Summary
- Death Stranding doesn't follow typical open-world game conventions, instead focusing on traversal mechanics and a desolate world.
- The game promotes non-violence, featuring consequences for killing humans, and it also has an innovative co-op system.
- Taking time to get immersed in the journey is valued, encouraging players to slow down and appreciate the unique world of Death Stranding.
Death Stranding was a unique game, maybe too unique for it to fully land when it first released, judging by its mixed reception. However, since then, the game has only grown to critical acclaim, and it's now commonly regarded as one of the best open-world games released in recent memory, even if it's not for everyone.
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That's because Death Stranding doesn't even try to compete with how other open-world games do things, meaning that it excels at its specific focuses better than countless other games in its field. There's plenty to celebrate in Kojima's desolate but beautiful future apocalypse, but a few particular aspects manage to stand out from the crowd when compared to other titles in the genre.
8 A Truly Desolate World
Timefall's Not Good For Real Estate
Many open-world games are jam-packed with things to do, map icons, side-objectives, collectibles, story beats, and a hundred other pieces of busy-work. Even empty worlds don't feel truly empty.
Though some might consider it a weakness, Death Stranding's open world is truly desolate in places. Players shouldn't expect to find hidden secrets in those mountains; they're just tough mountains. It's a breath of fresh air to feel like the player is traversing genuinely realistic terrain that doesn't constantly aim to distract with a shiny new objective, letting them enjoy some truly beautiful locations.
7 Focus On Traversal Mechanics
Belt And Road
Very few open-world games have a mechanical focus on how players traverse through the world, often being a means to an end to get to the exciting stuff. Walking should just require pushing forward on the analogue stick, right?
Well, Death Stranding tries to do things a little differently, where every step is meaningful. If Sam is trying to scale a rocky cliff-face with a backpack full of cargo, players need to choose their route carefully, holding onto straps for balance, deploying ladders, and climbing anchors to proceed. Every route is a little puzzle, and the pros will soon develop some wild techniques to traverse Death Stranding's world.
6 Sense Of Scale
Dwarfing Mankind
Often, when games want a player to be able to go anywhere in the open world, scale can be a problem. Making something too big or vast can make it impossible for players to interact entirely with the world.
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Death Stranding manages to straddle the line between scale and playability beautifully. Theoretically, players can scale the truly massive mountains and plains, but it's going to be really difficult. Most players will feel small in the vast scale of the primordial landscape, walking through it rather than dominating it.
5 Being About The Journey, Not The Destination
Helps Players Stay Present In The Moment
Generally, in open-world games, the point of doing a quest is to get a reward of some sort at the end, whether that's gear, narrative, or XP. The problem is that this can disincentivise players from enjoying the journey and myopically focus them on the end point.
In Death Stranding, the journey is the entire point. There are still rewards for successful deliveries, but the meaningful interaction with traversal and courier work comes in the journey. Feeling every step of the journey and meeting all the weird preppers is why the destination feels so sweet in Death Stranding.
4 Big Ambitious Narrative Swings
It's A Truly Unique Tale
It's no secret that Kojima loves taking a big narrative swing in his games, and Death Stranding is no exception. In fact, this may be Kojima at his absolute strangest, telling a complex sci-fi apocalypse story that's so idiosyncratic that it's impossible to imagine any other studio making it.
That's to the game's benefit. Open-world narratives can sometimes feel a little stale or written by committee, designed to maximize engagement without delivering a lot of story. Kojima clearly couldn't care less, but the uniqueness makes it all the more refreshing to play, even if it's easy to miss plot details or whole cutscenes.
3 Focus On Non-Violence
Rope, Not Sticks
It's an undeniable fact that the vast majority of video games, particularly popular video games, involve being violent in some way. Whether that's a good thing or not is up for debate, but there's undoubtedly room for gamers to explore different kinds of violent interactions in the realm of gaming.
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Death Stranding's entire world is built from the ground up to disapprove of violence. If the player kills another human, they have to immediately bring that body to an incinerator or risk causing a massive explosion. Pacifism or non-violent confrontation is key to success in Death Stranding, setting it apart from its peers.
2 Innovative Co-Op Play
Helping Other Players Can Be Incredibly Beneficial
Though Death Stranding is essentially a single-player game, the player is never truly alone. That's because there are technically millions of Sams out there delivering their own packages, and Death Stranding's truly ingenious co-op system wants players to help them out.
Players can contribute materials together in order to build communal roads, drop handy tools for others to use, or even provide shelters for each other. There's no expectation of reward; the player is encouraged to help out just for the sake of helping out. It's a wonderful system that reinforces the game's themes of community and togetherness, which is genuinely sweet and unforgettable.
1 Encouraging Players To Take Their Time
There's No Rush
It's a hard truth, but people's attention spans are not what they once were. Immediate gratification is almost always preferred over meditative experiences, and action is what sells copies of video games. There's little incentive to slow down, so few do.
Yet, for a AAA game, Death Stranding is unique in just how much it wants the players to slow down, adopt a meditative state, and just relax into the world. There's no rush, no point in hurrying along, and it helps players appreciate the craft of the world and the meaningfulness of the delivery. It's wholly unique and in a class of its own in getting a player to truly appreciate the open world they're traversing through.
Death Stranding
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 83 /100 Critics Rec: 79%
- Released
- November 8, 2019
- ESRB
- M for Mature: Blood, Intense Violence, Partial Nudity, Strong Language
- Developer(s)
- Kojima Productions
- Engine
- Decima
- Cross-Platform Play
- Yes! Players will share the same server as Steam and Epic users
- Cross Save
- yes
WHERE TO PLAY
- Genre(s)
- Action
