Kojima is one of the most prominent auteurs in the world of video games, making unapologetically unique and surreal experiences that are heavily inspired by cinema. (His Twitter bio reads, “70% of my body is made of movies.”) “Death Stranding,” released in November 2019, has undeniable echoes of everything from David Lynch to Andrei Tarkovsky, and unfolds with a cast that’s more like a motion-capture feature film. Unlike a lot of designers, Kojima does little to hide his star power. That’s undeniably Norman Reedus of “The Walking Dead” in the lead role, and you really can’t miss Margaret Qualley, Lea Seydoux, Mads Mikkelsen, Guillermo del Toro, and even Conan O’Brien and Edgar Wright.
Reedus plays Sam Bridges, who lives in a future world that has been basically destroyed by an apocalyptic event that opened a portal between life and death. Creatures known as BTs (“Beached Things”) have made most of the planet uninhabitable, which naturally makes delivery of goods a more precious and dangerous thing. (The game does feel a little different now post-COVID as we learned more about pipelines and delivery systems in 2020 than Kojima could have ever predicted.) Sam is a porter, someone who delivers packages across rocky terrain, avoiding the BTs, bands of marauders, and just falling into a river.
“Death Stranding” is designed to recalibrate players to a more surreal, serene experience. It’s a delivery simulator, wherein you have to balance cargo and use tools like ladders and grappling hooks to get from point A to point B. As dreamy songs by artists like Chvrches and Low Roar play on the soundtrack (named with on-screen credits like a music video), Sam does his best to basically reconnect the world. So many things play differently now than they did in 2019, but here’s something I wrote about the original version then: “Kojima’s made a game that feels like it’s about isolation at first but it’s really about how games and social networks unite us more than they divide us. Each chapter feels like it connects you to more players, so as the story’s world opens so does the inter-connectivity of the experience.” How games like “Animal Crossing” connected people in 2020 became a major story of our pandemic, and it adds a layer to “Death Stranding” that’s even more palpable than in the PS4 edition.
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