Love or hate his games, Hideo Kojima is a style unto himself. Like Tim Burton or Alfred Hitchcock or Tolkien, if I were to call something Kojima-esque, it would conjure imagery and ideas that no one else could do without appearing derivative…at least while keeping a straight face. When Hideo Kojima dropped the first teaser trailer for Death Stranding in 2016, it’s safe to say no one had seen a world of invisible monsters and babies in artificial wombs. I can’t quite imagine how that pitch meeting went at Sony.
Death Stranding introduces you to Sam Porter Bridges, a man whose name is also his job. Not much is offered about his personality, except that he does not like to be touched, whose purpose toward the plot seems to be about the beautiful metaphor more than anything else. Immediately after being the only survivor of a city-wide annihilation, he is asked by his mother, the President of the United States, to journey across the country getting everyone on wifi. Along the way, he’s assisted by people with names like Fragile, Deadman, Heartman, and Die-Hardman. They are all superbly acted by first rate actors who, I’m sure, had no idea what any of this was about, but it does makes you wonder what people in this world do if they choose to change careers.
If that gives you the impression I think Death Stranding is a silly game, that is not correct. Once the plot gets out of the way, you’re presented a moody, isolated world with beautiful landscapes set to a soundtrack that furthers your sense of loneliness. The game sets you up to meditate on the importance of human connection by highlighting the ways we come together and separate ourselves from community. Kojima is a master craftsman, and every element of the experience feels deliberate, down to the end game where you’ve trivialized most obstacles through building and vehicles. That, too, is part of the meditation.
I’ve only played a few hours of The Witcher, another game that is having its moment right now, but there’s a lot to learn in the differences. I’ve seen what a lot of the plots and sub-plots entail, including ghosts of unborn children and burning orphanages. Why do some games feel the need to go there, when you have stories like Death Stranding that can say so much with so little? My theory is rooted in its setting. It’s impossible to distinguish your story among Tolkien-esque derivatives without being edgier than the last guy. You can say many things about Death Stranding, but in a world of battle royale knock-offs, it is unapologetically itself.
Which leads me to whether or not I enjoyed Death Stranding. No matter how I feel, I’m in good company. Reviews are split into two camps, and both make valid points. Much of it comes down to whether you’re willing to come along for a Kojima-esque experience. If you were not before, then you will not now, and I’m not sure there is anything this game could change to appease those groups. It used to be that I would play a game like, say, Final Fantasy and then talk about how great it was or how bad it was, and where it fell was rooted in some kind of emotional payoff vs time investment equation. Not so of this game. I feel like I can say Death Stranding did what it set out to do, and if I have a problem with it then that’s on me.