Death Stranding: Journey Into A Beautiful, Dying World Where Hope Is Everything

Last year, legendary game developer Hideo Kojima unveiled Death Stranding, developed by Kojima Productions on PS4. The game had been in development for a few years with numerous trailers that only made it difficult to understand the plot of the game.

However, now the game is out there for PC users. I got my hands on the game, and here¡¯s what my experience was while playing Hideo Kojima¡¯s Death Stranding.

Once there was an explosion

The game is set in a world where humanity is on the verge of going extinct from the planet. The world is affected by Death Stranding -- a phenomenon where ghost-like creatures are taking beings from the land of the living to the land of the dead. The game primarily revolves around this story and the pursuit of connecting some dots.

Delivering stuff, connecting the nation

Your character in the game is Sam Porter (played by Norman Reedus of The Walking Dead fame) who¡¯s job is to deliver goods in such a world, fighting these creatures among other bad guys that you come across. His objective is to deliver goods and expanding a network (called Chiral Network) to reconnect the whole nation of the United Cities of America. I won¡¯t dive deep into the story as I don¡¯t intend to spoil the experience for you.

Hideo Kojima Productions

Expanding this network will help you getting new gear and tools to make your deliveries less stressful. The game involves a lot of walking, sometimes with heavy loads strapped to your back. The more load you have, the more difficult it gets to walk. The game has done a phenomenal job of simulating walking on different kinds of terrain. So that¡¯s something you need to be prepared for, before getting this game.

One part of the game also involves building cities. With the help of Chiral Network, you can 3D print roads, buildings among other things to help make your game-life simpler. They require you to collect raw materials and deposit in these 3D printing terminals to help build stuff.

Tools that eventually make your life easier

As most of your job involves walking through the terrain, you get tools as you level up, to make your hike easier. Things like ladders, climbing ropes, boots, 3D printers for building stuff, exoskeletons to help you lift more weight with ease, even vehicles.

Hideo Kojima Productions

Making deliveries also unlocks schematics for new tools that come in handy later in the game.

Dealing with multiple villains

In case you were wondering delivering stuff is going to be a boring chore that¡¯ll eventually get monotonous, you¡¯re wrong. While the biggest villain in the game is the terrain (even your shoes have a health bar) you¡¯re going to be dealing with far complex villains that will keep you on your toes, literally.

First up are the BTs (Beach Things) -- the same ghost-like creatures that are trying to take you to the world of the dead. In this game, you¡¯re a repatriate -- essentially immortal. However, if you do come in contact with the BTs, you get straight into a boss fight with some large and rather supernatural creatures. Losing this battle could cause a voidout -- resulting in a nuclear bomb-like crater, so yeah, the stakes are super high.

Hideo Kojima Productions

Second bad guys you¡¯re going to deal with are Mules. These are groups of thieves that want to steal your cargo. You do not want to kill them as killing them can trigger BTs and then the voidout, so you need to stealthily go past them or take them down with a few punches/non-lethal methods.

Third, is a group of terrorists that are essentially against UCA to form the nation once again and are rebelling by creating voidouts on purpose. They get more relevant in the game as the story progresses, so I won¡¯t go deep into it.

Hideo Kojima Productions

Overall these bad guys surely keep you on alert and can completely shake you while you¡¯re admiring the picturesque post-apocalyptic world.

Taking care of BB

In this mind-numbingly tiring journey, you¡¯re accompanied by a BB -- a Bridge Baby. It is an actual unborn baby taken from a still-mother and kept in a glass container. It is connected to Sam and helps in finding the BTs using a scanner called Odradek.

Hideo Kojima Productions

This scanner also tells you the kind of terrain you should be walking on and looking for packages among several other things. BB in the game is essentially a tool, but you¡¯ll have to try really hard to not get attached to the cute kid. This kid is also connected with the story, and you¡¯ll have to play it to truly find out.

Hideo Kojima Productions

You need to make sure you take proper steps while climbing a mountain or going through a river as falling down or drowning can not only deplete your health, it can also put BB into stress and it starts crying. Too much stress and it can go into a condition referred in the game has hypotoxemia where BB gets completely shut down and you need to get it repaired at a safe house. This basically means that your ghost-detector is broken. So good luck finding & saving your butt from ghosts without BB.

The multiplayer impact

This game primarily is single-player. However, it has a major multiplayer aspect drilled deep into it. All players are connected in the game, but they can¡¯t really see each other. Their actions in the game, however, affect you, and your action affects theirs.

For example, if you¡¯ve left a ladder to get on some cliff, that ladder will be there for other players to use unless you dismantle it and keep it back in. Similarly, when you build safe houses, roads, bridges, people use them and give the creator a ¡®like¡¯ if they feel like.

Hideo Kojima Productions

Trust me, it might not sound like a big thing, but when you¡¯re on a cliff confused where to head, a ladder is nothing short of a godsend. They also leave helpful tips like if the area has BTs moving, or in case you should ideally take a left or right to avoid falling down a mountain.

Multiple characters and their storylines

The game has a stellar star cast that involves Mads Mikkelsen, LeaSeadoux, Guillermo Del Torro, Lindsay Wagner, Emily O'Brien, Tommy Earl Jenkins to name a few.

Hideo Kojima Productions

Each of them has some rather funny names like Deadman, Die Hardman, Mama, Heartman. However, the funny name has a major significance to their backstory that you discover as the game progresses.

Random elements that break the tension

Reading it so far, you would have presumed the game has a rather serious setting -- and it does. But game developers have tried their best to add elements which can be considered funny and odd in this game setting -- that actually try to break the tension.

You get like for things you do, an odd choice of typography in some places, and elements where Sam Porter tries to break the fourth wall doing funny things surely make you think if this is right, but then again, with so much negativity around, such kind of positivity in my opinion only helps to ease the tension and show how people can try to be happy in a world where the hope of survival is dwindling.

Beautifully optimised for PC

It is true that the game has become very hardware-hungry on a PC as opposed to a PS4, however, it is beautifully optimised for even mid-range/budget hardware. I ran it on a Core i5 6600k paired with an RX570 GPU and 16GB of RAM and I could run the game smoothly with over 60 frames per second on medium settings and on high settings too, by disabling a few anti-aliasing options, and the game still looked gorgeous.

Verdict

Death Stranding is a game that you¡¯ll either truly love or you¡¯ll truly hate. Sure, the gameplay gets a bit monotonous with making deliveries, sometimes even repeating locations, but it never bored me as the picturesque landscape in the game was enough to truly mesmerise me and help me keep going. Unlocking vehicles later definitely helps loads though.

While this game surely has an enticing gameplay, the thing that truly kept me hooked till the end (and the end is farther than you think) was the actual story, my curiosity of finding the secret for the BTs, the BB and the actual occurrence of Death Stranding among other things.

Hideo Kojima Productions

I played this game at a time when my world today is not that different than Death Stranding¡¯s -- people are locked indoors because a coronavirus is wreaking havoc, claiming millions of lives while delivery agents are risking their lives, bringing us the supply we need. It obviously isn¡¯t exactly like that, but some resemblance does exists.

With me locked in the real world, I dived deep into the world created by Hideo Kojima, trekking through icy mountains, crossing rivers for hours, and each trip was exhilarating, to say the least. The end leaves you speechless, with many questions and in my case, rooting for more. For Rs 3,999 for the PC version on Steam, the game is pricey, but I for one recommend you to try this game, it¡¯ll be nothing like you¡¯ve ever experienced.