So. I’ve been playing Death Stranding. How to describe how it plays…
Well, you basically run from point to point in a series of missions with occasional combat. You’ll be surrounded by a variety of interesting characters and a pretty intense story, wherein you become the Warrior of Darkness and save the First-
Wait, sorry, my mistake. That describes FF14’s expansion Shadowbringers.
Well, you basically have to move in such a way to maximise the terrain, make sure you don’t lose your footing or become unsteady, juggle all the resources you can acquire out in the field to upgrade your Mech Warriors-
Hold on, that’s Battletech. Sorry, back to Death Stranding.
Well, you basically roam around a big open world, surviving all sorts of weird creatures and threats while you scavenge the materials necessary to build structures, improve your power base, and eventually make a Nether Portal-
Ahh, never mind, that’s Minecraft.
…Do you see the point I’m making, though?
In Which Delfeir Makes His Point
The internet is awash with people making incredibly divisive statements about Death Stranding, from the most casual internet goer chiming in all the way to paid reviewers. Some are protesting that this is clearly an art project running rampant at the expense of the game. Some are saying this is a great new idea and a contender for game of the year. Some are saying that it’s obnoxious, slow, bland, boring or just not fun.
So here’s the thing: just about all of these statements? They could very well be true, up to a point!
The examples I listed up there at the beginning of this article are all reasonably accurate ways of describing aspects of Death Stranding (up until the specifics and proper nouns come into play, at least). Likewise, they’re all reasonably accurate descriptors of factors in the other game listed. All of these game mechanics and concepts are present and most are important factors in your play experience. And all of them are arguably more helpful in explaining what the game is and what I (or anyone) might think of it.
But saying “It’s boring” or “it’s not fun”, devoid of context? Much a legal statement, it’s completely true and totally useless to most people.
If you’re going to try and give strong opinions on Death Stranding — or any media, really — then I hope you do so in a way where anyone hearing it doesn’t have to immediately follow up with “Okay. Why?” and not find answers. Calling the game a FedEx simulator or a walking sim that’s boring is about as helpful as called Breath of the Wild a Zelda game. You might know what that entails, but does everyone? And what about the fact that Breath of the Wild is fairly different in approach than a traditional, “standard” Zelda game?
When we get right down to it, those examples I made might be true, but they’re so bereft of context or details that they’re meaningless. You proceed down a mostly linear hallway with occasional side paths, and you push buttons on your controller until enemies are defeated and the section of the game is over. Congratulations, I just described Devil May Cry 5, or Call of Duty, or Bastion, or… well, the bulk of games in existence. Yet the way in which all three games — even their genres — differ in these approaches are huge discussions we could have.
You can boil down every game, every genre, or every activity in human history to such basic statements that they become indistinguishable mush. But it’s not helpful to anyone. It doesn’t make for a good discussion, it doesn’t provide context, and it ultimately cheapens whatever it is that we’re talking about.
This is an issue I see in a lot of culture criticism. In our rush to get clicks and view counts, we craft increasingly rapid statements that are built only to maximise sensationalism. We put our claims out not because they’re interesting or make any kind of sense, but just to have a say in the matter. We engage with material not because it’s something that we might want to experience, but because someone said it’s good (or bad). And don’t even get me started on the many people I see out there who couldn’t give two shits about what anyone actually says, just that it lines up with their own thoughts in order to achieve some base level of validation.
But I think you get the idea, so let’s hit the next point that needs its own heading.
Entertainment is Subjective
The Room is widely regarded as one of the worst films ever made, and yet it is enjoyed the world over because it becomes so awful that people find it hilarious and delightful in its flaws. The Lord of the Rings books are considered the birthplace of most fantasy conventions in modern literature and are regarded as excellent, but many find them tedious, dull, or the prose heavily overwritten while focusing too much on description rather than the actual narrative.
There are objective facts in both that we can consider here. The Room actually is bad, with huge inconsistencies in what passes for the narrative. Lord of the Rings is great, creating and fleshing out a fantastical world and its workings during a major stretch of its history while establishing many conventions that would be used afterwards.
Despite these objective facts, the earlier statements about them are also completely valid. People can and do feel about these ways, and I should know: both of them are opinions I share! I will happily laugh and cringe my way through a showing of The Room, and I will never read Lord of the Rings again on account of them being skewed way too heavily into describing the foliage while ignoring the battles or character interactions just off the theoretical camera.
So what does that mean? We can like bad things, and we can dislike good things. Entertainment is subjective. Whether we find something fun or interesting is entirely based on our own preferences.
Now to me, so much of this doesn’t need to be said at all to be fairly obvious. Even so, there are many out there who will denounce all such opinions or feelings on media as being wrong because they don’t line up with their own interpretation. But they aren’t wrong, they’re just different.
I like RPGs of all varieties, even the slower menu-driven ones or the sprawling MMORPGs. Action RPGs, Japanese RPGs, classic PC RPGs; odds are, I’ll get a kick out of them. Not everyone does, though. And that’s completely fine: I fully accept that what I like might not be to everyone’s tastes.
I like strategy games, particularly those with larger scope or else lots of micromanagement and detail. City builders, games with heavy logistics and production chain focuses, sprawling turn-based 4X games; odds are, I’ll get a kick out of them. They’re definitely not to everyone’s tastes though, or others might lean more towards different subgenres. Factorio is not Starcraft, after all.
So let’s bring all this back to the real thesis statement of this piece:
I Have Enjoyed My 20 Hours of Death Stranding So Far
Death Stranding is slow paced in its gameplay. Even taking out the focus on story and graphical fidelity, there will be long stretches of the game that are quiet and lacking in serious action or bombast. Combat mechanics are present, as are stealth sections against semi-visible eldritch horrors, but they are often ancillary to the bulk of your play time. They are a challenge to overcome in your standard mission based play, but are rarely a direct objective.
Your objective, instead, is delivering cargo from location to location across long stretches of rough terrain. There are countless mechanics that have little to no bearing in combat, but almost all affect traversing the landscape. You will scavenge for lost resources and packages, or else be given them with the intent to see them to their destination as intact as possible. There are survival mechanics to balance, and you can build vehicles or structures in order to facilitate your progress and make your job easier.
Furthermore, there’s some honestly impressive online integration that lets you find the structures and equipment of other players that have been left behind in order to aid you. Likewise, what you leave behind can be of use to others. There’s a hugely collaborative effort to it all, and part of the joy of making the first treacherous run to a new dropoff point is seeing the online integration kick in afterwards and populate it with the landmarks and travel paths of others.
With all that said, it can definitely be a time consuming game. Some side areas can be hidden off in hard to reach areas, and it definitely helps to carry the tools you might need to make it through these places. The real slowdown is the cargo itself, however. You can stack yourself high with hundreds of kilograms of material, but this will make you sluggish and prove hard to balance, leading to sometimes comical pratfalls that will damage fragile goods and stymie your advance. Finding the right combination of gear, vehicles, and balance of luggage in addition to navigating through safe paths and level terrain will make all the difference.
Now, I could happily elaborate and breakdown a lot of these mechanics even further. But I’ve probably said more in these few paragraphs about the game than the vast majority that are just going out and leaving a bad review while saying it’s “slow” and “boring”. And hey, they might be right! But that’s entirely dependent on what they find entertaining or not, which may not line up at all with your thoughts on the matter. They certainly don’t line up with me.
While I do like the game and have genuinely found it fun to pick my paths and navigate across this post-apocalyptic America despite the occasional slow section or overly fidgety mechanics, my feelings on the game actually don’t matter that much here. But there might be people out there who would really find something entertaining or enjoyable about this title, yet only hear claims of “it’s boring and not fun, don’t play it” or “glorified walking sim” without details. As such, they end up bereft of what might have been a good experience to them, as well as one that’s honestly refreshingly different from the “standard” big budget titles of the year.
When looking at reviews or opinion pieces on a game that I am curious about, I want to know about specifics and details of gameplay. I want to know if the story is well-written and engaging, even if it’s not something the reviewer might like.
In fact, the only time that their personal engagement in a title is useful to me is if I know who they are and what their tastes and preferences are, and therefore can make educated decisions on whether or not this game aligns more with mine than theirs. And if their piece or thoughts are well-written and presented in a way that is interesting, insightful, or entertaining, then so much the better! But whether it’s a thumbs up or thumbs down from them is a minor addition to all these other factors.
So if you’re going to review a game, don’t just tell me what you thought… tell me why you thought it. What parts or moments solidified that response, or what stood out as good or bad.
I wrote this because I was so very tired of people trying to dissuade others from looking into or trying out Death Stranding because of basic and context-free statements. I’m tired of somebody saying something is shit without choosing to elaborate. Hell, I’d be pretty tired of it if people just said “It’s really good, go play it” without quantifying that or going into more detail, because it accomplishes the exact same thing in the opposite direction. And this has been something that’s become increasingly tiresome to me over the last few months or years in general, but it really took a game as high profile yet esoteric in style as Death Stranding to really tip that frustration into a written statement.
Death Stranding isn’t going to be for everyone. But then, no piece of media is. As such, let’s have a chat about it and see where people land, or what aspects they do or don’t like. It’s more useful to people uncertain about whether to take the plunge than a one word answer fuelled entirely by individual emotional response. Not only that, but the discussion would be far more entertaining!
Or at least… I’d find that discussion more entertaining. To each their own~
Quick Housekeeping Unrelated to the Topic
If you’re here, it’s probably because you followed the link in one of the usual Discords. That means you also probably know that I’ve been writing these blogs/articles for a long time, but have been fairly silent on any posts here for the better part of 2019. This is something I still enjoy doing and really want to pick up again, but there’s been a lot of considerations with physical and mental health that have hindered it.
I don’t know if these will be regular again, or if this is the prelude to clamming up for another few months. I hope not, but I honestly can’t say yet. Trying to figure out if I should restart regular or semi-scheduled posts, move this to another site or platform, try and get more exposure to it since I’d rather have these things read by an audience… no idea where I’ll end up.
But if you enjoy what I have to say, or made it through this article, it would genuinely mean a lot to hear back. Tell me what you did or didn’t like about it, or strike up the aforementioned chat over Death Stranding, whatever. Insight and input on such matters will go a long way in determining what I should do with this hobby of mine.
It felt really good to write one of these again, and I’m honestly more elated with it than I expected. Hopefully it read decently. If nothing else, Death Stranding and the conversation around it was the impetus to write something again… for that alone, it’s been worth the price of admission in my eyes.
Delfeir vs. the Backlog 