Death Stranding was released in November of 2019 for the PlayStation 4. It was created by Hideo Kojima after his departure from Konami, and is the first project made by his studio Kojima Productions after it became independent from Konami.
The game has a strange backstory, to be sure. You probably recognize Daryl Dixon from AMC's The Walking Dead on the front cover. Norman Reedus was set to appear in a new video game by Konami, which would be produced by Kojima Productions. The game in question was to be the latest release in the Silent Hill franchise. However, after the falling out between Konami and Kojima, the game was cancelled, and instead, Reedus found himself being tapped for a totally different project Kojima had come up with.
Death Stranding is an action game taking place in what can only be described as a whole new take on the "post-apocalyptic" genre. The setting is a United States that is barely recognizable as even a real place anymore.
A world-changing event called the Death Stranding happened. It is truly hard to describe what this means. I've played the game all the way through, and understand it as much as one can, and I still can't fully explain what it is. All I can say is that the Death Stranding broke - nay, rewrote - all the rules that we have come to accept about nature, life, death, and even what it means to be alive or dead.
After the Death Stranding happened, the world became much more dangerous. Rainfall became timefall which was to be avoided, as it caused time to accelerate for whatever it touched. The boundary between the living and the dead became much thinner, as people became able to access an area called the Beach - a physical manifestation of this boundary, unique to each person who visits. And that wasn't all. Strange creatures called Beached Things, or BTs, began to inhabit the world of the living, and posed a threat to any living creature.
Under such conditions, it was only natural that the human race would feel the need and drive to seclude itself in places safe from the outside world. The last surviving humans locked themselves away in various cities called the Knot Cities all across the country. In these areas of relative safety, humanity has nothing to fear from the BTs or the newly hostile conditions brought by the Death Stranding. But without people willing to brave these conditions, humans would surely be unable to survive without the necessities of life and survival. For this reason, a new job was created for people who elected to face the dangers.
This is where our hero, Sam Porter Bridges comes in. Sam works as a freelance "Porter," a courier who works outside of the Knot Cities, delivering goods to people while risking his life against the newly dangerous elements and the world of the living's new inhabitants. After a job gone wrong, Sam is recruited by his former colleagues at the Bridges delivery company and the last remnants of the United States government - now the United Cities of America or UCA for short, to travel across the country and bring the rest of the country onto a new proprietary communications and data transmission network, connecting those who had once been separated.
As Sam travels across the country, he makes new friends and enemies, unravels the secrets of the Death Stranding, and helps to restore hope to a bleak new world.
Oh my word. I'm not entirely sure how else to start with this game other than to tell you, it is like nothing you or I have ever played before.
Like many out there who love their games, I was truly disappointed when I learned that Hideo Kojima would no longer have any involvement with Konami, or by extension, his magnum opus that is the Metal Gear Solid series. And that's without even mentioning the nightmare of a shameless cash grab that was Metal Gear...Met-...Me....UGH! Metal Gear Survive!
Sorry about that. I struggled to even type the name of that mistake-in-a-box. I feel like by mentioning it in this review, I am dignifying it as a game rather than the middle finger to Metal Gear fans it really was.
But I have to say, this game was a spectacular move by Hideo Kojima. I wonder what the executives and representatives of Konami thought when this game came out - seeing what Kojima could accomplish without them.
Normally, I evaluate each of my review subjects by area, sorting out what I did and didn't like about the subject in question, aspect by aspect. But before I do that, I want to highlight a few noteworthy points. There are several things I could say about this game that make it unlike anything the gaming world has ever seen.
As anybody familiar with Kojima probably knows, one of his trademarks is that his work is very often based on some of his favorite movies. Kojima loves movies. But especially action movies. And if one looks close enough, the player can draw parallels between Kojima's work and some famous movie they've seen, including ones that Kojima probably didn't even intend. As an example, when I play the Metal Gear Solid series, it feels to me as though Kojima combined elements from the Rambo movies, 007, Apocalypse Now, Escape From New York and its sequel Escape From L.A., Robocop, and just a *smidge* of Star Wars.
What Kojima did here goes well beyond that. He and his company made a video game with the cinematic feel of a movie that you would actually go to the theater to see. I have often thought it seemed as though some video game companies were trying to make their games like movies. Think about the game Beyond: Two Souls which had the names of Willem Dafoe and his co-star printed at the top of the case, like you would see for some blockbuster hit.
Now by comparison, Kojima made Death Stranding by combining the best elements of cinema and video games. He filled the game with faces that most of us recognize from something, graphics that are a hair's breadth from cinematic quality, game mechanics that give the impression like something is actually being done, and a story that, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, is like nothing that has ever been seen before. This game actually made me wish that there was some sort of movie theater for video games. Places you could go to play a game and get more or less the same experience as you would have in a movie theater. Who knows? Maybe AMC will come up with such a place in the near future. (Side note: If any of you guys know of such a place, PLEASE tell me.)
Okay. Now that that's out of the way, I'll go ahead and tell you that the story of this game is by FAR the most interesting part. As I said earlier, we are talking about a whole new take on the post-apocalyptic genre. When we think of such settings, we typically think deserts, droughts, city ruins, places that are radioactive enough to cook you where you stand. Setting aside, we are witnessing a story where nothing is as we know. Life and death no longer have the meaning we give them. The laws of the natural world have been warped beyond recognition. This next sentence will likely not make any sense, but Kojima created a world where rainbows, of all things, are a sign of danger. Kojima's genius with this game lies in taking stuff that we take for granted and fundamentally changing the reaction it elicits in us.
Beyond that, however, you have an interesting story of a man simply doing his job called to serve a greater purpose. While still making deliveries across the country, Sam uses a device given to him by Bridges in conjunction with the UCA government to bring the different Knot Cities online and into the UCA as one of the United Cities. Sam must work his way across the country, bring the other Knot Cities and outposts online and eventually unite with the new President of the UCA on the West Coast.
One of the central themes of the game's story is connection. Kojima and his studio found countless ways to weave words like "bridge" and "strand" into the story, in a meta sort of way. This theme is so relevant, what with all of us reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic and all that we as a people have had to do in order to keep going through our lives, and even just to stay sane. Kojima himself said the idea that Death Stranding was built on was "connecting the world."
Graphics-wise, Death Stranding was an absolute gem. The visuals for the game are well-defined thanks to the Decima game engine developed by Guerrilla Games and used in Horizon: Zero Dawn. The characters also looked much more realistic than most game characters have looked up until now. The body models of Reedus and his co-stars are so perfect, I sometimes had to remind myself that I was not looking at something live-action.
One thing I just loved about the game is that Kojima kept in one of the things that he did with past games - specifically, the Metal Gear Solid series. Anytime a character showed up for the first time onscreen in the Metal Gear Solid games pre-The Phantom Pain, a caption would show up onscreen that said the name of the character, followed by the person portraying them. Like so:
Solid Snake
David Hayter
Death Stranding held on to that little motif. I've always thought that this move is not only classy, but also allows anyone curious to find out about the people voicing their favorite characters. Of course, one could argue that for some of the characters in this particular game, the captions might seem kind of superfluous, given that some of the characters that appear are known to live-action TV audiences.
The game mechanics are fairly simple, but they definitely challenge your thinking. You have to use your wits to determine what the best way is to get from Point A to Point B while at the same time negotiating the different orders from clients across said distance. You can use resources you gain to fashion equipment, transports and routes for yourself across the UCA. The game also incentivizes cooperation.
When playing the game online, you are not limited to the things you make for yourself. You can very often run across equipment and structures built by other players for themselves, which they then leave behind to be used by others. Your cooperation with other players even has a scoring system, in which "likes" can be left to or from you as a means of thanks for help. That's right. You heard me. You are able to use "likes" in this game.
Playing the game, you will also run into the aforementioned BTs that have now infested the world, and will have to either find your way through or around them, or face them in combat. Which one you do is up to you. But the BTs will not be your only outside force. You will also run into scavengers and terrorists who choose to make the UCA their new playground absent any visible "government."
While I enjoyed this game greatly, I have to admit that there are some things that might be a bit...challenging for anyone who plays this. Unless you're one of those people who likes to watch or play stuff that really makes you think, you might have trouble grasping some of the concepts in here. I will be the first to admit there were a few things that kind of lost me. At the same time, I do think that is part of the genius of this game and what makes it unique.
Without spoiling anything, even though I don't think that this was a "scary" game per se, I was prepared for a few things in the game to scare me. And some things did. But Kojima and his studio made this happen by tapping into what H.P. Lovecraft would describe as the most powerful fear - fear of the unknown. Once you understand the elements in question, they are not as scary as they were.
Now let's get on to the performances, shall we? Kojima has had a long history of top-notch voice work in his games, recruiting the likes of Phil LaMarr, John Cygan, Cam Clarke, Troy Baker, Robin Atkin Downes, Tara Strong, Grey DeLisle, Steve Blum, and even Kiefer Sutherland. Death Stranding follows that trend to a T while also paying further homage to his favorite art style with people he's included.
You probably recognize Norman Reedus the most for his role as Daryl Dixon on The Walking Dead. But he also appeared as one of the MacManus brothers from The Boondock Saints. I'm not entirely sure what kind of character he was meant to play when he was tapped for Konami's Silent Hills production, but from what I can tell, Reedus plays a bit more of a serious, if apathetic, character on Death Stranding. According to Reedus, Kojima developed the mannerisms of character Sam Porter Bridges by just watching him and having him do whatever seemed natural at the time. What I take from this is that there is a lot of Norman Reedus's real self in the character of Sam. I found this little tidbit hilarious too: Reedus described the experience of being recruited by Kojima thus: He was talking to film director Guillermo del Toro, who said that someone named Hideo was going to approach him to work on a video game, and that he should say yes. Reedus asked "Who is he?" Del Toro said, "It doesn't matter. Just say yes." Reedus's involvement in the project has led to a lot of surreal experiences, and whether they influenced his decision or not, apparently Reedus has expressed interest in doing more with this new franchise.
Aside from these great performances, you can also find Margaret Qualley as Mama, Tommie Earl Jenkins as Die-Hardman, and even science fiction veteran Lindsay Wagner as Bridget Strand. And while a majority of the characters - at least the main ones - share both a voice and a body model with their actor, there are a few characters who have a different actor for each. For example, while the Death Stranding researcher known as Heartman has the body model of Danish film director Nicolas Winding Refn, he had the voice of Darren Jacobs. And Bridges' medical expert Deadman is a threefer - having the body model of Guillermo del Toro, the motion capture performance of Justin Leeper and the voice of Jesse Corti. Kojima even incorporated an appearance in the game by late-night talk show host Conan O'Brien.
Regardless of the medium, the actors bring these characters to life in an empathetic way. Each character has a backstory in some way related to the very event precipitating the game, and the actors ironically bring a superb liveliness and realism to each character and help that backstory to resonate with us, the players.
Overall, I would say that this game deserves a lot of recognition. It seems visionary in the way that there have been no other video games like it. It also seems like a PERFECT game to play while the world is coming back to life after being rocked by the COVID-19 Pandemic. In fact, I would say that while Kojima himself might not have intended it, with all the themes in this game, I can't help but wonder if he might have. Go ahead and use it to ride out this period of seclusion we've been forced to undertake.
Voices Carry gives Death Stranding a 9 out of 10 - 3.6 out of 4 stars.
