Death Stranding: Director’s Cut (2021) [PS5]

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.”

— Carl Gustav Jung

Death Stranding was one of those experiences that I didn’t expect much from, picking it up on a whim on a cold winter’s night. It ultimately ended up hitting me like a truck—a very slow-moving, slow-burning truck. I have never played a Kojima game, nor had I paid attention to any of the hype behind this game’s release, seen any trailers, etc. I’m making sure to preface my critique with that info, as a lot of the reviews I’ve seen are from people who have been big fans of Kojima for many years, and have practically studied all the hints and pre-game footage he’d been dropping over the game’s long development period. A lot of these people were ultimately disappointed in the final product, expecting something perhaps more akin to the director’s previous work.

I also played the PS5 port of the Director’s Cut, rather than first starting with the base game and then replaying the enhanced edition as so many did. Hopefully, that means I can provide a fresh perspective—from someone who went from just slightly curious to “now I want to play every single Kojima game ever made”.

Death Stranding is so gloriously overindulgent, the love child of a film buff-turned multimillion-dollar studio-owning game director. I’ve seen it likened to a “prog rock album”. I could easily compare it to an arthouse film. Seeing an auteur given such free, unfiltered rein over fulfilling his vision, in the video games sphere, is quite rare, refreshing, and inspirational for creatives with similarly grandiose aspirations. What if you could just… make anything? And you had a team and a budget to accomplish it? Death Stranding is the answer to that. It is slow-moving and slow-burning, but despite that, it is fun to play and has a great story, which I guess is what a lot of folks come to video games for.

The 8-bit Review

 Narrative: 10/10

The world that we are introduced to is just absolutely and wonderfully absurd. The game reeled me in for being endearingly strange, that perfectly “weird Japanese game” material—a genre that I’ve become increasingly enamored with over the years. In fact, the main reason I started playing the game was due to my friend recommending it by saying something like “dude, you gotta play Death Stranding, it’s so weird!”

You’re introduced to this strange near-future wasteland that is supposed to be America, where people have babies attached to them and freely eat quasi-tardigrades that float in the air. People have names like “Die-Hardman”, “Deadman”, and “Samantha America Strand”. Things are rooted primarily in reality but appear somewhat off, a very Lynchian feeling. But, where that novelty in games usually wears off after a few hours, Death Stranding made sure to keep its plot moving and its hooks deeply in me. It is much more than simply “weird for the sake of weird”. Rather, it is more akin to purposeful surrealism—which I’ve come to learn is a mark of Kojima’s style. It goes on to unveil those crazy things about the world that you might have thought it would just lazily handwave away like “eh, it doesn’t matter” or “that’s just how it is, don’t think about it too hard”. There’s a clear logic—you could even say science—that is well-developed, yet enough mystery is left to keep one’s speculative imagination flowing.

In my opinion, the most engaging fictional worlds—whether fantasy or sci-fi—are the ones in which the worlds have clearly defined rules and boundaries. There’s great fun, especially through the video game medium’s inherent interactivity, in figuring out what those laws and limits are. If things were all wishy-washy and ill-defined, trying to make sense of things would be full of frustration and confusion, and you might just give up entirely. I’ve usually found that the more complex, the better—so long as it’s communicated well and enjoyable.

The author Brandon Sanderson has spoken extensively about how he believes the strongest fantasy writing should always have solid rules to its magic system, and I would extend that to any genre of fantasy or sci-fi. If you’ve read any of his books, you’ll know that it’s such an enjoyable process to uncover the secret mechanisms behind his worlds. And Death Stranding, too, is exceptional at constructing its absurd internal logic, tying together the joy of slowly discovering the story, with the joy of mastering the gameplay. The two are ingeniously interwoven—if this was just a movie with no game attached to it, or just a game with no story, it would just seem hollow. A mark of great game design, I think.

In a nutshell: Death Stranding takes place amid the remnants of a near-future America, following an apocalyptic event called the “Death Stranding”. Ghostly creatures called “BTs”, or “beached things”, start to appear, killing people and causing “voidouts”, which are massive crater-forming explosions. From the Beach, the purgatory-like realm where the BTs originate, an element of antimatter called “chiralium” is introduced to the world, which can be used as an über-powerful energy resource, but also evaporates into the atmosphere, causing “timefall rain”—i.e., rain that causes anything it touches to rapidly age. As a result, most life on Earth is eradicated, though some people were able to take shelter, and there are scattered attempts to reestablish civilization.

You play as Sam Porter Bridges, a standoffish stoic played by the incredibly cool Norman Reedus. He has a special power that allows his soul to return to his body if he dies—he is practically immortal. Sam is tasked with delivering packages for the organization BRIDGES, which is basically post-apocalyptic Amazon. On his journeys, he fends off BTs with the aid of a BB, a “Bridge baby”, who is connected to both the realms of the living and the dead, allowing him to detect BTs. Without the BBs, humanity would be doomed. As the plot moves forward, Sam reluctantly agrees to “Make America Whole Again” by traversing the entirety of the country on foot (or on rusty little vehicles) with his BB, delivering supplies to survivors, and attempting to connect them to the “chiral network”, some sort of quantum internet that not only keeps people in touch with each other but also allows them to “print” practically anything using raw resources. He also becomes the spokesperson for the UCA, the “United Cities of America”, a government that aims to connect the remainder of humanity together. 

And then some wild stuff happens. Saying much more would spoil the plot, which I think is a huge selling point of this experience. We learn about the nature of the BTs, the origin of the BBs, what exactly happened to cause the Death Stranding, and we unravel these mysteries through our own curiosity, ingenuity, and sleuthing. It is a brilliant story. The characters and their performances are all so memorable, and practically every moment hits how I felt it should have. It is sad, it’s moody, and it is occasionally quite tense and scary, but it also has plenty of lightheartedness and hilarity. Death Stranding‘s envisioning of post-apocalyptic America is brilliant, giving us the remnants of a fractured world to piece together ourselves—again, mechanically and narratively, purposefully intertwined. I never thought that “lore” in a post-apocalypse America would be so intriguing to sift through, but man, it’s so good. We don’t get big codex entries or books like in a lot of fantasy RPGs. Instead, we get emails and video calls and interviews—the perfect adaptation to this modern aesthetic.

 Visuals: 10/10

The PS5 version that I played is a visual banquet. Post-apocalyptic America is rendered in painstaking detail. The journey is across painterly lands hardly distinguishable from ones a true camera might capture. A melancholic greyness pervades the colour palette, but it is always juxtaposed by verdant lush greenery, towering snow-smeared mountains in the distance, stony canyons, and mossy valleys mired by endless rains. Unlike other games that have you soaring over and sprinting across their breathtaking environments, Death Stranding’s plodding pace and stoic quietude give us more space to stop and smell the roses. But it is not a simple feast for the eyes, as every shift in terrain means one must also adapt their approach to traversal in kind. 

 Gameplay: 10/10

I believe that one of Death Stranding’s major themes is “taking things one moment at a time”. I will further expound on that idea later, but I think the gameplay suits that narrative motif just perfectly. We are in charge of Sam’s every step. What we choose to carry as our cargo and how we choose to carry it is vital to the gameplay loop. We thoughtfully consider what things we wear, what equipment we take with us. It’s not just a case of “do I take it or not?”, it’s about considering exactly how much the gear weighs, and even where on Sam’s body we place it, so as to keep his center of gravity on balance. We also consider the state of our equipment, which we had crafted from the materials we’ve gathered.

It feels very much like a survival game in that sense, via finding raw resources and turning them into useful items, which we then use to find more materials, and so on. Practically every micro-decision we make can have a crucial impact on our survivability, and so it’s supremely satisfying when we get to our destination in (mostly) one piece. The player is made to feel proportionally rewarded. Preparation is something about a gameplay loop that makes it so much more rewarding. I’m reminded of the importance of prepping for a hunt in Monster Hunter, and especially in the inventory management of many survival crafting games.

The main crux of the job is being out on the wide open field and there we’re responsible for making a whole world of careful decisions. Do I plot out my course on the map, or just wing it? Do I play it safe and keep to flat ground, or attempt to climb over hills and mountains, or cross rivers and valleys? Do I hunt for BTs, or avoid them at all costs? Do I spend time mining for resources and build roads for my truck, or just truck it on foot? No two trips are ever the same due to all the interlocking systems and unpredictable elements like weather and enemies, making for practically endless replayability. We’re made to feel in control. It is a game that treats the player with respect, that makes us feel as if our decisions matter.

Themes: 10/10

The theme of taking things one moment at a time makes us look into the face of mundanity and work with peace instead of grumbling. I might make a few Souls comparisons in this critique, which I’m deeply sorry about, but I’d say there are pretty apt parallels. I realize that Souls is often seen as an allegory for fighting depression, and so it’s opened my eyes to viewing games as reflections of my real life. Death Stranding is an extension of that realization for me. In other words, these games have less to do with escapism and distracting yourself from life, and are instead more about leaning into your struggles, be it depression, anxiety, trauma, or whatever it may be, attempting to reframe the struggle—even if just a little bit—to be more manageable to deal with. Where Dark Souls may help us to fight existential dread by constantly failing and rising again to succeed, Death Stranding does the same by having us do mundane work as a means of slowly reconnecting those in isolation, including ourselves. Rather than giving up, we are encouraged to fight—perhaps not against dragons, but against each waking, agonizing moment. 

As Die-Hardman says, we (as in, Sam) take it day to day, one moment at a time—while many of the characters are comfortable in their homes, or even can travel to the Beach, where time and space flow differently. Rather, we’re out there on foot, dealing with each individual person (even if they’re usually separated from us by a hologram). It seems like such small steps, but gradually the fruits of our labour can be reaped, and there is unparalleled satisfaction to be found when we sit back and admire our handiwork. We’re put in a state of glorified mundanity. During a time when I was struggling with finding work while also dealing with depression and other personal issues, Death Stranding helped me to find comfort in the mundane, in the in-between moments that feel like time is passing in slow motion. Rather than wishing that time would go by faster so I can just go home and do what I really want to do—as if praying for my own cloud of timefall rain to appear above my head—I would try to live in the present, and to find peace in each moment. It didn’t reform my life by any means, but sometimes even just the tiniest spark of encouragement is all you need. Sam himself struggles with what’s called aphenphosmphobia—the fear of being touched—rooted in his past traumas, which he continually pushes down. Yet he pushes on, and slowly he opens up.

Don’t get me wrong, it is indeed work that Death Stranding gets us to do. But I’ve long held the belief that no game is without its fair share of work, so it’s by no means a criticism. Work is a huge contributor to making those memorable and epic moments we crave so epic and memorable. Rather, it’s how the game makes that work compelling and satisfying and not feel like work that is the important thing. You might hear the gameplay described to be boring to you, but you’re sorely lacking in vital context. You can’t just watch this game being played, you have to play it for yourself to properly critique it. I mean, just look at the grind some people do in MMOs, for example—asking someone to kill chickens for 20 hours sounds ludicrous, but in the context of the game and its systems, it can be made rewarding. The MULEs, the cargo thieves who you will occasionally run into, are the cautionary tale in the theme of facing mundanity, as their addiction to oxytocin and instant gratification causes them to steal materials from porters and horde them, rather than work for it themselves.

Online Play: 9/10

The aforementioned theme of glorified mundanity is elevated even further with the game’s very Dark Souls-esque “asynchronous” online multiplayer system. That is, that other online players exist indirectly throughout the world as phantoms who we can never actually see, but who can offer all kinds of help. But where Dark Souls‘ phantoms can only nudge you in a direction (or mislead you) using preset messages, other players in Death Stranding can drop helpful items across the landscape, leave their vehicles behind for you to use, build vital structures, contribute materials to constructing roads, and even give you “Likes” (yes, as in social media updoots), which I’ll get to in a bit. It is a very wholesome system that exists wholely as a boon to the player in dire situations. What I admire about it is that you really don’t get anything for helping anyone; it is purely by the virtue of other players that materials may be contributed to the building of your worlds, or helpful gear is left for your use.

I’m a very avid advocate of participating in Death Stranding’s online multiplayer (or any of FromSoftware’s). It is certainly a lonelier experience being offline, and perhaps more satisfying building everything yourself. You might think it sounds more fun, as I know many people opt for the offline experience—but I wouldn’t want to go back. Something crucial would be missing. The online system elevates its theme of isolation. Just like Sam, I am extremely introverted and the company of others can even be debilitating, but my penchant for keeping to myself can often be to my detriment. Sam leans into his traumas and battles them like he does the BTs, and it’s from that foundation that he can begin the process of healing. He uses his supposed weakness as a strength that binds together humanity, one step at a time. It seems this game came at the most appropriate time, too, with the recent pandemic forcing millions into isolation. 

Even though it’s not commonly classified as an RPG, the emergent storytelling this system offers gives me heavy RPG vibes. Death Stranding is very much an open-world RPG. While there are no “stats” in the traditional sense, the cargo load and the different skeletons you wear, vehicles, and weapons we fabricate operate in a very statistical-based RPG way. It creates endless potential for each player’s individual story to be unique. There were so many instances like being stranded on some snow-blasted mountain, on the brink of exhaustion, strained by the heaping weight of my cargo, the controller’s triggers resisting my grip (get the PS5 port), BB desperately crying for some attention… only to be blessed by a stranger’s stray bike, itself rusted and worn from the rain. It was that slightest push that was the difference between failure and success. Apply that to your life and… it offers a pretty tear-jerking sentiment. We need other people. It also creates a beautiful contrast for those moments when you just can’t find anything to help, and you’re completely on your own. The tension of not knowing whether your cargo might make it out in one piece or not was always a thrill, though mildly stressful.

Challenge: 9/10

Balance is important for Sam’s cargo, but it’s also important for the game’s difficulty. I think Death Stranding struck a near-perfect balance in its Normal mode, measuring the quantity of gear against the obstacles of the American wasteland. There was almost always some significant hurdle I had to overcome on any trip. The diversity of terrains and weather conditions, the hostile MULE and BT territories, the various weights of the cargo jobs, could all be tackled from various angles. The decisions were up to me and I was made to feel responsible and capable. A power fantasy, in the sense that you get proportionately rewarded for your hard work.

I never hear anyone talk about the boss battles in Death Stranding, yet for me they offer some of the most compelling and exciting moments in the game. They’re glorious, cinematic spectacles. There’s a certain brand of purposeful awkwardness or stiffness to these sections, which I think is to their benefit. I was heavily reminded of Resident Evil boss fights, as those have also always had a similar stiffness and clunkiness, which to me gets across a sense of panic, chaos, and desperation. You wrestle with the controls, you drag your feet in the murk of the swampy tar, you occasionally lose your balance and drop your gear. Sometimes you don’t exactly know that what you’re doing is perfectly right, while you’re taking damage, and only with so much ammo.

It takes some control and confidence away from the player, so as to say “so, you’ve mastered exactly how to deal with an average BT, but here’s something new”. It tests the mechanical knowledge that you’ve accumulated in the rest of the game, and they often have a marked weak point to aim for, but it still takes the player’s intuition and some good old-fashioned trial-and-error to conquer your foe. There’s a panicked urgency when facing down the bosses, because you can only carry so many weapons, and you have to carefully consider your carry weight with relation to your mobility and balance. A simple tumble can snowball very quickly: you drop your gear, which you scramble to pick up, you and your gear take damage, and BB starts crying. BB mostly serves to heighten the panic, and she can contract certain conditions (though I never experienced that myself).

Sam’s blood is used for both your health and your ammunition, meaning his state is the most important thing to watch for. Take too much damage, and not only are you barred from replenishing health, but even from dealing damage! At that point, you got to hope you can scavenge for scraps on the ground. This is where the multiplayer played a large role in many of my victories.

Even though I amassed a veritable armory of weapons, BTs never failed to pose a threat. They go from imposing demons to mild inconveniences, but I appreciated that they always remained a looming deterrent that you could not take for granted, or else you would be dragged into their hellscape. The true villain of the game is most definitely its hostile terrains. Timefall rain will quickly rust and ruin your cargo. Even a simple hill poorly maneuvered can spell devastation. Crossing a river or climbing a cliff is a careful game of keeping your footing and stability. I could easily get into a deep flow state when playing, pushing aside the troubles of yesterday for the satisfaction of maintaining equilibrium. The sound design no doubt played a massive role in creating that experience.

 Audio: 9/10

As you march across the landscape, occasionally the diegetic sounds around you will be whisked away for a song to fade in. It is difficult to describe my feelings when those moments occurred, but it must be akin to frisson. Kojima opted to use a beautiful indie rock and post-rock soundtrack written by various artists, mostly the Icelandic band Low Roar. The music in these moments is moody, soft, synthetic, and heavenly, encapsulating the dissonance in the state of the world, but also its beautiful, pastoral harmoniousness. The way music weaves in and out of travel is incomparable to anything else I’ve played. It never failed to enhance my experience and give me countless moments of bliss. I sometimes felt like I was playing a movie trailer—it was times like these that I was taken away from the mundane, and instead, I felt like a hero. Glorified mundanity.

There are two particular melodies built into the story, and are sung by characters in specific scenes or ingrained into the various sound effects of the game: the lullaby “BB’s Theme” and the classic nursery rhyme “London Bridge is Falling Down”. BB’s Theme, especially, is such an incredible song that rarely fails to make pull on my heartstrings. And when it hits at the right moment… there is frisson undoubtedly.

The sound design is excellent. The auditory feedback—footsteps crunching, rivers babbling, the Odradek alerting you of nearby BTs, the gut-rumbling blast as you scan your surrounding, the whimsical fanfare as you deliver materials—it is so deeply visceral and gratifying. Every time I jump back into the game, whether it’s tomorrow or next Christmas, the sound design is there to remind me that I’m home.

Personal: 9/10

I had about 80 hours of playtime, but I could have easily sunken twice that amount into the game. It is exceptionally satisfying completing deliveries for folks who are thankful for your hard work, or stockpiling resources to build roads, or helping others build structures and highways. I could not have anticipated that I would have loved Death Stranding so much. It appears by all means, on the surface, a slow and overindulgent chore, but there is astonishing depth to be unearthed in its systems and its narrative that are so uniquely masterful, and so it has become one of my favourite games of all time. Don’t knock it until you try it. And apparently, as I was writing this, there’s a sequel in the works!

Aggregated Score: 9.5

 shhwonk, in his natural habitat, is commonly found wielding his weapon of choice: his 8-string guitar. He is fascinated with studying the arts and history through a critical lense, with focuses on new media and ancient literature. His YouTube channel showcases his dedication to writing challenging progressive rock and metal music, as well as experimental rearrangements of video game music.