When I play a truly great video game, I will occasionally stop and think to myself, “I can’t believe this game exists.” While I play a lot of great video games, there are some that are so masterful in their craft, I can’t help but take a few moments to be in awe of the achievement that is before me. I recently felt this exact way while playing Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth, a game I consider an all-time classic.
I usually only feel that way once or twice a year at most, but I’ve already been overcome by the feeling once again. This time, however, it’s a bit different. As I finally play 2019’s Death Stranding for the first time, I am constantly asking myself how this game exists. That is, in part, because Death Stranding is a fantastic video game. The other reason is that this is truly one of the most unique, challenging, and, at times, bizarre games I have ever seen get a AAA budget in modern times.
While I think most criticisms of modern gaming are ridiculous, it is undeniable that AAA games have become more massive investments than ever before. These games take way longer to make than they ever used to, and because of that, it makes sense that publishers have become increasingly risk averse. While there are certainly plenty of big games that take chances, most of them still have a core gameplay concept that can easily be sold or has a pre-existing audience. Dragon’s Dogma 2 is one of the more bold games in recent AAA history, but in the end, they still had tons of trailers of characters fighting large monsters, which is easy enough to sell. Usually, if you want to play something truly unlike anything else out there, you have to look into indie games. Last year’s Chants of Sennarr was a bold and intriguing game that I could never have seen being expanded into a $70 AAA concept.
This is why the existence of Death Stranding is so remarkable. I did not play it in 2019 because of the exact reasons I’m sure it was a nightmare to get greenlit. It did not seem interesting or fun in the slightest to me. I really don’t see a great way to build an elevator pitch for it.
I can only imagine how insane the meeting was between Kojima and Sony when the game was first pitched.
Kojima: “In this game, you will be in a post-apocalyptic world.”
Sony Executive: “YES!”
Kojima: “It will be a game where you are a delivery man trying to deliver packages all over the world!”
Sony Executive: *stunned silence*
Fetch Quest Perfection
This is a game based around one of the most dreaded side quests in all of video games… the fetch quest. And even more dreaded, a completely non-violent fetch quest! While there are enemies, the game often actively discourages you from engaging with them. If you kill the human enemies in the game, you have to either haul them somewhere safe, which is a giant nuisance, or they cause “voidouts” which can cause other problems for you later on.
The ghost/zombie entities in the game are also an absolute pain to deal with. They are mostly invisible and end up being very time-consuming to wipe out. If you get too close to one, you get swallowed up in a tar that just ends up making your life hell. The moral to the story is that fighting in the game sucks and is better to be avoided usually.
Your ideal mission in this game involves walking or driving from one point to another, while occasionally finding a way around an obstacle, either through exploration, or by using tools like bridges, ladders, or climbing ropes. In the best case scenario, you won’t see a single enemy on your path. Can you imagine how insane it would feel to travel from one side of a map to another in Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth without seeing one enemy? Well, it can very easily happen here, and it even makes me happy when it does!
Despite it not being traditional in the slightest, Death Stranding has somehow made this bizarre gameplay structure work. Each environment in the game is its own puzzle, and it’s up to you to solve it in any way you can. The game never tells you what the best path is to get to an objective, so there is an element of true freeform exploration that only a few other modern AAA video games have. The music also uniquely fits the vibe of the game in a special way. It only comes on in rare instances when you are completely in the clear of danger, which makes it extra rewarding when it happens.
And perhaps most importantly, the game consistently finds ways to make your hard work pay off. Completing objectives gives you some basic RPG-esque level ups, and it also gives you supplies that let you build better tools, better vehicles, and even roads that end up making once treacherous journeys easy. I can’t tell you how satisfying it was to go from my first few hours of doing everything on foot, and having way too much cargo on my back (which causes you to lose balance often), to suddenly having a motorcycle that could take some of that burden off. That feeling became even more awesome when I built my first road, and a path that was a bit of a nuisance was suddenly a breezy ride to my next destination. Death Stranding will challenge you, and at times, feel like it is unfairly punishing you, only to offer a solution later on that feels game-changing. The feelings of satisfaction that this game gives you would not hit the same way if it didn’t make you a little miserable first sometimes. Not many games have the patience and confidence to pull something like that off, but Death Stranding does.
Unabashedly Itself
The funny thing about this game is, not only is trying to make an elevator pitch for it difficult, but it also gets harder and harder to explain when you go beyond giving the basics on what it is about. Every time my wife watches me play, I have absolutely no idea how to explain why a little baby in a pod is helping me detect the ghost/zombie creatures in the game. I have no idea how to explain how one character gave birth to a ghost baby. I’m not sure how to say why I am currently taking the president of the United States dead body to an incinerator. I have no clue how to describe why I am putting a nuclear bomb in a lake of tar.
Death Stranding is one of the rarest things out there for any mainstream media. This is a piece of entertainment where the artist had the power to keep their vision exactly as intended, with the budget to actually make those dreams a reality as well. Death Stranding is able to give you both a world and gameplay that is unapologetically itself, with no compromises.
There was truly so much working against this game, and just the fact that this exists at all is weirdly an achievement in and of itself from Kojima. He has truly become a master at marketing himself, and that is paying off with him seemingly being able to do whatever he wants from this point forward. And I’m so happy he is using that power to craft things that we have never seen before. I can not believe this game exists, and I am so glad that it does.
Big Nerd Gaming 
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