents.
After this we are also informed that Amelie, the president’s daughter, has been kidnapped by the terrorist group Homo Demens whose dogma is based on keeping this world in chaos and that superior beings rule over humans. The reason for their captivity is their hidden power or DOOM, of which there are several levels that can range from detecting Stranded Entities to being able to invoke them.
At the same time, this pretext is being used to carry out our main function, shipping. The axis of the story will consist of transporting goods from one point to another avoiding the different irregularities of the terrain, which we will talk about later, and the rest of the adversities.
Our main companion in fatigue will be the BB-Bridge , or Baby Bridge, an unborn child locked in a capsule that will allow us to detect nearby EVs. This is so because Babies are in an existential limbo that allows them to coexist between both worlds. Our BB, or Lou for friends, is sensitive and will react to everything that happens around us, laughing when he is having a good time or crying when things go wrong .
If the latter happens we will only have to gently move our control to rock it and calm it, otherwise it may suffer a shock and stop detecting BTs for a while.
Physicality, the different animations for loading. Inertia
During its early stages, what draws the attention of Death Stranding are its controls and how it establishes a new code between player and game through rethinking the open world. When you first pick up the backpack, the first response is rejection. This is not well designed, it is too exaggerated, one thinks .
You quickly put those convictions aside and begin to unravel the meaning of those pulsations and how Kojima throws us the first message of the game: we are too absorbed in ourselves and we do not pay attention to every step we take , each one of them is so important. like breathing, which is also a mechanic in itself.
In the form of a joke, several videos have emerged parodying the controls and the feeling of load in Death Stranding with young people carrying a stack of boxes behind them and, in a kind of Streissand effect, they have shown how realistic the physicality of the title is.
Physicality -corporeity in Spanish- is a term that, paradoxically, is very abstract . It is about everything that refers to the body and its way of expressing itself. The latter can be applied from the most physical to the most psychological: our way of walking, even our way of thinking. In this case we will focus on the more physical part.
As a courier, our job will consist of carrying various orders and carrying many kilos of weight on our backs , but not in any way. If the first thing we do is throw ourselves uncontrollably across any terrain, Sam will kiss the canvas before we know it. To avoid these situations as much as possible we must use the triggers of the remote control: one to hold the left handle of our backpack and the other to the right.
If we carry a load beyond our capacities, Sam will start to wobble from one side to the other and we will have to alternate between the triggers, or press and hold both at the same time so as not to fall and spoil the load . At this point many of you will be thinking that keeping them pressed avoids any of the aforementioned problems … But no, since two more elements must be taken into account: resistance and terrain.
Amen to our life bar – in this case “blood” – another equal or more important is our resistance or stamina bar. Indeed, running, crossing a river or holding the load while climbing a steep hill consumes our energy . When we climb a hill and rest on a foothold, it regenerates and we can also recover it by drinking from our canteen (which contains a well-known energy drink), resting on a base or sitting on the ground.
The inertia of the terrain is also essential since, if we are climbing without taking into account the weight we carry, we will fall with all the equipment and the realism of its physics will make us wonder on more than one occasion if it was a good idea to climb too high a hill. pronounced with so many packages on top.
In case we did not have enough with the above, we have to take into account another factor, the decline. A kind of acid rain -sometimes snow- that deteriorates everything in its path, including our merchandise. Not only does it deteriorate, but it makes it difficult to move, and the stamina that we use to go up a slope will be greater, since the ground will slip. Apart from this, the decline has a curious effect on the grass. We will see how flowers bloom and wither at full speed demonstrating the power of the Decima engine , the same one that was used in Horizon: Zero Dawn .
EVs, as we have already mentioned, are beings from beyond that seek to invade the world of the living . At first we will not have any weapon to face them and all we can do is use BB to find out their position and hold our breath so they do not detect us. If they catch us they will drag us to their world where we will have to face an absorber -a very powerful EV- although we always have the option of fleeing from combat.
Mules and terrorists are the other types of enemies that proliferate in the game. These are former bearers who have lost their sanity and have become addicted to merchandise . They find a special fetish in stealing goods, so the best thing to do is keep your distance or use non-lethal weapons.
If we have the wonderful idea to kill any of these enemies, it will become an EV and will make it even more difficult to raid their camps. You are warned .
Sam, although he can be attacked by any of these enemies, he cannot die as such . He is one of the so-called returnees, people who cannot die or, rather, can revive. When this happens our soul – called ka – must reconnect with our body (or ha ). However, this treatment leaves its mark on our world: wherever we have died, a gigantic crater appears that will remain for a while.
A new concept of online gaming
Actually in Death Stranding we will never be alone thanks to the online section. In this title we will not see other players in real time but we will see the trail they have left in the form of tools and constructions . From the beginning of the game we will have at our disposal the ladder and the climbing anchor, essential to cross any obstacle, and the CQP, a kind of briefcase that will allow us to make different constructions (bridges, mailboxes, shelters …). Any of our buildings will become part of the worlds of other players.
It is a very welcoming feeling to reach an imposing slope and see that staircase ideally arranged by a charitable soul . You do not have to access any type of menu or interaction, simply the fact of building something will be shared with the rest of the world, in a completely organic way. As a thank you you can give a like to whoever places any construction outside of you.
Speaking of likes , it is another of the many crazy ideas that we will see throughout our game and that serve as a point meter within the progress system; some characters will be able to like our interactions, even BB himself.
There are many hours that we will spend alone and although different characters will appear that will make a dent, the moments of solitude will be many within the game; Knowing that you are not the only one who is fighting against the odds to deliver that massive amount of supplies only feeds back the reconnection that Kojima constantly talks about.
From everything explained above emerges another of the fundamentals of the game, planning . When we accept an order, a menu will open where we will select how we distribute the load and the delivery point will be shown, as well as the type of terrain and obstacles that we will encounter.
The environment as an optics of your story
Death Stranding is a game that grants you a limited number of stimuli from time to time. Your main function is to send packages in the best possible condition and time, having to travel very dangerous moors, incessant acid rains and enemies everywhere .
He blindly advocates contemplative gameplay, stopping to admire a waterfall or sitting anywhere and brooding after a long journey that has ended up wearing down your boots.
It is in those moments after having crossed a difficult mountain, a hostile snowy landscape; when our commission is about to be broken, when one’s convictions begin to falter … The HUD begins to disappear and a Low Roar theme is incorporated with a sound fade … You start to feel lighter, the rest of the sounds become opaque, You agree to play with the camera, establishing a new direction in the artistic direction and a series of connections between you and the game that do not need to be overexplained.
It is as simple to understand as that song, or that movie that always manages to tear the most embryonic thing out of your soul. Death Stranding does it by creating those momentums out of thin air. A snapshot and a unique narrative frame are established for each person. The music is played with a certain randomness to startle the player and not try to look for patterns in the appearance of it.
It is Kojima’s way of reconnecting with the player . He knows perfectly how tedious it can be to have delivered forty similar missions after having dodged the unspeakable, after having avoided death – not only because of the BTs but because of the many human errors that we will commit for wanting to stop or think ourselves smarter than the game. – and gives us those little havens of peace.
It does nothing more than draw a parallel with the real world. Everyone has a day when they try to do their best, and the world probably won’t reward us . At that moment when the situation begins to tighten, we untangle our headphones, connect them and begin to listen to the soundtrack of our life.
It is a game that can agglomerate many emotions, especially when you carry a nuclear bomb on your back that beeps with minimal movement while surrounded by EV / PT. I assure you that the tension that is transmitted through the command is very palpable .
At this point, and if you had already read something online, we see that Death Stranding is a very specific proposal for a small audience. Not only because of its mechanics, but because of the iterative nature of its proposal; going from one place to another delivering orders, each one with its own delivery conditions and in a hostile environment during eighty percent of the gameplay does not match at all with the demands of the more general public and has generated highly polarized opinions .
What does Kojima want to tell us?
Regarding its history, without fear of being wrong, this is and will be the most autobiographical work of its author . A nihilistic vision, a man who wanders through a world from which he feels alien, and in that very moment, is when he really realizes that he was never alone. The causality of the connections is no accident; everything is pure agnition, it is the reunion of the Japanese creative with the fruits of his career .
The Chiral Network is nothing but the process of remembering what we are, above all, as a civilization . A completely platonic approach whereby the soul, once detached from the body, can access the invisible world of ideas and recover forgotten forms. Or what is the same, when the apocalypse or any catastrophe ends the world as we know it, we must take a step back and reflect. Everything necessary to survive is inscribed in our DNA, both in our history and our culture. Remember why we are still there; because if we unite we will be able to face any situation, no matter how difficult it may be.
During the first hour, the translucent narrative that Death Stranding offers us is quite overwhelming, it focuses on the objective of connecting all the nodes of the Chiral Network, blurring the rest of the actors in the scene. While you pay attention to each conversation or cinematic, the main ones are releasing little pills, some small detail that will remain in our eardrum throughout the game until the end of the game, but that is not relevant to us at first .
However, its story as well as its gameplay , is thought out and meticulously designed in such a way that it can be rough or crude in its execution, maintaining that premise until almost the end of the game . This is when Kojima unleashes himself. He begins to pull the strings (strands) and begins to show us the adventures that he has been weaving throughout the game.
Obviously we speak in a veiled way because we do not want to spoil the experience for anyone and we consider that the story is a fundamental pillar of the title.
With one of the most daring “endings” in the history of video games , the Japanese man maintains a strong pulse against the established to uncover this trompe l’oeil and offer us an absolutely conclusive and tearful epilogue. In front of us. From the first trailer of the game. Since we saw that ode to Evangelion . When we saw Mads Mikkelsen in the purest Apocalypse Now style.
And you begin to see that the video game, the homo ludens that is talked about so much about the game, has existed since the beginning of time and that it is another transmutation of our way of transmitting our culture and our existential concerns .
When one studies history, literature, painting, cinema, music… One of the first things that one learns is that everything is cyclical and that one of our greatest fears is not knowing our antecedents when, in reality, we are born with them registered.
The epic of Gilgamesh is considered the first written narrative in history , in it we are told the story of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, and his best friend -before enemy- Endiku. After a fight he embarks with Endiku in search of adventure; They will find themselves faced with a series of challenges that will test their abilities and Gilgamesh will face a completely new feeling, that of loss and death. After a series of failed attempts, Gilgamesh was able to briefly meet his lover and discover the meaning of death and its irreversibility.
Two hours after finishing the game, it never occurred to me that Death Stranding , nor many video games, were literature. I was wrong, I was wrong.
As we have seen with Plato, we were born with the Gilgamesh already read, everyone, including your dear reader. Even at the risk of being wrong, I’m sure Hideo Kojima hasn’t read the Gilgamesh yet, but Death Stranding has a large part of his legacy within him.
What both works show us is that being human, due to their own condition, is not capable of disconnecting and we have to realize something even more important. Kojima never spoke of connecting, but of reconnecting. To reconnect.
The connections have always been there, he has never wanted us to seek new stimuli, but to rediscover the ones in front of us. Distances or barriers do not matter as long as we have a point from which to reconnect.
Death Stranding does not want us to be friends with him, but to write to our Amelie, to call Fragile more often, to meet more with Deadman … In short, Kojima bequeaths us a future more than possible – leaving aside the BTs and other paranormal beings – in which all may not be lost as long as we have those who make us who we are, and enjoy the nuclear winter together .
This is something new, a AAA that also has a strong independent authorship component . A title that sets new paths and takes risks around every corner, remarkable progress in a world of loot boxes. A work in which the irony of living a story based on recovering ties with humanity is constantly played on, but which, at the same time, we will spend most of the time alone.
A very special person once told me that she never acted in a way that was not herself. That way of thinking had led him to have a reduced number of links, but yes, he managed to have some imperishable ones and with which he could always reconnect whenever he wanted. Reconnect with yourself.
So nothing in life is just ha or ka, everything in this life will always be RE-: Reconnect, rebuild, retry and remember.
