10 Reasons to play Death Stranding (+ BONUS)

Hi Dreamers!

I had talk about this game before (#1502), but I think that it’s interesting to analyze it deeper, especially now that Director’s cut was out, I finished the story and I played it for around 40 hours. Spoiler: I liked it A LOT.

This 10 reasons don’t want to be any miscellaneous list of spicy things that you can find inside the game or obviousness (Easter eggs, fan service or “It’s a Kojima game dude! You can’t lost it!“). And, most important, it’s not a review. I’m not a reviewer or a journalist. I’m a game designer! So this is an Analysis.

This is my first analysis at all so, don’t be mad. You can hate it, you can love it. This is my idea about a work of entertainment and it can differing form yours. I’m interested in other opinions, so leave a comment below with your idea!

I have to put some spoiler inside this analysis. If you want to avoid them just don’t read the ORANGE TEXT.

And now we can start!

1. Complex Story

At the beginning, no one could imagine what’s going on in the world of Death Stranding. No one told us what we were seeing. Frustrating. But… After few hours we understood the logics and mechanics behind. Like the characters we hadn’t an answer about “why”. It will come only at the end of the game.

I don’t put in this top 10 list “Acting”, “Characters” or something like that, but they are inside this point. It’s impossible that a complex story it’s also a good story if there’s poorly written characters or the actors/actress are not convincing.

The most famous in the “cast” (is so strange to use this word for a videogame even in 2022) are Sam (Norman Reedus), Deadman (Guillermo Del Toro) and Cliff (Mads Mikkelsen), but also the others characters are special in some way.

I loved Mama (Margaret Qualley), for example. The story behind her character was so intense!

Kojima is a master in writing. Sometimes the jap-style kicks in and it can be a little weird, especially for westerns, but the story still very good.

2. An hostile world

Talking about the strange rules that we found in this world. What I thought in the early hours was “What a bad place to live!” one of the worst ever!

Ok… Live in Doom can be even worse, but if you think to live something like a normal life Death Stranding’s world is sooo bad! Believe me.

1. You have to avoid to walking in the rain at all because it will kill you ageing rapidly.
2. If you die and no one burn your body in 72h, you will destroy everything in an area of a city. Your parents, children, your friends, neighbors, police, … And if you’re alone in home and nobody discover your dead body? Boom.
3. If you die in this way, or your soul never reach the afterlife, you will become a CA. Well done. Your job now it’s to chase the living souls. If you are successful you will cause an explosion like the previous point.
4. About CA. If you’re a living soul and you don’t want to became a crater I’ve a news for you: the common people CANNOT sense in any way a CA. Only if you have a particular power or with the support of a BB (that is an experiment, so you don’t find them in a mall) you can sense them.
5. No paved road, no animals. Only raw nature.
6. All the cities are little more that villages and are not linked (no road, remember?)
7. There are everywhere Mule. Crazy people that want to kill you and stole your cargo (and you are a delivery guy).
8. There are also terrorists! Oh so nice! What they want? Extinction of the human race. As we needed someone to help the world to complete this job!

Probably I forget something, but it’s just a bad place to live, don’t you think?

3. Social Metaphor

This is interesting. I don’t see any interview of Kojima about this game, but, what I feel when I started to play is a strong metaphor of our lives in the 20’s.

The game rewards the player with “likes” like in a social network. No money, only “reputation”. There’s a lot of references to our lifestyle.

For example cuffs link. You have to wear handcuffs to be linked to the net. You see the metaphor?

Isolation is another theme of the game (we’ll see it more in #9). Sam is most of the time totally alone in the middle of nowhere. He hates people that touch him, it’s a phobia. Also the people that lives in the cities are always represented as holograms. They almost never meet Sam personally. This kind of problems can be related to “Hikikomori“. A term that represent a social issue strongly felt in Japan (but also in all the other rich country of the world, even here in Italy). This kind of problem is become more and more serious because nowadays is possible to live buried at home. You can order food with home delivery, you can work at home, sleeping, buy something on Amazon, play games, see movies. it’s possible to live totally “online”.

4. World Design

I love explorations games. I love games with big maps, procedural or not! For example I love Minecraft and No Man’s Sky, but I also love Elder Scrolls saga and Fallout.

This game is so satisfying if you like to explore natural landscape. The world aspect is one of the most important thing in this game. It’s very realistic, so emotional and dressed with melancholic songs here and there.

I’m sure more there were a lot of people worked on model of the world and they made a great job.

5. Movements

The most basic interaction of a player with a 3d game is the movement. But in more than 30 years we are not reach yet a “perfection”. There’s a lot of games with good level of controls. But there’s always some bugs, some issue, some struggle for the user.

Death Stranding it’s not our savior on this point BUT… It is probably one of the most free and well made game about movements.

Animations, terrain, behavior of the character to different conditions and we can’t forget the vehicles! A lot of mechanics of the game cover the “movement” problem and I can see a lot of work to solve a lot of critical situations.

6. Game Over is justified

This is the core ability of Kojima (for me) about game design. He’s able to justify or give more depth to a lot of common videogame situations. These choices can really go crazy a player because are unusual but very strong.

For example, one of the most “embarrassing” videogame situation is the “Game Over”. Almost every game has a game over scene. No one pretend that a game needs to explain narratively why you can play again the same level when you lose it.

It’s a simple erase of your errors. Sometimes game over has consequences, sometimes they have not, but players don’t need a reason why after a second my pg is again ready to fight. It’s a deal between the game and the player. We as players never think about that, it’s ok.

Well, Kojima said “If you fail your game will have consequences but you can retry. And you can retry because Sam can really do it again. When you fail, Sam really fail with you and no one will change this.”

Very powerful. Someone can say “It’s useless” and it can be true, but on my opinion this kind of attentions are something that move a game to the next level in most of the cases.

7. Is creepy but is not an horror

Kojima has affinity with horrors. It’s not a secret. Some years ago, he was the guy that should had to give new life to Silent Hill (one of the most famous horror IP in videogames history, and property of Konami). He also release a demo in 2014 called P.T. that make me (and a lot of others guys) crazy about what he can do for this genre. Unfortunately always was archived very soon.

About Death Stranding. There’s some specific moments in which you can have a little shake but the most of this situation are more weird or stressful than horror.

I personally like this because when something really strange is coming you don’t expect it and shakes take you. In horror’s you are always ready to some scary situation so, after 3-4 hours the majority lose impact on player.

8. Best inventory system until now

Oh! This one is huge guys. Like the #6 this is one on my favorite point of the list. In every videogames is accepted that a pg can take with him an inventory of 200 kilograms or over 400 pounds, be a living armory, put in the bag an entire castle. No problem!

In Death Stranding, what you see is what you have. You have to balance the weight, make some strategies to carry weights in some dangerous situation or put more attention on a fragile package.

So you want to take all the loot? Do you have enough space man? It’s common to left something behind in order to carry more easily the mission packages. So smart.

9. Covid Metaphor (unintentional)

I talk about this point yet in #1502. The game was released on 2019, before the start of the pandemic so, I don’t think that Kojima can read the future and it is an unintentional metaphor, for sure. But it is.

Here in Italy we pass some months in 2020 in lockdown. No one can go out in the street without a valid reason. So, who can work at home is forced to do smart working. Who can travel around the city all the time? The delivery guys.

Everybody lock at home and a Delivery guy that leave to you package in cities that seems ghost town. The people have fear about their health and when someone take the virus a lot of people near to him take it (the explosion of the dead people). Does this remind you of anything?

10. It’s not just a “Delivery Guy Simulator”

One of the most ferocious critic about this game was “Why I have to buy a Delivery Guy Simulator”? Talking about the game, seeing some early gameplay you can really think this, it’s justified!

But the game gradually change his mechanics and introduce “war” (a sort of). Obviously, the focus is always on delivery package but it’s not only that. If you still read this list and you never play it, you can try without doubts.

BONUS. Not so single player

I always prefer single player games. Because I play for the experience that I have playing. I can live the game at the level that I prefer. If I want to role play and put myself in the game, multiplayer is not the right place to do it.

Talking about Death Stranding. It’s single player. But! Mr Kojima put inside the game a mechanic really interesting for people like me that don’t like interactions with other players.

You can put signals for others players (as in From Software games) but it’s not end: you can build some structure in world or leave some equip or vehicles to help other players. Collaborative multiplayer.

Warm, don’t change your experience so much and it’s useful especially if you are more interested in the story and you don’t want to lose time farming resources to build equip or structures.

It was very tough write this list in English (and very long!) but it was fun!

Let me know what you think about this game in the comments.

See you later dreamers!