It bottles the sensation of when you’re outside and walking around while listening to music, and a particularly poignant song comes on through your earbuds. The camera pulling out and showing how small Sam is in the greater world reflects how small each of us is compared to everything around us. What makes these needle-drop moments work so well is how they meld in with everything that comes before them, as well as the lengths you still have left to go. And finally, the subtlety of Ludvig Forssell’s score gives way to one of the bespoke songs that Kojima chose to play at this given moment, many times being from the American-Icelandic band Low Roar. A majority of the HUD fades away to clear distractions. The camera slowly pulls out, revealing more and more of the environment while making Sam a smaller and smaller part of it. There are several moments throughout Death Stranding where, upon approaching your destination, things begin to change. And the awe that would fall upon him when he truly lost himself in the wilderness became my own personal awe. Sam’s struggles became my struggles his relationship with the rugged world became my relationship with the rugged world. But for me, trips from point A to point B began to truly embody the idiom that it wasn’t about the destination, but rather the journey itself.
To a lot of folks, this sort of repetitive micromanagement quickly devolves into tedium. The core gameplay loop is clearly divisive, playing luggage Tetris as you load Sam up with enough delivery materials to make movement cumbersome but possible and then wrestling with that movement every step of the way to your destination. And much of your time is spent deliberately navigating the terrain, like a pioneer setting off into the unknown. It’s a sad, barren husk of a world that still finds a way to exude beauty in its loneliness. Though your journey takes place across America, it’s clearly an artistic representation of the country that draws heavy influence from the dangerous grace of places like Iceland. A big part of that is how the game’s perfectly timed music forges a stronger connection among Death Stranding‘s world, characters, and your own personal journey.Īs Sam Porter Bridges, your job is to traverse what remains of a shattered America in search of small pockets of civilization, with the ultimate goal of connecting these groups via an information network that rebuilds society brick by brick. But seven months later, Kojima’s prescient story of a world torn asunder and the lengths it takes to cobble the pieces back together is one I’ve thought about literally every single day. That was how I felt late last year as I made my way through Hideo Kojima’s highly anticipated Death Stranding, a game that refused to fit neatly into any of the boxes we’re used to in modern gaming. Perhaps the edges are a bit rough, or maybe the experience is so strange and new and that you’re not able to fully process it until long after the credits roll. These games offer a more complicated first impression. But some other games take time, slowly nestling out a place in your thoughts until they eventually makes a permanent home. There are some games that you just know are going to be instant classics, like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time or Portal.
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