Death Stranding Gameplay
Leana Eckes
Death Stranding is a 2019 action game developed by Kojima Productions and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment for the PlayStation 4. It is the first game from director Hideo Kojima and Kojima Productions after their split from Konami in 2015. A Windows port licensed by Sony was released by 505 Games in July 2020. A director's cut was released for the PlayStation 5 in September 2021, followed by a release for Windows in March 2022. Versions for iOS,[b] iPadOS and macOS were released in January 2024.[1]
The game is set in the United States following a cataclysmic event which caused destructive creatures to begin roaming the Earth. Players control Sam Porter Bridges (Norman Reedus), a courier tasked with delivering supplies to isolated colonies and reconnecting them via a wireless communications network. Alongside Reedus, the game features actors Mads Mikkelsen, La Seydoux, Margaret Qualley, Troy Baker, Tommie Earl Jenkins, and Lindsay Wagner, in addition to the likenesses of film directors Guillermo del Toro and Nicolas Winding Refn, as supporting characters.
Death Stranding received generally positive reviews, with critics praising its voice acting, soundtrack, and visuals, with more mixed opinions regarding its gameplay and story. The game was nominated for and won several awards, including for game of the year. By July 2021, the game had sold 5 million copies worldwide. Numerous commentators[2][3] later noted that elements of the game resembled the COVID-19 pandemic, which began during the months following its original release.
The player controls Sam Bridges, a porter for a company known as BRIDGES. The player is tasked with delivering supply cargo to various isolated cities known as KNOTs, as well as isolated researchers and survivalists, while also connecting them to a communications system known as the Chiral Network.[9][10] The player is evaluated by the company and recipients based on their performance (including via "likes" similar to social networks), including whether the cargo was delivered, and if it is intact, among other factors. These merits are, in turn, used to level up the player's statistics, such as stability and weight capacity, and increase their standing with individual locations and characters (which can improve rewards).[11] How cargo is packed by the player, and the overall weight being carried, affect Sam's ability to navigate through the environments.[12]
The game extensively uses licensed music, most often from the bands Silent Poets and Low Roar, to score and enhance specific set-pieces and moments of traversal. When speaking on the use of music, Kojima said the music "would match this harsh but beautiful and pure environmental setting. I also felt somewhat of a connection to Low Roar and the game, the matching of Low Roar's acoustic but digital futuristic sound and the concept of Death Stranding."[13] After the death of Low Roar's front-man Ryan Karazija in 2022, Kojima said, "Without [Low Roar], Death Stranding would not have been born."[14]
The player's main enemies include otherworldly creatures known as "beached things" (BTs), MULE (a cult of rogue, bandit-like porters influenced by an obsession with cargo, who attempt to steal deliveries so they can deliver it themselves), and Demens, MULEs who have begun killing porters to claim their cargo.[15][16] BTs are surrounded by a rain known as "timefall", which damages the player's armor and cargo by speeding up their deterioration. BTs are normally invisible, but Sam's suit is equipped with a robotic sensor referred to in-game as an "odradek" that points towards nearby BTs, and the player can then scan the area to reveal them.[17][18][19][20][16]
As Sam is a "repatriate", he is taken to an underwater world known as the "Seam" if he is killed, where he can "swim" back to his body to revive himself. However, being killed and consumed by a BT also results in a destructive explosion known as a "voidout", which permanently damages the location of the death with an untraversable crater.[16][9][10]
As players expand the coverage of the Chiral Network, they can access maps of areas, and use blueprints to produce consumable items and structures with the Portable Chiral Constructor (PCC, a device similar to a 3D printer), including ropes, bridges, and power generators used for charging battery-powered equipment. The Network is also used as the basis for the game's online functionality, where players can leave supplies, structures, and messages that can be viewed and used by other players, although structures will eventually be destroyed by Timefall after some time. The player can also recover cargo lost by other players to complete their delivery.[20][9][21] The player does not directly encounter other players in the world.[21]
Freelance courier Sam Porter Bridges (Norman Reedus) is transporting cargo to Central Knot City but is interrupted by Timefall and takes shelter. He receives assistance from Fragile (La Seydoux) in evading a BT. Sam arrives at his destination, where a citizen has committed suicide, with the corpse on the verge of necrosis. Due to being both a repatriate and having DOOMS, Sam is given an emergency assignment to accompany the disposal team to an incinerator to dispose of the corpse. However, an encounter with BTs causes a voidout that destroys Central Knot City.
Sam revives in Capital Knot City and meets Deadman (Guillermo del Toro/Jesse Corti),[c] a doctor from BRIDGES who has Sam deliver morphine to the dying President of the UCA: Sam's adoptive mother, Bridget Strand (Lindsay Wagner/Emily O'Brien).[d] Bridget pleads with Sam to rejoin BRIDGES and help realize her dream of "reforming America" before succumbing to her illness. Sam takes her body for incineration but refuses to incinerate a Bridge Baby involved in the Central Knot City voidout. With the BB's assistance, Sam evades a horde of BTs and decides to adopt it as his own Bridge Baby; against UCA instructions to treat Bridge Babies as pieces of equipment, Sam gradually forms an emotional bond with it and nicknames it "Lou".
Upon his return to Capital Knot City, Sam receives a message from his estranged sister Amelie Strand (also Wagner/O'Brien).[d] She tells him that over the past three years, she led an expedition across what is left of the continental United States, making contact with isolated cities and settlements and setting up terminals that would connect them to the Chiral Network: a system that facilitates instant communication and data transfer across vast distances through the Beach. However, upon reaching the last city on the West Coast (Edge Knot City), Amelie was captured by a terrorist group to guarantee Edge Knot City's independence. She pleads for Sam to follow her expedition and complete the Chiral Network, thus "reforming America". As this pilgrimage ends at Edge Knot City, Sam can then rescue Amelie, and she can take Bridget's place as the President of the UCA. Sam reluctantly accepts the mission.
Following the instructions of Die-Hardman (Tommie Earl Jenkins), Bridget's personal aide and Director of BRIDGES, Sam begins his journey from the east to the west coast of North America. Along the way, he delivers valuable cargo to various Knot Cities and settlements; helps research the Death Stranding with BRIDGES staff such as Mama and her twin sister Lockne (Margaret Qualley), Heartman (Nicolas Winding Refn/Darren Jacobs);[c] and thwarts deadly plots by terrorists and their leader, Higgs Monaghan (Troy Baker). While connected to Lou, he occasionally experiences memories depicting Clifford Unger (Mads Mikkelsen) and his hospitalized wife and BB child. Sam is pulled into Clifford's Beach; there, he fights a BT manifestation of Clifford, who seeks his lost BB.
After reaching Edge Knot City, Sam fights and defeats Higgs at Amelie's Beach. Higgs reveals that Amelie is an Extinction Entity: a godlike being manifested by the universe to trigger mass extinction events. Amelie is revealed as the true leader of Homo Demens, having conceived the Chiral Network to enable the Last Stranding, the end of life on Earth. It is also revealed that Amelie and Bridget are the same person; Bridget's soul separated from her body during early experiments into the Beaches and used the alias "Amelie" as a cover. However, Amelie is conflicted over her cosmological duties, finding the Last Stranding more humane than perpetual cycles of growth and extinction.
With the help of allies made on his journey, Sam reaches Amelie and convinces her to delay the Last Stranding. Moved, she accepts but must separate herself and her Beach from the world forever. Sam is rescued by his BRIDGES allies, returning to the living. Die-Hardman becomes President of the UCA, and Fragile resolves to rebuild her company. However, Sam is told that Lou is dying. Although UCA law demands dying BBs are incinerated, Sam follows Deadman's advice and removes Lou from its pod in hopes of saving its life. In doing so, Sam connects with Lou one last time and discovers the memories he has viewed are his own: he is Clifford Unger's son, who Bridget Strand had transformed into one of the first BBs, accidentally killed alongside Clifford during a botched escape attempt, and resurrected by Amelie (which triggered the Death Stranding). The spirits of deceased BBs help save Lou's life, and Sam destroys his UCA cufflinks, going "off the grid" to live a peaceful life raising "Louise".
After a lengthy corporate conflict with Konami as a restricted subsidiary,[23][24] Kojima Productions closed in July 2015 and re-formed as an independent video game developer and studio in December.[25][26] The same month, Hideo Kojima announced his partnership with Sony Interactive Entertainment, at the time led by Andrew House, to make a new PlayStation game.[27]
Kojima revealed the game at Sony's conference during E3 2016 with a teaser trailer featuring music from Low Roar, whose music would later be used in the final game.[28] The trailer was made possible with the technology of photogrammetry and motion capture.[29] It featured Norman Reedus, who served as the basis for the protagonist. The game was the second collaboration between Kojima and Reedus, following the canceled Silent Hills.[30] Kojima and Mark Cerny, lead system architect of the PlayStation 4, spent two weeks in January 2016 looking for a game engine on which to develop the game.[31] One candidate was used to develop a teaser trailer.[28] Guerrilla Games would later be announced as a collaborator on the development of the game, as it was providing their proprietary game engine, Decima.[32] Kojima Productions' meeting room was recreated in the engine as a reference of accuracy and for the purpose of testing physically based lighting.[33]
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