therapy, ghosts, and package delivery
Death Stranding is a 2019 video game by Kojima Productions. Its plot centres around Sam (Norman Reedus), a Porter who moves freight from one place to another through a landscape riddled with supernatural danger. The game also stars Lea Seydoux as Fragile, Mads Mikkelsen as Cliff, Troy Baker as Higgs, Nicolas Winding Refn as Heartman, Tommie Earl Jenkins as Die-Hardman, Margaret Qualley as Mama, and Guillermo del Toro as Deadman.
I won’t go into much detail because I don’t want to spoil the story. All the character names are well-explained; most of their backgrounds are tragic. It’s brilliant, and all about death.
it’s a good game
Death Stranding is a very good game. Allow me to opine a moment on this triple-A indie title:
The graphics are, obviously, incredible. Attached to this post are some photos I made in-game to showcase this. The quality draws you into the sweeping vistas and bleak, beautiful environments. There are blizzarded mountaintops, craggy and acidic deserts, volatile volcanic expanses, and lush, rocky forests. All places where one might be destroyed by a BT (Beached Thing) or eaten away by Timefall.
The gameplay is a perfect loop: a mix of combat, stealth, exploration, and navigation all for the sole purpose of package delivery. Who knew a mailman simulator could be so enjoyable? That rush when you’re surprised by a gang of stealthy MULEs, or the breathless moment when you think you’ve gotten away from a BT, only to be grabbed and whipped through a pool of tar and into the arms of the dead. For me, getting sucked into the loop is like making my own movie through unique in-game experiences.
The atmosphere (sound design, weather, general look and feel) is very tightly designed. Every locale has a specific feel to it, and while all are unique, all are inherently tied to the Death Stranding event, and the fact that the dead now walk the Earth. The minimal HUD and flashy, numbers-ridden distribution centre interfaces cement the world further: a futuristic, high-tech world with few people and the threat of death ever looming. Vehicles and roads may be 3-D printable, but foodstuffs must be trekked across the continent by foot. The soundtrack, largely music by the Icelandic band Low Roar, is a perfect fit for the overall atmosphere of the game.
The characters are real people, i.e. the animated faces are motion-captured from the actor, rather than a new face being designed to suit the character. For me, this makes suspension of disbelief much more effective as watching cutscenes is like watching real people act out a scene. The dialogue matches lip movements, the voices come from real human beings that you seen on screen, and the writing allows each actor to play to their strengths while still telling the story of the Death Stranding. Though most of the game centres on Sam alone, he and his BB (Bridge Baby, a conscious foetus used as a tool to detect BTs) have a unique and warm relationship. If BB gets upset, Sam needs to rock him back to sleep. BB might even throw Sam a Like for doing something fun, like snowboarding.
The strand (a rope braided with fibres woven from Sam’s blood) turns out to be, again and again, a weapon far superior to any lethal rifle, grenade, or quad-rocket launcher. It can be used for climbing, incapacitating enemies, and for helping others. In the world of Death Stranding, killing other people will cause massive explosions—voidouts—instantly vaporizing a portion of the Earth’s surface. So what's better than the silent, utilitarian strand?
The strands that bind the game’s characters together, and bind the dead to the Earth, are well-written and complex. The story does not pull punches: it is at times extremely violent, miserable, funny, raw, and beautiful. Because of the connection I found with each character, and the connection I found with other players, Death Stranding became a deeply engaging experience.
it’s a spiritual game.
At its core, Death Stranding is about helping one another. Each player, whenever they place an object in the game—a bridge, a rope, a ladder, a post-box—places an object that is accessible to other players as well. These others can help upgrade objects, aiding the community in crossing tough terrain, providing materials to build more tools, and even constructing roads to make deliveries that much easier. Death Stranding is an asymmetric multi-player game, meaning players do not interact simultaneously. This leads to the player being thankful for constructs from other players without ever truly interacting with them.
Because Death Stranding focuses on the remnants of America after an apocalyptic event, and because the denizens of the country are so few, there is not much of an economy. There are materials (metals, ceramics, chemicals, etc.) used to 3D-print tools, and Likes given to porters and others who do their jobs well, but no currency to speak of. Likes are more of a status symbol than anything else—and dislikes cannot be given. The only interaction with others is positive or, at worst, neutral. The society in Death Stranding, if it can be called a society, is based on aiding one another: porters are given food and shelter in return for their essential service of freight movement. Despite the horrors of the Beach, it is always rewarding to get an email from someone you surprised with a fresh pizza.
Spiritually, Death Stranding is a majority-positive experience. It can be scary or frustrating at times—especially when accidentally throwing a load of cargo down a mountainside—but as long as the freight gets to its destination in one piece, you’ll get a few Likes. The focus on positive community interaction, and the inability to interact with other players negatively, make Death Stranding a uniquely positive experience in an era of warring factions, cynicism, and pessimism.
I’ve read about Eye Movement Desensitizing and Reprocessing (EMDR), a form of therapy based on distracting your brain into reprocessing trauma though bilateral stimulation (side-to-side movements) of the eyes. In short, while conjuring a memory of a traumatic event, and while consciously focusing on a moving object, one may be desensitized to the traumatic memory rather than attempt to forget or bury it.
The side-to-side movement of our eyes while navigating through our environment—by driving, cycling, walking, or playing Death Stranding—may be a lesser form of EMDR. The monotony of the majority of Death Stranding, and the reason many people dislike it, is what I find most gratifying: you walk, you trip, you right yourself, and you keep walking. For hours. I generally have a lot of stuff going on in my head, and playing the game allows me to distractedly sort through my thoughts and process them, learning my own approaches to life.
I like this game.
I haven’t read or watched any analyses on Death Stranding save a ‘should you buy’ before I got it. The Death Stranding world is so richly envisioned that one could write a story about any porter, going through any sort of harrowing adventure. The game becomes your story, rather than just Sam’s.
Suffice to say, Death Stranding is one of the most rewarding and touching stories I’ve ever experienced. I heavily recommend it, especially for the cool sunglasses.
