Death Stranding
This post will contain some pretty major spoilers about the final hours of Death Stranding but honestly you're not missing much unless you're a Kojima Gremlin. Metal Gear Solid 2 spoilers are also afoot.
It's high time we faced the music: Metal Gear Solid 2 is a disaster. It's a convoluted mess that starts reasonably strong and goes further and further down the revelation rabbit-hole until nothing is left to surprise or shock you. Unlike its predecessor, it is a poorly paced car-crash that wastes hours of your time in cutscenes that go on for hours talking about virtual reality soldiers or whatever your girlfriend is making for dinner. A lot of the discourse around Metal Gear Solid 2 surrounds 'that one bit' where Kojima essentially predicted the future with how today's media functions.
Don't get me wrong, it's a cool bit. But a few hours ago I was trying to save the President and spraying bombs with upside-down compressed air. How does this fit with the rest of the game? It just feels a bit disjointed to me.
Death Stranding has you totter about from point to point conducting various kinds of deliveries. You are Sam Porter Bridges (yes, that's his actual, human name) - a gruff man who looks and sounds suspiciously like Norman Reedus - trekking from one side of post-apocalyptic America to the other in order to connect everyone to the Chiral Network, a sort of internet-but-it's-instant kind of deal. I assume it's what Jeremy Corbyn was talking about in his manifesto. You're also doing it to save your sister who has been captured by The Big Bad and is being held on the west coast. That's important. Remember that later on.
I for one am a lot happier now that we're seeing the shift away from zombie post-apocalyptia to not-zombie post-apocalyptia in our video games. I much prefer the worlds of Breath of the Wild, Horizon Zero Dawn and Death Stranding because it's such a change from what we're used to. The world of Death Stranding is one where humanity is truly on the brink of extinction, but I wouldn't describe it as depressing. Almost every character you meet maintains a positive outlook on the situation. Despite ghostly Beached Things that cause atomic-bomb level explosions and rain that literally ages you as it falls, it's still a world that is filled with hope. It strikes a chord between the harrowing situation of Dark Souls and the melancholy of Breath of the Wild.
The moment-to-moment gameplay involves you taking on deliveries from one point on the map to the other. Before you set out, it's advised to plan out your journey, from what route you wish to take, to what gear you wish to pack. While a lot of these deliveries involve battling major hazards such as Beached Things, The Big Bad and more passive dangers such as rivers and chasms, much of your time will be spent just moving forwards; you and your thoughts. The thudding of Sam's boots and the pitter-patter of the rain. In the same vein as No Man's Sky or Euro Truck Simulator 2, Death Stranding can be a meditative game where you can zone out and think about anything, paying only small mind to the obstacles in the foreground.
You have to give credit where credit is due. Death Stranding smudges the line between being a huge risk in an unfamiliar genre, and an easy money-maker so long as Kojima's name is stamped on it. While both points might be correct in their own way, I still appreciate the fact that we have a AAA game that deviates from a lot of open world games out there. It's slow. Very slow. The majority of danger can be avoided, or easily handled once you progress into the latter hours. It's less of a gauntlet of challenges and more of a long, continuous mountain climb (sometimes literally)
Death Stranding is all about rebuilding and reconnecting America from the ground up and that's not just present in the story, but in the gameplay as well. It has some of the most innovative online features I've ever seen. Along the way, you will find ladders, ropes and ziplines placed by other players. A well positioned ladder across a crevice can make your journey go from a harrowing trek to a brisk walk. As a reward for your efforts, you receive 'likes' - a fictional currency that means absolutely nothing. You can give likes to pretty much anything a player does at the press of a button and I'll be darned if Kojima hasn't trapped me in his little rat maze. It provides a great sense of empathy which, as a Dota 2 player, is an feeling I never thought I'd have playing a video game. It's incredible. It's like when you walk around in an RPG and start closing all of the doors behind you, but here, it actually means something. The climbing rope, for example, will be at the place it's left for all players. Of course you take the extra five seconds to throw the rope back down like the previous user did. In a way, Death Stranding is the first multiplayer immersive sim, even though you never see another player.
It evolves from being something kind to do for a stranger, to full blown collaboration. Eventually you get to build literal bridges and roads (as if the metaphor wasn't heavy-handed enough) across some of the most treacherous parts of America. The roads that were previously built by players already make the game that much easier, so chipping in a few materials of your own to the next stretch feels like an obligation. It's an excellent example of the gameplay being used to support what the creator is trying to put across in the narrative.
Building roads makes the game much easier - but that's the point.
Kojima is no stranger to interesting approaches to storytelling. If you are a Kojima Gremlin who laps up everything the man does, then you'll be right at home here. For the rest of you, it ranges from genuinely quite interesting to absolutely unbearable. The opening is a sluggish introduction to the world, being introduced to characters you have no attachment to and generally having no idea what you're actually meant to be doing. Once it does get started, it keeps a pleasantly slow pace that's kept engaging through the discovery of the previously mentioned collaboration mechanics and a cast of characters that'll make you go "wait a second, did they really spend all of this money on Tommie Earl Jenkins only to have him wear a mask the entire game?" or "wait a second, isn't she from that really bad James Bond film?" or even "wait a second, isn't Mads Mikkelsen meant to be in this?". As per usual, Kojima uses his characters as a vessel for all of his cool ideas instead of giving them actual personalities. They're really cool ideas, but they're sadly not explored for all too long or in all too much detail. If you've seen the trailers, then you've likely seen the most interesting parts of what Death Stranding's story has to offer.
If you've seen this trailer, you've probably seen the most interesting part of the game's story. Sorry.
It's typical Kojima nonsense, but it's the endearing kind where you just nod vacantly and pretend you know what's going on. Thankfully, a lot of the really boring stuff is buried in emails and such, so unless you're a massive nerd who likes reading (thank you for visiting) you shouldn't have too much to worry about. You make your journey from the east coast to the west, meeting a gallery of characters with stories of their own. It's all very okay. Along the way, you are impeded by Higgs, a man who wears a gold mask and summons evil inky monsters to fight you. I'm not really sure why he does that, I guess it's just his thing? If there was an explanation, then I've lost it in the other 50 hours of stuff I can't remember. It's one of Troy Baker's best performances and easily out shadows Reedus or Mikkelsen. Speaking of which, Mads Mikkelsen is in this game. Yeah. He's in it. That's cool.
Let's talk about the final hours of Death Stranding.
After many struggles and hardships, you finally reach the west coast of America. It turns out your sister is an Extinction Entity - whatever the hell that means. I'm pretty sure it's a being that causes cataclysmic events in the world such as the Ice Age or the dinosaurs dying or whatever. Amelie (that's her name) is the being that caused the Death Stranding
Ok a little interruption here - I might be wrong about some of the details. If I have gotten anything wrong, then feel free to correct me by leaving a comment. Oh wait.
Anyway, Higgs uses Amelie to summon the final boss which is definitely not 3 small Metal Gears in a trench coat and plans to use her destructive powers to put an end to the world once and for all (again, for some reason?). It's nothing a few thousand rocket launchers can't handle - the bosses are bullet sponges by the way and are not fun to fight in the slightest.
And then the game ends - except it doesn't.
Higgs escapes, with Amelie in tow, to Amelie's beach. A beach is the world that connects the living and the dead. Everybody is meant to have their own beach. All of this is very subtle and not jammed down your throat in any way. Sam gives chase and he battles with Higgs once more. This time, it's a classic Metal Gear fistfight, and after twenty years, Kojima has truly mastered the art of two dudes punching each other to death. Higgs is finally defeated and Amelie is saved. All is good in the world.
And then the game ends - except it doesn't.
It turns out Amelie was the leader of The Big Bad all along and wants to cause the extinction of all of the things. She only wanted Sam to build the Chiral Network so she can more easily end it all. It's also revealed that Amelie doesn't actually exist in the real world - nobody has ever met her before. Her real world self took the form of Bridget - Sam's mother. It's absolute nonsense, plain and simple. It only exists to provide revelation after revelation to the point where you can't be shocked anymore - you stopped being shocked about two revelations in. Sam and the gang come up with a plan to stop Amelie, so Sam once again travels to Amalie's beach to try and convince her: Instead of ending all life as we know it, maybe she could not do that? It works! Amelie stops The Last Stranding and the world is saved, although Sam is trapped on the beach, presumably forever.
And then the game ends. The credits roll. Except the game doesn't end.
You spend - I kid you not - about twenty minutes wondering around on a beach listening to Low Roar's I'll Keep Coming. It's 11:00PM. You have work tomorrow. You sit there wondering... is that it? Is the game finally over? You realise you're a fool. An utter buffoon. This is a Hideo Kojima game. We've only had two hours of cutscenes so far, and we need to go for a third. The metaphors that were perfectly put across during the actual game need to be jackhammered into your skull.
They've just been told the plot of Death Stranding.
While he was on his day trip to Minehead, Sam's friends were concocting a plan to bring him back. They use the very gun that was used to specifically not kill Amelie in order to find him. Do you get it yet, reader? We're all connected. The gun that is used for disconnecting people was used to connect people. This game is about connecting America. There are likes. You can build bridges for people. We've been ramming home this point for about an hour of cutscenes now, just in case those of you low fliers in the back didn't quite get it.
So Sam is saved and then the game ends - except it doesn't.
Throughout your journey, you've been carrying around Lou, that weird unborn baby you've been seeing in all of the trailers. They let you see the Beached Things. Throughout the game, you've been taking on a lot of Lou's memories which is where you'll find Mads Mikkelsen hanging about. Lou was his son and was about to be taken away from him, so The Big M is a bit miffed, tries to take him before The Big Bad does and he gets shot to pieces in the process. The final revelation is - and I seriously wish I was joking - that Lou dies and was then reborn thanks to Amelie as Sam himself. So Mads Mikkelsen is your dad. Yup. At the end of the game, the Lou that Sam has dies in the little capsule they carry the babies around him. In a reckless disregard for health and safety, Sam breaks open the capsule and tries to revive Lou. It works. I guess she's a fully fledged baby now. Almost like how America has been reborn. Cool. It's short for Louise by the way.
And then the game ends.
So we come full circle back to Metal Gear Solid 2, except this time it's much worse because Death Stranding was by all accounts an excellent game up to this point. I still think it is. But the writers at Kojima Productions can't help themselves. They are not content to let Troy Baker's performance take the spotlight and just let it end there. They have to surprise and shock you. It's like when you hear someone tell a joke and you laugh and then they tell another joke and it's not as funny. And then they tell another joke, and another one and another one. The first joke was great. Let it end there.
Also, did I mention Mads Mikkelsen is in it? Mads Mikkelsen is in it.