Death Stranding is an action game developed by Kojima Productions. It is the first game from director Hideo Kojima and Kojima Productions after their split from Konami in 2015. It was released by Sony Interactive Entertainment for the PlayStation 4 on November 8, 2019, and by 505 Games for Windows on July 14th, 2020.
The game is set in the United States following a cataclysmic event which caused destructive creatures to begin roaming the Earth. Players control Sam Porter Bridges (Norman Reedus), a courier tasked with delivering supplies to isolated colonies and reconnecting them via a wireless communications network. Alongside Reedus, the game features actors Mads Mikkelsen, Léa Seydoux, Margaret Qualley, Troy Baker, Tommie Earl Jenkins, and Lindsay Wagner, in addition to the likenesses of film directors Guillermo del Toro and Nicolas Winding Refn as supporting characters.
Death Stranding was nominated for a number of awards including Game of the Year, and received generally favorable reviews, with critics praising its voice acting, soundtrack, and visuals, but were polarized regarding its gameplay and story. It was nominated nine times at the Game Awards 2019, more than any other game that year. It would go on to win three, including Best Game Direction, Best Score/Music, and Best Performance (awarded to Mads Mikkelsen). In early 2020, numerous commentators noted that elements of the game resembled the COVID-19 pandemic.
Gameplay –
Death Stranding is an action game set in an open world, and includes asynchronous online functions. Kojima refers to Death Stranding as the first “strand game”, an original genre characterized by the game’s incorporation of social elements. Kojima compared this genre to how his earlier game Metal Gear—now considered a stealth game—was called an action game during its release because the stealth genre had not been established.
The player controls Sam Bridges, a porter for a company known as Bridges. The player is tasked with delivering supply cargo to various isolated cities known as KNOTs, as well as isolated researchers and survivalists, while also connecting them to a communications system known as the Chiral Network. The player is evaluated by the company and recipients based on their performance (including via “likes” similar to social networks), including whether the cargo was delivered, and if it is intact among other factors.
These merits are, in turn, used to level up the player’s statistics, such as stability and weight capacity, and increase their standing with individual locations and characters (which can improve rewards). How cargo is packed by the player, and the overall weight being carried, affect Sam’s ability to navigate through the environments.
The player’s main enemies include otherworldly creatures known as “beached things” (BTs), MULE (a cult of rogue, bandit-like porters influenced by an obsession with cargo, who attempt to steal deliveries so they can deliver it themselves), and Demens, MULEs who have begun killing porters to claim their cargo. BTs are surrounded by a rain known as “timefall”, which damages the player’s armor and cargo by speeding up their deterioration. BTs are normally invisible, but Sam’s suit is equipped with a robotic sensor that points towards nearby BTs, and the player can then scan the area to reveal them.
As Sam is a “Repatriate”, he is taken to an underwater world known as the “Seam” if he is killed, where he can “swim” back to his body to revive himself. However, being killed and consumed by a BT also results in a destructive explosion known as a “voidout”, which permanently damages the location of the death with an untraversable crater.
As players expand the coverage of the Chiral Network, they can access maps of areas, and use blueprints to produce consumable items and structures with the Portable Chiral Constructor (PCC, a device similar to a 3D printer), including ropes, bridges, and power generators used for charging battery-powered equipment. The Network is also used as the basis for the game’s online functionality, where players can leave supplies, structures, and messages that can be viewed and used by other players, although structures will eventually be destroyed by Timefall after some time. The player can also recover cargo lost by other players to complete their delivery. The player does not directly encounter other players in the world.
Game theme –
The game is set in an apocalyptic United States, where a cataclysmic event known as the “Death Stranding” caused “Beached Things” (“BTs”)—invisible creatures originating from the “Beach”, lands thought to be unique to each person that are typically visited during near-death experiences and are said to be the link to the afterlife—to begin roaming the Earth.
BTs cause explosions known as “void outs” when they consume the dead by necrosis, and produce rain known as “Timefall” that rapidly ages and deteriorates whatever it hits. These events damaged the country’s infrastructure, leading its remaining population to confine themselves to remote colonies known as “Knot Cities,” which form the remaining “United Cities of America”.
These colonies have since relied on the services of a company known as Bridges, whose porters brave the BTs, bandits, and terrorists to deliver supplies to the cities. Bridges also performs various governmental functions on behalf of the UCA. If they achieve a mental connection to a “Bridge Baby” (a “BB”)—a premature child reflecting a state between life and death—it is possible for a person to sense the presence of a BT.
Porters carry a BB with them, which is stored in a pod simulating a mother’s womb. A condition known as “DOOMS”, depending on its severity, also allows a person to naturally sense, see, or even control a BT, as well as granting a variety of powers, such as teleportation or travel to other people’s Beaches. There are also individuals known as “repatriates” who can travel back from “the Seam”—a place between the world of the living and the Beach—upon death. As such, these individuals can effectively return from death, though their deaths will still cause void outs if killed during contact with a BT.
Plot –
Freelance courier Sam Porter Bridges (Norman Reedus) is transporting cargo but is interrupted by Timefall. He receives assistance from Fragile (Léa Seydoux) in evading a BT. When she leaves, Sam continues his delivery. He arrives at his destination Central Knot City, only to be warned that one of the citizens has committed suicide and their corpse is on the verge of necrosis.
Due to being both a repatriate and having DOOMS, Sam is assigned to transport the corpse to an incinerator to safely dispose of it, but an encounter with BTs hinders his progress and the corpse causes a voidout, destroying Central Knot City. He awakens in Capital Knot City and meets Deadman (Guillermo del Toro/Jesse Corti), a doctor from Bridges. Sam is then tasked to deliver morphine for the dying president of the UCA, his adoptive mother Bridget Strand (Lindsay Wagner/Emily O’Brien).
He also meets Die-Hardman (Tommie Earl Jenkins), the director of Bridges and Sam’s former boss before he left the organization. Bridget pleads with Sam to rejoin Bridges and help rebuild America before succumbing to her illness. Sam transports Bridget’s body to be incinerated but refuses to incinerate BB-28, a Bridge Baby that has been marked for retirement. With BB-28’s assistance, Sam is able to evade a horde of BTs and return to Capital Knot City. Sam decides to take BB-28 as his own Bridge Baby, eventually nicknaming him Lou.
Upon his return, Sam is reunited with his sister Amelie Strand (also Wagner/O’Brien). She tells him that over the past three years, she has led an expedition across what is left of the continental United States, making contact with the remaining cities and survivor settlements and setting up terminals that would allow them to connect to the Chiral Network, a system that facilitates instantaneous communication across vast distances. However, upon reaching the last city on the West Coast, Edge Knot City, Amelie was captured and is being held hostage by an anti-UCA terrorist group called the Homo Demens to guarantee Edge Knot City’s independence.
In the aftermath, Die-Hardman takes Amelie’s place as the President of the UCA, with the rest of the Bridges staff dedicated to keeping the UCA safe. Fragile resolves to rebuild her trading company. Sam is told that Lou has died, and is assigned to transport the corpse to the incinerator. He connects with Lou one last time and discovers the memories he has been viewing aren’t Lou’s, but his own, making him Clifford’s son. Clifford died trying to smuggle the infant Sam out of a Bridges lab.
Sam was also killed in the incident but was revived by Amelie, establishing their connection and turning him into the first repatriate, which in turn facilitated BTs to enter into the world of the living. Since Sam was no longer suitable to be a Bridge Baby, Bridget instead decided to adopt him and raise him as her own son. Back in the present, Sam decides not to incinerate Lou and manages to resuscitate him as infant BTs watch. Sam refers to Lou as “Louise”, revealing that she is female.
Development –
After a lengthy corporate conflict with Konami as a restricted subsidiary, Kojima Productions closed in July 2015 and reformed as an independent video game developer and studio in December. The same month, Hideo Kojima announced his partnership with Sony Interactive Entertainment, at the time led by Andrew House, to make a new PlayStation game.
Kojima revealed the game at Sony’s conference during E3 2016 with the trailer. It was made possible with the technology of photogrammetry and motion capture. It featured Norman Reedus, who served as the basis for the protagonist. The game is the second collaboration between Kojima and Reedus, following the cancelled Silent Hills. Kojima and Mark Cerny, lead system architect of the PlayStation 4, spent two weeks in January 2016 looking for a game engine on which to develop the game.
One of the two remaining candidates had been used to create the teaser trailer. Guerrilla Games would later be announced as a collaborator on the development of the game, as it was providing their proprietary game engine, Decima. Kojima Productions’ meeting room was recreated in the engine as a reference of accuracy, and for the purpose of testing physically-based lighting.
Death Stranding Review –
The game’s announcement at E3 2016 was met with positive reception and discussion: from the entrance of Hideo Kojima, introduced by Andrew House on the Sony stage, welcomed with great enthusiasm after his “Hello, hello everyone. I’m back!” exclamation, to the teaser trailer itself, especially for Reedus’ appearance and interpretation, triggering several reaction videos from the public which were widespread on YouTube.
Kojima’s arrival and the trailer were chosen by several publications to be two of the most discussed moments at the event. In the period after the shown trailers and basic game information, fans speculated their theories about the game, its gameplay and its plot, organizing themselves in communities on discussion forums. In 2017, Death Stranding was nominated by Golden Joystick Awards in the category “Most Wanted Game”, but lost to The Last of Us Part II. In June 2018, during the days following the E3 press conferences, Death Stranding reached the top ten in the most watched video game trailers on YouTube, with more than 4.5 million views.
Legacy –
Numerous commentators noted that the game’s story and gameplay resembled the COVID-19 pandemic. The game’s prescient similarities to the coronavirus crisis has drawn comparisons to the way in which a previous Kojima game, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (2001), had anticipated 2010s phenomena such as fake news and echo chambers. A Chinese man developed a Death Stranding-inspired suit designed to protect his baby from COVID-19. In March 2020, Death Stranding inspired a parody game, Walking Simulator, set in a post-apocalyptic world devastated by the coronavirus outbreak.
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