I decided to start a new series where I talk about a game I recently beat. I last beat Deliver Us Mars and felt like even though I might not beat games all that off, delivering a sort of postmortem might be fun and force me to think more critically about a game after I’ve beaten it. So with that said, let’s jump into Death Stranding.

Death Stranding was a game that I think I couldn’t help but keep at arms length. Not because I didn’t like the gameplay loop, far from it, I liked doing deliveries and the pseudo-puzzle solving of trying to navigate a new area. I think I couldn’t stick with the game because I’ve changed how I played games since the days of Metal Gear.

We can’t have a conversation about Death Stranding without talking about Kojima’s most popular series, Metal Gear. Over the course of 11 mainline games, you play a tactical espionage game of hide and seek. Well, maybe not quite hide and seek, because I always played it sneaky as best I could, but would frequently have to defer to loud gunfights when caught. That’s where my main hang up with playing Death Stranding comes from. I’m not the best at sneaking and Death Stranding punishes violence by giving you more work to do after the fact. So like I wrote before, it’s a wonderful narrative choice, but one that left me stressed. So in situations where I knew there was a part I’d have to go through dangerous territory, I almost always had to take a break from the game. Eventually I found my flow and, crucially, gained tools to make being non-lethal easier, I was finally able to progress through the game. Once the 2nd map opens up and you can start building roads, I really got sucked into the game. It was fun building infrastructure and just getting into a flow of delivering items between outposts. I even started trying to max out contacts to 5 stars because I was having so much fun. I very rarely try to 100% a game, because a lot of the time it feels like busy work and very cumbersome. That’s not to say it didn’t feel cumbersome at times here, but the flow of the mechanics just worked. Especially once you found a route that worked or you unlocked trucks and could load it up full of cargo and just follow a route, dropping off packages as you went.

If I didn’t 100% this game, it’s only because the story got in the way. After a certain chapter, I realized that I was being pushed to the end of the story. I could no longer explore to my hearts content and at one point, I couldn’t complete a job because the outpost I needed to deliver to ended up having a boss fight. From that point on, I couldn’t complete that delivery until I beat the game. Which, if I knew, I wouldn’t have progressed the story as far as I did and would have enjoyed my delivery runs a bit more. I think that gets at the one issue I had with the game, that the story just got in the way. If you notice, I haven’t included a spoiler tag or even really talked about story beats. It’s not that I’m trying to avoid spoilers, I just think the story of the game is the least interesting part of the game. The world is interesting and how the world functions and how you have to adapt makes the game great. But the narrative was just not what was propelling me forward. After a certain point, I gained enough unlocks by playing through the story, that I was kind of content to just deliver. The only reason I pushed forward through the story was to unlock more places to deliver to.

The world of Death Stranding was kind of the best open world I’ve played in because everything was optional. Yes, I could use cargo cannons to shoot my cargo across the map or zip lines to zoom across troublesome spots, which I absolutely did. But I can also just walk through on foot or build myself a nice little highway and drive through the desolate but beautiful world. I still love the mechanic of getting to a new area and you only have what you brought with you to make it to your destination. It reminds you to be grateful for all the tools you can build once you connect it to the larger world and grateful for what your fellow players have built for you. This game is, to me at least, the only game I’ve played that forces a positive interaction with players. Yes souls games have mechanics to leave helpful notes, but they can also troll you and there’s a kind of deep seated cynicism in those mechanics. In the souls games, a player can come into your world you’re always wondering if they’re friend or foe. The only game that I think could compare here is Journey. In that game you can stumble across a random player and you can ping them, but that’s it and if they want to, they can keep moving through the world or you can both help each other traverse the world.

The only reason I say that Death Stranding is better, is because there are more concrete ways to help your players. I remember messing up and not having shoes on me and my character was forced to walk barefoot. I was able to make it to my destination, request a player give me shoes and I actually just turned the game off. When I was ready to play again, those shoes were waiting for me. Another time, my stamina was drained and there was nothing I could do to recover it. But thankfully I stumbled across a shelter placed by a player and I was able to rest and keep going. I think that’s the core feeling that this game really wants to push on you. Just keep going, keep pushing, keep building out your toolbox in this world and it’ll all just get a little better. Maybe it’s a bit saccharine to say that this game has lessons for our time. But I’m reminded of a conversation I was having with a friend. We were playing Call of Duty and talking about how rules are in place to make sure you’re respecting your fellow players when you play online. So you’re not supposed to name call, you’re not supposed to grief other players and you can’t show unsportsmanlike behavior. But, there is a emote you can use when you’re one of the top players of a match to flip off your fellow players when they’ve lost. Games in general have a cynicism to them as part of the culture itself. You’re struggling at a game? Get good. People being rude to you in a online game? Grow a spine. This game is kind of the opposite of all of that. You’re struggling? Ask for help, a player can send you supplies. You see someone put down a ladder that saved your day? Give it some likes, show some appreciation.

I’ve talked to some people who played Death Stranding and they purposefully turned off the online component to make it harder. Which I think defeats the whole ethos of the game. The point is to help others and in turn receive help yourself. I’m not saying the game is perfect, like I said the story is the least interesting part. It has cool character concepts, but it’s hard to combine all those concepts into a serious narrative. But this game is kind of a game for game enthusiasts, not gamers. It’s a game that I will encourage everyone to play and it is that game that you have to kind of level set and say the beginning is rough, you might think it’s dumb, but when it all clicks, you will be sucked in. It is probably one of the few games that if someone says they didn’t like it, I can do the snooty thing and say that they just didn’t get it.