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I recently finished Hideo Kojima’s latest game, Death Stranding, and as the credits rolled past (for the second time) I couldn’t help but think that, despite the bizarre twists and utterly unique imagery, the feeling I was left with at the end was very familiar. On first blush, it seems unfair to compare it to anything that’s come before: A post-apocalyptic game about rebuilding America by delivering packages to survivors one by one until you’ve crossed the entire country. It’s not going to be easy, either, forcing the player to manually load up their cargo, maintain their balance, navigate rocky terrain, build their own roads, and forge a path from A to B with little more than a destination and whatever tools they have to hand. Yet, as I progressed, slowly linking up the country with my magic Wi-Fi necklace, Kojima’s tell-tale fingerprints began to creep in more and more, and the clearer my understanding of his vision became, for both good and ill.
My thoughts on Kojima’s particular brand of storytelling are complicated, and I’ve never quite known how to approach his narratives, even after playing over half a dozen of his games. The storytelling quality of any given moment in his work ranges from hard misfire to genuine brilliance. This is a man who has directed one of gaming’s most iconic moments in Metal Gear Solid 3’s ending, and has also written a scene where a character gets proposed to during a gunfight by a man whose most notable character trait is that he frequently poops his pants. With Death Stranding however, I think I’ve identified a common stumbling point: he has lots of really interesting ideas, and he tries to do all them at once.
I’d go so far as to say Death Stranding is not so much one story, as it is three different narratives all trying to share the same space. I have taken the liberty of naming them “Make America Whole Again,” “The Problem with Extinction” and “The Mads Mikkelsen Affair.” All of these stories have overlap obviously, and in some cases, would not happen without the others, but I feel justified in separating them regardless. All three have separate conflicts, themes, and tones, and are distinct enough to each have their own climax within the entirety of the game’s narrative.
The first, and most obvious narrative is “Make America Whole Again.” It is the theme that the core loop of the game is built upon, and is the first and most obvious task the protagonist is given as everything begins. America has been destroyed by the “Death Stranding,” a catastrophic incident where the lines between death and life have been blurred, resulting in the destruction of most of America and the appearance of both “BT’s” which are kind of like ghosts but more difficult to explain, and “Timefall,” which is a kind of rain that ages anything it touches. Sam Porter Bridges, the protagonist, is tasked by the President to travel the country and connect everyone to the “Chiral Network,” which is essentially the internet, allowing people to communicate and send information back and forth again. Sam embarks on this journey to reunite the country and save his sister, who has been captured by terrorists who oppose the reunification.
As with all Hideo Kojima games, there are hundreds of incredibly complex details and twists that occur over the length of this narrative, but that about covers the broad strokes. This is the narrative that is best expressed by the core gameplay loop. There is a surprising amount of excitement in preparing to embark over unexplored territory for the first time, and a real visceral satisfaction in hooking up a new location and watching the network slowly expand across the country. As you perform more deliveries, you raise your reputation with the different shelters, and learn more about these individuals and how they survive in a world where just going outside is a huge risk. I began to form attachments to different survivors that I liked, and grew invested in their interests as I helped them recover and deliver the things they needed. This is where the game truly shines: when you’re simply making deliveries and learning about all these different people, connecting to them, helping them build connections of their own, and occasionally stopping the terrorists from ruining your plans. It’s interesting to learn about the world, and making deliveries is a surprisingly satisfying gameplay loop with almost meditative qualities. As you grow to make new connections and retread the same ground back and forth, you begin to build new pathways and connections between locations, neatly mirroring the connections formed between the individuals you hook up to the Chiral Network. It really is an excellent example of gameplay and story working hand in hand to create an experience unique to the medium of gaming.
Towards the latter half of the game however, things take a shift, and a new theme is introduced, “The Problem With Extinction.” This one is both far more complicated, and yet deceptively simple. The woman you are meant to be rescuing, Amelie, is not a real person, she is what is called an “Extinction Entity,” meant to usher in the next great Extinction Event. Of course, an extinction event sounds like a bad time, so you have to find a way to prevent this, and near the end, you kind of do. If that all sounds vague and lacking in detail, it’s because it is. In the actual game, Amelie’s identity and motivations are obscured under ludicrous levels of deception and misdirection. First it is thought that the terrorists have captured her to prevent America from reconnecting, then it is realized that their leader wants her to cause the extinction against her will, then it is thought that Mads Mikkelsen has orchestrated this all to punish the President for stealing his son, then it’s revealed that Amelie has actually orchestrated everything, and the chiral network will help her usher in the extinction, and then it is revealed that Amelie actually is the President because the President was her body and Amelie is her soul, and then actually she realized that the extinction is inevitable but Sam can choose to delay it or let it happen right away.
Frankly, it’s kind of a mess, and the more you think about it the less sense it makes. It’s not the first time I’ve played a Hideo Kojima game with an incredibly roundabout story arc, but unlike Metal Gear Solid 4, which at least had the excuse of having to tie up around 6 or 7 other games worth of story threads, a lot of Death Strandings’ plot twists feel shallow and detract from the experience. Not to mention the fact that I managed to predict most of them ages before they happened. Amelie looks incredibly similar to the President and is never seen in person, to the point where I was suspicious of their relationship within the first ten hours, and about halfway through was convinced they were the same person. This is later revealed to be exactly the case in a tone that seems to imply this was intended to be a shocking revelation, but it falls completely flat. Many of the story’s twists do nothing but make straightforward, compelling characters less straightforward and less compelling. “Deadman” is a particularly confusing one. After a brief but satisfying arc where he grows fond of “BB,” a little baby that has a connection to the afterlife, he reveals that he is actually an artificial human, made from cadavers and stem cells, and never felt any connection to other people, until now. This character conflict is never mentioned before this moment, is resolved immediately, and never comes up again. There are several other characters you meet along the way, all of whom represent their own “connection” related conflict with varying degrees of success, and ultimately come together to help prevent the Extinction Event. This arc is the game’s weakest point: it spends far too much time explaining itself over and over, is incredibly obfuscated for no reason, and ultimately has very little to do with either the main gameplay loop or the main theme of connection. It is only partially saved by the fact that by the end of the game, I had grown fond of the other main characters, and was able to enjoy some of these scenes regardless of their issues.
Finally there is “The Mads Mikkelsen Affair.” At certain points throughout the game, Sam gets sucked into a big storm caused by Chiral energy and is transported to a battlefield. First WWI, then WWII, and finally Vietnam. When he arrives, Mads Mikkelsen is there, hunting him down to take back his “BB,” the aforementioned baby that Sam uses to see the ghosts in the world (it’s complicated). Whenever Sam plugs into BB’s pod, he sees a memory of Mads Mikkelsen and gradually pieces together that it was his child who was experimented on to create the BB program. Over time it is revealed that the President/Amelie lied to him about what they were doing, and Mikkelsen attempted to rescue his child before being shot and killed; His anger and resentment over the event being manipulated to bring him back to attack Sam. The way these events are revealed gradually over the course of the game is actually quite interesting, and combined with Mads Mikkelsen’s characteristically excellent performance makes for the strongest linear storyline in the game. Unfortunately it is slightly let down by the fact that it also insists on overexplaining itself, showing you all the events in order again long after I already had a firm understanding of what happened. This all concludes with Mikkelsen reuniting with Sam and passing on, and Sam deciding that instead of disposing of the “BB” he is going to take it out of its pod and raise it as his own child.
Out of all the story threads in the game, this one strikes the best balance between complicated conspiracy weaving and relatable human drama. It reminds me of Metal Gear Solid 3, where a lot of very complex and initially confusing elements are at play, but it’s all underpinned by realistic motivations and becomes clear when viewed with all the cards on the table. Unfortunately the gameplay does not do it justice. Theoretically, these encounters with Mikkelsen should be about breaking down the barriers of lies between him and Sam, recovering that lost connection by seeing the truth that was obscured from both of them, and I don’t really understand how I achieved that by shooting him in the face repeatedly. While these segments are fun and comprise some of the game’s best moments, they’re basically just a neat distraction slotted in between the actual character arcs.
Though all of these different stories and moments have their merits, I can’t help but think they are all done an injustice by being forced into the same game, and it brings me back to what I thought after finishing Metal Gear Solid 4: “This is a game that has too many ideas.” Connecting America could have been its own game, the Extinction Event could have been its own game, even the Mads Mikkelsen plot could’ve carried a game by itself, but putting them all in the same story is like splicing together three different movies and you can practically hear the thunk of the reel changing whenever it loses interest in the current thread. Once the game starts talking about Extinction Events, the rebuilding America stuff only ever seems to come up as an afterthought, and Mads Mikkelsen seems to just pop in whenever it’s convenient before one long string of cutscenes at the end to wrap up his narrative. There’s just so much going on that I think the best thing you could do for the game would be to cut it down drastically, and use those extra resources to rework things focusing on one of those three big arcs.
All that said, I don’t want to give the impression that the game is bad. It’s not perfect, and it’s certainly not going to be for everyone, but it is, like everything Hideo Kojima makes, completely, utterly unique. It has a really solid gameplay loop, wonderfully strange imagery, some fantastic performances, and, despite my criticisms of the story, some really great moments that are worth experiencing for yourself. It’s one of those games where I’d have to say, if you’re hesitant, give it a try anyway. Even if you end up hating it, you’ll never play anything else quite like it.
