It has taken a long time to get here on the RPS Advent calendar. We have conquered mountains, crossed rivers, even built some roads along the way. It’s been a journey, but at least we didn’t have to do it alone. So please get your holographic signature ready. It’s time to deliver door number 18.
It’s Death Stranding!
Katharine: Death Stranding received a hard hand when it first came out on the console last year. If we look back at their critical review, many of the words written about this game were simply baffled by the fact that it wasn’t Kojima’s next big second arrival, the relentless bombing engine that had made them believe it would be. Instead, it was simply a game about moving boxes from one point to another, and no one could decide if it was intensely boring or if there was a core of something special that lay beneath the surface.
But if Death Stranding teaches us anything, it is that time and distance are great healers. If you reduce it to its simplest form, yes, yes, this is really a game about moving boxes from point A to point B. But what about moving it. A Death Stranding, crossing is the game. From the way you load your load to the route you choose for its rocky and mountainous landscape, this is a game where even the slightest change of gradient can make you fall to your knees and destroy your precious deliveries in the process. It is a game where time is your enemy and where seeing a well-located road or zip line can make you cry. It’s a walking simulator in the best sense of the word, and this year I didn’t get enough of it.
There is no stopping the BB Boys!
It’s a game that makes you engage with the landscape of your world like no other, as even the simple act of crossing a river can be fraught with danger. You can’t load to your destination like Assassin’s Creed or follow the road like Skyrim. Heck, you also can’t climb its walls with bare hands like Breath Of The Wild. Instead, you need to plan and prepare for each trip, balancing the tools you need to get the job done (ladders, ropes, and construction kits) with the amount of cargo you can carry.
After all, you don’t just have to look at Death Stranding. You also have a small passenger with you, BB, who is sitting in a pot on your chest. BB is your lifeline in this strange, empty world, as they are the only way to intuit where the deadly (and potentially explosive) ghosts of the world are. These alien beings are the reason humanity has fled underground into the world of Death Stranding, as no one but the bearers is equipped to deal with it.
Death Stranding is still taken from many of Kojima’s bad habits. The opening of a couple of hours is almost 90% reduced scene, and the way it loads much of its tradition and the names and terminology of the painful characters is enough to get you to any user the uninstall button. But beyond that opening, there’s a game really different from any other, and the deliveries are just a part of it.
Ultimately, Death Stranding is a game about connection. There are literals that you play in the game as you zigzag through a broken (and very Icelandic-looking) way to re-establish the “chiral network” (a kind of proto-internet that was destroyed as the title event of Death Stranding a few years ago) which will reunite its disparate citizens. There are also the personalities you forge between individual characters as you make your deliveries. Sometimes the two go hand in hand, as some bunkers will not agree to join the chiral network until you have given them some orders to show that they can trust you.
But the connections you make with other players may leave the biggest and most lasting impression. While Death Stranding is basically a single player game, its asymmetrical online multiplayer elements will also see the work of other goalkeepers occasionally overlapping with yours, either a friendly soul picking up and delivering a piece of Lost load or a helping hand makes a vital contribution to much of the build while you’ve been plugging in the last few game sessions. According to my end-of-game statistics, I made “connections” with only about 1600 more players, which is actually a lot less than I expected.
I love you, BB.
Most importantly, though, those who have gone before you don’t instantly leave the world “filled” either. It’s true that there’s a bit of shy-shy logic, it’s true, but your first run in every new region you find is as pure and fresh as the virgin land beneath your feet. Only once you put a bunker online does the world suddenly come to life, the milestones left by the first hikers that are now visible on your map and the world around you. I still had a lot of work to do, however, but let me tell you, using my zip lines to join the leftovers by other players in their mountain range is one of my proud game achievements. the year. I didn’t even do it for the “likes” that other players can give you for all sorts of reasons. I did it because, deep down, these structures, these connections, are about paying it forward and leaving behind a world worth living for those who come after you.
This is at the heart of everything you do in Death Stranding, a game about so much more than just moving boxes from one point to another, and for that reason it’s my personal selection of PC games of the year. No matter how disconnected and disinterested he is in the world around him, a protagonist that Sam has a lot to strive for throughout the game, we are ultimately all together, and it is only by embracing the strange peculiarities of others. (and in turn the strange peculiarities of the game, with its sensitive babies in pots, nuclear ghosts and all sorts of supernatural nonsense) that the Death Stranding cast can begin to unite and build a new life from the ruins of their mistakes. Yes, it may seem strange and ridiculous to have a baby in a jar tied to my chest, but I will condemn myself if I didn’t end up loving the BBs as if they were my own child when I got the final credits. Death Stranding is a weird, weird and yes, sometimes baffling game, but open your heart to it and you’ll find that there are plenty of reasons to break this “like” button and love it just like me.