Death Standing: Game of the year for 2020

When Hideo Kojima released Metal Gear Solid 2 in 2001, the game soon became a byword for nonsensical, self indulgent plot. While no one would deny that MGS 2 is self indulgent, it has become apparent of the succeeding two decades that themes and questions Kojima has raised are extremely relevant and poignant and that the game was ahead of its time. Similarly when Deathstranding was released in the fall of 2019, it was likewise ridiculed for being self indulgent and nonsensical, but unlike MGS 2 the game relevance of the game has become exceedingly apparent in far less than two decades..

Death Stranding is set in a post-apocalyptic world where society has pretty much collapsed into a series of isolated communities and households after an event called the “Death Stranding” which caused the collapse of communication networks across the world and the fall of the United States. What was once America is now a series of isolated settlements and households divided by vast swathes of blasted landscape haunted by “B.T.s” which are pretty much ghosts created by the Death Stranding. Ironically for a post-apocalyptic world technology has managed to advance far enough that people’s material needs are still able to be met through stuff such as 3D printing and the like. But, there is still the need for some communication and transport between various households and communities and that is where Sam Porter Bridges the protagonist comes in.

Sam is a courier, couriers in this setting are pretty much the only people willing to brave the outside world and deliver information and goods from place to place. Sam is the best at what he does and so gets recruited by the UCA which is a coalition of settlements intent on reforging the United States. Sam’s task is basically to go around to the various settlements and households and reconnect them to the “Network” which is basically the game’s equivalent of the internet and so allow the various isolated parts of America to be in communication with each other and so form a nation once again. As the story goes on things become more complicated and questions arise about why the Death Stranding happened, what the UCA’s real motivations are and what are the motivations of its opponents.

2020 has been a terrible year, probably the single worst year in the post-war era. We have a mass pandemic with the ensuing fall out from that and while the end does finally seem to be in sight, we still have a lot more to go through before we get there. Death is everywhere around us, unnecessary in person social interaction has become taboo by necessity and every one has become increasingly isolated and withdrawn.This game feels so much like 2020, more than any game actually released in this year, with it’s themes of isolation and death.

The actual gameplay of Death Stranding is fairly simple in concept, you are a courier, you travel from point A to point B delivering goods and then you repeat. While you do have vehicles for the latter part of the game, Death Stranding really is mostly a walking simulator. The thing is the walking in Death Stranding feels really good. The main challenge comes from the fact that as a porter you are trying to balance a big stack of boxes and containers on your back and so have to make sure to keep your balance at all times. This is made trickier by the elaborate terrain design of the game with its numerous cliffs, valleys, streams and forests. You have access to a built in terrain scanner which you have to use to figure out what terrain is easily passable, what is impassible and what is risky but doable. Do you want to take a risk and go through a tricky area if it means the route will be shorter? Is the river safe to cross if you just avoid the deep currents? How do I get down from this cliff? Can I get through this area by vehicle or should I play it safe and do it by foot?

You are aided in your journey by the variety of tools and equipment you can use, for instance you can put down a ladder to make a stream passable and a rope to rappel down the mountains. The game is very good at pacing out how often you get these new tools and organically creating situations which showcase their abilities and limits. For instance when you first get access to a vehicle you are initially tasked with doing some backtracking over areas you have already covered, which shows you how to use the vehicle on terrain you are already comfortable with and how a good path for vehicles differs from a good foot path. However after you do this, you are sent to a new location which requires passing through a narrow ravine full of ghosts. You will naturally want to use your new vehicle for this and you will discover that some terrain should never be traversed by vehicles and why you are still going to want to be walking around on foot most of the time.

All of this walking though challenging becomes very relaxing and this combined with the beauty of the terrain and the sheer isolation you are in creates a sense of peace and an almost spiritual mood where it’s just you and nature. And when you do finally carve a new path through tricky areas like snowy mountains it feels utterly satisfying.

However you are not entirely alone in this game. The gameplay is almost pseudo-online, in that you are not the only courier in the game map, and while I am not sure of the technical details of how it’s done, when you play the game if you leave an object or a structure on the map it is uploaded to the server where other players can use it when they play. So even though you are alone you can still find helpful bridges and paths created by other players. After a while all this adds up to a feeling that the map is becoming less desolate and more built up, especially in the later stages where you and several players can start to build actual paved roads!

This creates a final interacting aspect to the game where your score for want of a better term is based on the amount of likes you get, if you deliver your goods quickly and without damage you will receive a better score and level up. But you can also send likes to other players as a thank you for using your equipment and likewise receive likes for doing the same. This creates an incentive structure where people want to help each other and is a sort of a commentary on the positive aspects of the internet and suggests that even in these times of great isolation we can still find news ways to form connections with each other.

In conclusion Death stranding is the game of the year for 2020 in my view, even though it came out at the end of 2019 it says more about the experience we are in this year than any other game that came out this year. Will this game may not entirely be to everyone’s taste, it is very slowly paced and even after 40 hours I didn’t reach the ending, I would still strongly recommend the game to anyone and everyone to at least try. Personally I believe this is the best game of 2020 and the best game Kojima has ever made.