‘Death Stranding’: Death as Life’s Goad
Unique. Death Stranding breaks all genre barriers and refuses to offer the fatigue the market demands, offering instead a much needed vision. A big budget game fulfilling so humbly and confidently the functions of art is something you don’t see everyday. This is a great game d’auteur with a science fiction setting, immersed in the very personal and peculiar style of the legendary Hideo Kojima. The theme, connection, is established early and accompanies us from beginning to end, where it then unfolds as part of a new byword.
Death Sranding’s plot is convoluted, it starts smoothly by exposing the rules of the game universe and some information about the post-apocalyptic world devastated by an event known as Death Stranding, then it continues abrasively until the end of the game, where it’s all discharged at once. The writing is very safe and, although there is quite a dose of hidden symbolism, it always presents itself in a careful and simple way, as if it was afraid that something could be misunderstood. Due to this phenomenon, it’s common to hear sentences such as “you will understand everything in a moment”, “let me explain” or “I was investigating and…”, which are rather stiff crutches. Episode nine’s writing is far below the rest of the game and Higgs (Troy Baker), the “main villain”, is certainly the weakest character. Despite having some of the most interesting moments in the game and a good backstory, he is poorly integrated and relatively forced. The writing benefits a lot from the interviews and emails that we receive throughout the game; there we find personal stories and narrative details from the fascinating world of Death Stranding. The ending is also quite coherent and, to a certain extent, impressive, even though it sharply shifts direction twice, making of the leading plot thread a mere maneuverable wire. In truth, everything is well connected and the game perfectly conveys the message it wants, even so, it has some difficulties in balancing it with the story of great cathartic dimensions in a fraction of equal denominators.
Graphically, the game from Kojima Productions is quite competent. The animations are sublime: the stumbles, the hands resting on the floor, the tics when adjusting the load etc., everything is well accomplished; the ever infamous vegetation is well made; the models are great, especially those of the natural elements; the lighting is phenomenal, notably in cinematics, where even the refraction of light in the glass stands out; the shadows are perfect; the varied landscapes inspired by Icelandic nature are beautiful; and the recreation of rugged terrain is exceptional. Also note the capable physics and high quality cinematography, with a careful composition and good use of close shots, typical of Kojima. However, there are some flaws, such as certain facial animations in some cinematics, sporadic cases of lip desynchronization, imperfect textures, pop-ups, jagging problems, fire effects that could be better, and some defective collision detection that is a bit too frequent.
The gameplay focuses the delivering of cargo through the wild scenery, avoiding human and paranormal dangers along the way. The act of walking is different from any other game, as our balance really counts here and if we don’t balance ourselves properly or divide the load correctly before setting foot on the road, we will fall and damage the goods. Orders must be delivered to progress in the narrative and advance character development, which includes unlocking equipment at a stable and highly elongated pace — even after 50 hours it’s still possible to unlock new items. These include consumables, lethal and non-lethal weapons, vehicles, technological gadgets with a thousand purposes and much more.
The gameplay is quite varied, even with most of it dedicated to deliveries, there is a hybrid combat system with action and stealth, with the action part working well most of the time, particularly in hand-to-hand combat with the use of the strand (the so-called strand, which is only used to deflect attacks from enemies or tie them up) and the load itself, which can be graciously thrown. Running away is also a viable option and causes some hectic moments. The stealthy part is monotonous in terms of options against paranormal entities, while against humans it offers more dynamism, even though the level design is never prepared for these moments. Some other missteps include: the material detection radius of the auto-paver could be larger; getting into vehicles has a long animation that gets tiring rather fast; activating the odradek (a scanner for terrain, cargo and enemies) also has an endless mandatory ten-second animation; the menus are logically confusing and when the player gets familiarised with the navigation and starts to use them more quickly, they fail to keep up, accusing a lack of shortcuts and automated processes; and boss battles, while original and lively, are somewhat circular and not very fluid.
One must commend the way the gameplay conveys the intended message by using, for example, the paranormal entities that try to catch us, dead people who want to connect with the world of the living again to forge a connection, and the online aspect, a world of mutual help in a network that, without direct contact, connects us to dozens of people and shows the best of each of us as altruist players. This asynchronous online system allows the creation of structures that appear in the worlds of other players, facilitating the delivery processes. As a reward, we can assign likes in a kind of alternative social network, these likes serve chiefly as a mean to transmit positive energy between the players, since the improvement of Sam’s skill levels that comes from it is very restricted and sort of meaningless. As in the never-forgotten Journey, the final credits include the names of those with whom we have connected, reflecting the intimacy created with others to fill the game’s landscape, despite the anonymity.
The open world design is great and lessens the strenuous backtracking cycle that the game forces you to do, making each step more exciting. The initial pace of the adventure is extremely slow and may demand some tenacity, but when it increases, we unlock more equipment and get access to new game mechanics, that’s when Death Stranding takes on a new life. There are some traits of emergent gameplay, with unique situations created by individual acts, so each player will have a different adventure and leave lots of details undiscovered if they don’t purposefully try all the possibilities.
A bothersome detail is that cities have thousands of people, there is a living world constantly mentioned, but you never see parts of these cities or traces of anyone anywhere. Contact with large populations is lacking and communication with NPCs through holograms is, therefore, underwhelming. For the feeling of a devastated void and a bond absence to be correctly transmitted, the opposite is needed — it’s contrast that gives palpability to emotions, and the emptiness of Death Stranding ends up slightly artificial by purposefully hiding the possible feelings of human connection it describes in its lore documents.
Death Stranding is unmistakably Japanese. Endless menus and abrupt escapes from realism without the fear of obliterating the suspension of disbelief. Even more, it’s a Kojima game, he who always makes a point of breaking the fourth wall, however, that isn’t enough, there are small details in some secondary texts that go even further, blurring the line of what it really is to break or not to break the fourth wall — it can be said that Kojima breaks up even an extra wall in these segments. Note also for the huge section of tips (there are 256!), very useful, although some are almost identical.
Integrated advertising like seeing real energy drinks in the game and even Norman Reedus’ TV series is weird, however, if it helped to pay for the monumental amount of licensed music, ave!, because it was worth it. The soundtrack is anything short of other-wordly and can be divided into three parts: the licensed songs; the songs made by various artists for the game, compiled on the album Death Stranding: Timefall; and Ludvig Forssell’s original soundtrack. Any of them is incredible and adequate, and the licensed songs, which play strategically during some special moments of deliveries or in certain areas of the map, leave a deep mark. Almost all of them are from the artist Low Roar and add a lot of personality to the game. In terms of vocal performance, the high-profile actors perform very well, with some intense scenes superbly managed, especially by Tommie Earl Jenkins and Mads Mikkelsen. Regarding the sound effects, there is, in good Japanese style, an exaggeration in quantity, a sound effect for everything, which gets to be irritating, despite the good choice of sounds.
By the end of the game, we have about two hours of sporadic minimalist gameplay very interestingly intersected with the cinematics, which make up the vast majority of this section. In the final stretch there is an atmosphere that could well be in a Terrence Malick film. Human perseverance, the continued fighting in a harsh universe that inadvertently tries to erase us — Death Stranding makes us feel small, like ants crushed by the goofy walk of the cosmos, but at the same time, it shows humanity through a very close shot, in which humanity’s lively flame can be seen.
Carrying a positive and hopeful message, so important in this current era of division where the space between people seems to be gradually expanding, the Kojima Productions’ title is relevant. With its narrative virtues and brilliant game design, this is a unique experience, a work of art steeped in spirit that must be played. The expectations of being revolutionary have been fulfilled, but as a game it isn’t perfect. It achieves its goals, but it does so brazenly and clumsily, as it is a bit sterile and staggers a little in its communication. Death Stranding is still an advancement, a milestone declaration, a peace treaty for video games, and that is what already makes it part of history. A game of this budget doing something like this is one of the big things that happened in the industry. The insertion of video games into the artistic and cultural panorama has proven difficult and has been taking longer than it should, but, thankfully, Death Stranding has come to accelerate the process.
This article was translated from the original in Portuguese I made for Comunidade Cultura e Arte.
