I Don’t Get the Hype for Death Stranding
August 19, 2019–5:45 pm CST
I feel like this piece might be a bit divisive for some readers depending on a couple of key factors…
Prolific game developer Hideo Kojima’s first game after his ugly departure from his long time employer, Konami, is an enigmatic game called Death Stranding. Ever since its announcement trailer at E3 2016, I feel like the overwhelming excitement and hype for Death Stranding in the gaming industry has been almost unprecedented.
Yet, my own excitement for this title has slowly but surely transformed into a feeling of confusion and even slight frustration in the three years that it was first announced. What started as excitement and interest has slowly warped after being shown trailer after trailer or strange, almost incomprehensible bits of both story and gameplay.
When the game was first unveiled at Sony’s E3 press conference in 2016, I was honestly overjoyed that Kojima was able to rebound so quickly and so strongly after his departure from Konami. For those who may be unaware, the long and short of it is that Kojima and Konami abruptly ended their partnership of over 30 years of developing games together.
In the midst of their break-up, Konami performed some pretty disrespectful actions toward both Kojima and his final project: Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. This naturally caused a lot of outrage for both fans of Kojima and the larger gaming industry as a whole. (For a more succinct and insightful read, see this article by Polygon.)
To get back on track when the game was first announced at E3 2016, I couldn’t help but be fascinated by the trailer. It was quite honestly unlike any game trailer I’d ever seen before. It was cinematic, intriguing, emotional, and incredibly beautiful to just see on screen.
The trailer looked like something that might come out of the film industry. Which, as many fans of his can tell you, is one of the staples of Kojima’s work. The way he directs both the promotional material and in-game cutscenes are incredibly cinematic.
Additionally, after the first trailer we began to see more and more high-profile figures becoming involved with the game. Along with the Walking Dead television star Norman Reedus, we saw Kojima partner with numerous actors and Hollywood figures like director Guillermo del Toro, actor Mads Mikkelsen, and the prolific voice actor Troy Baker.
With impressive names like these attached to the project it’s nearly impossible to deny that Death Stranding is shaping up to be something incredibly ambitious. However, as more and more info about the game’s narrative, world, and especially gameplay began to surface, my excitement for this game was quickly tempered.
The main problem that I have with the game’s narrative and world is that, even after we are shown five or six trailers for this game’s story and world, I still have an incredibly loose idea of what this game is even about or what you’ll be doing for the majority of time while playing.
Kojima has done numerous interviews with members of the industry about the game’s narrative, genre, and gameplay, and even after all those interviews the game’s structure and narrative has managed to remain both mysterious and, quite frankly, puzzling.
A brief synopsis from Kojima himself clarifies my point:
“People have created ‘Walls’ and become accustomed to living in isolation. Death Stranding is a completely new type of action game, where the goal of the player is to reconnect isolated cities and a fragmented society. It is created so that all elements, including the story and gameplay, are bound together by the theme of the ‘Strand’ or connection. As Sam Porter Bridges, you will attempt to bridge the divides in society, and in doing create new bonds or ‘Strands’ with other players around the globe. Through your experience playing the game, I hope you’ll come to understand the true importance of forging connections with others.”
Honestly, that seems fairly straightforward, right? I mean, having both singleplayer and multiplayer elements heavily mixed in together over the course of the campaign seems a bit confusing at first glance, but I can sort of imagine how the two could be implemented and flow together. I can see how terms like “strand” and “walls” are metaphors for the connections and barriers that humans construct between one another. It’s still a mysterious and vague explanation, but I can wrap my mind around that.
But then we’re shown other bits of the game like this…
In this eight minute trailer, we see a team of scientists exploring what looks like a ruined version of earth, or maybe even some other planet. We’re shown what appears to be rain that ages anything it touches, floating, invisible monsters that may or may not be the same liquid monsters that carry of one of the scientists. We see babies in strange tanks strapped to the scientists chests, and a slew of other elements meshed into this trailer over its run-time. Not to mention the portion where the camera literally zooms through Reedus’ esophagus only to show a baby inside of him that gives a thumbs up to the camera… Walls and strands, hunh?
Kojima has also gone on to clarify a bit about why the babies floating in tanks are so prevalent in the game. Apparently they are some kind of link to the world of the living and the world of the dead, another central theme of the game. These ‘bridge babies’ (also called BB’s) seem to act as some sort of experimental technology, with Guillermo del Toro’s character explaining in the recent Gamescon 2019 trailer that they are prone to failure and that “no BB on record has remained in service for over a year.” But we’ll get back to Gamescom in just a second…
I totally get that games can be otherworldly and mysterious in their marketing in order to drum up hype for the release. That’s completely acceptable. However, I’d like to make a comparison between another game that is releasing soon that feels somewhat similar to Death Stranding in its outlandish-ness: Astral Chain which is heading to the Switch on August 30th.
Developed by Platinum Games, Astral Chain seems equally complicated both narratively and gameplay-wise to an outsider looking in. But because of the way the marketing and promotional material has been handled, I feel like I have a firm grasp of what to expect going in to this game. The game is set in the near-future where you work on an elite police force tasked to save the remaining human population from inter-dimensional entities. You do so by capturing and utilizing those same entities to combat those that are hostile. The gameplay acts in a balance of controller both your player character and your “chimera” to explore, solve puzzles, and engage in combat.
That game sounds nuts. Not as nuts as Death Stranding — I will admit — but still, it sounds pretty damn nuts. So why am I able to wrap my head around the premise of this game and not Death Stranding, despite the fact that I feel like I’ve seen the same amount of — if not more — promotional material for Death Stranding than Astral Chain? All that to say the premise of Death Stranding just seems so far out there that it is near impossible to comprehend.
Along with the incomprehensible nature of the narrative shown thus far, I’ve seen both excitement and skepticism for the gameplay that’s been shown for Death Stranding. From the brief glimpses we’ve shown, it seems that the main gameplay pillars will be traveling around an incredibly vast open world, traversing terrain, some light combat, and delivering certain cargo across the open world. Additionally, there appear to be some stealth and horror elements as you hide from and try to avoid the floating invisible monsters known as BTs.
I just…can’t get excited about the gameplay that’s been shown, and I honestly do not understand where the overwhelming excitement from fans is coming from in regard to it. From every bit of gameplay that has been shown to us, Death Stranding seems slow, plodding, and cumbersome.
We’re constantly shown landscapes like the above image, while the majority of travel that’s been shown has been done on foot (we’ve been shown the main character, Sam, riding a motorcycle once to be fair). Yet personally, I could not fathom that traveling across landscapes this broad and sprawling on foot would actually be fun over the course of a 40–60 hour game. I’ve heard games torn apart by fans and critics for much, much less than that (*cough* Twilight Princess *cough*), yet fans of Death Stranding seem to be on pins and needles to spend half an hour walking across a river valley to drop off a briefcase.
Finally, my patience with the promotional material has pretty much evaporated after the game’s latest showcase at 2019.
In this trailer we’re shown a woman breastfeeding a ghost baby, Guillermo del Toro’s character Deadman (yes that is actually his real name) phasing through a wall like it’s nothing and with no explanation, and peeing being a significant part of gameplay.
Please, feel free to re-read that sentence a few times if you need to.
After you pee, a comically over-sized mushroom sprouts from the ground that you can collect.
I just don’t get it, man. I just don’t see the appeal anymore. Why are we supposed to get excited over urination being an action you can perform in Death Stranding? This may sound really harsh and critical, but it kind of just seems like a joke at this point. How can this game make less and less sense the more that it’s shown? I genuinely do not understand how that feat is possible, but here I am — not understanding this game.
Now, to give Kojima a bit of credit, I will admit that the only game of his that I have actually played with my own hands was Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. And while some of you might think this article makes a bit more sense now, I am still very much aware of Kojima’s legacy in the industry. I know how and why the Metal Gear franchise is so prolific. I know about Kojima’s pension for cinematic storytelling and the dense themes present in his games. And personally, while I enjoyed MGS V’s overall gameplay, the story was a mess. A sentiment that is often echoed by long-time Metal Gear fans.
However, I also know that his games can sometimes have 27 minute long cutscenes. I know that the stories within the Metal Gear franchise can be dense and complex. I also know that Quiet exists in Metal Gear Solid V. Did you know she’s dressed like that because she breathes through her skin? Not for any other reasons, of course. She also does things like this, that totally fit her character:
Okay, okay, maybe the Quiet thing was a low blow. Honestly, I have absolutely no problem with fan-service in games, and kind of think it’s ridiculous that people and major outlets get so bent out of shape about stuff like this. But that’s a discussion for another article.
What I’m trying to get at is that Hideo Kojima is not some infallible game director. Despite what some members of the gaming industry may lead you to believe, he has in fact made what some might consider mistakes over his many years working in games. He has his weird quirks that have built up his reputation and loyal fanbase after all these years in the industry, but he does make some quality games. Otherwise, why else would people be freaking out so much over every drop of Death Stranding material that’s been released?
I’m just saying that maybe a bit of skepticism might go a long way in Death Stranding’s case. Kojima Productions, in it’s current state, is still a brand new company. Yes, they’ve been around before since 2005 or so, but they’ve also disbanded completely and regrouped since then. There of tons of hurdles and challenges that could come from starting up work in a brand new, independent company. Especially after the burn that was Metal Gear Solid V (which I know was not entirely Kojima’s fault), you can’t help have a little bit of hesitance for Death Stranding’s overall narrative after something like that.
Maybe the narrative and themes of Death Stranding will completely come together after it’s released to the public, and people will laud it as one of the greatest games of this generation.
And once that happens I’ll feel like a big ol’ dummy for thinking that breastfeeding a ghost baby and walking across barren, sprawling stretches of valleys, peeing all the while seemed kind of dumb and boring. But until that inevitably happens, I still think it seems just a little bit dumb, and a little bit boring.
