most titles designed by famed developer Hideo Kojima, you’re going to be spending huge chunks of your playthrough simply setting the controller down and watching several minutes of in-game cinematics. In fact, the game’s opening two hours are almost entirely cutscenes, with maybe 15 total minutes of actual play time spread throughout. But the cutscenes tell a gorgeously cinematic story about connection amid isolation, and the bonds we form with those around us that transcend life and death. It’s a shame such an artfully realized story is in service to a gameplay experience that is frustratingly tedious.
Image via Kojima Productions
Without giving away too much, the game takes place ten years after a cataclysmic event called the Death Stranding wiped out most of civilization and joined the worlds of the living and the dead. Sam (Norman Reedus) works as a porter for the BRIDGES organization, transporting cargo from settlement to settlement. Sam gets tasked by the President of the United Cities of America to try and rebuild the country’s shattered infrastructure. To do this, he’ll have to travel across the entire continent, uniting the scattered settlements and bringing them all back online one by one. It’s essentially The Postman, with Reedus in the Kevin Costner role.
But Sam is going to meet some sturdy opposition along the way. There are groups of violent separatists who would prefer the government stay dead, and they regularly carry out attacks on existing settlements. The worst of these groups is Homo Demens, led by the sinister Higgs (Troy Baker).