Death Stranding - The First 10 Hours

So it's safe to say I've sunk in about 10 hours now, but I very much doubt I've progressed in the actual storyline as much as some others might have in that time. I will be guiding you through my thoughts without intentionally giving too much away in regards to story - but fair warning ahead, this post will contain what could be considered spoilers, so just to be on the safe side:

!SPOILER ALERT!

Now that I've gotten that out of the way I can tell you about my experience, in the latest world conjured up by Hideo Kojima and the Decima Engine.

Firstly I just want to say, I like that the game reminds you of the hours played after making a delivery. It's a nice simple feature that I think more games should employ, and it's the reason I know I've hit 10 hours. Within those hours, I've had a lot of thoughts that I wanted to jot down and this is what I'll be sharing with you in this post.

Again, I will mention story beats but I really don't think it's as important as what my own personal interpretation (or yours will be) of what Death Stranding is. So let's start with the obvious...

The Landscape:
It's the first thing I notice, and it is beautiful. As a fan of Horizon Zero Dawn, I was especially excited to see what Kojima Productions could do with something like the Decima Engine. I knew we were in for a treat, but upon seeing this first flow of water in the picture above, I stopped to just take it in for a moment. After 4 years of waiting, we were finally here.
But in all honesty, the picture doesn't do it justice, because accompanying this imagery is the sounds of wind breezing by, and ground crunching underfoot as you move through different terrain. Do I go as far as to say, 'best landscape ever'?

Traversal / Gameplay / Features:
I'm quite pleased to announce that I took to it straight away. Possibly because I was just walking at a normal pace, as you would in real life. For me it was because I felt like a tourist in a foreign land, looking around at the peaks and valleys and lush greenery. You have the freedom to run too, keeping in mind your stamina. But as the weight on your Sam increases, it becomes more work to move, keep balance, manage your stamina, observe damage to your boots, and preserve the load on your back. The challenge of this is also scaled against the type of terrain or obstacle you have to move through (or over, or around) which is where the tools in your loadout are vital.

As strange as this sounds (even to me) I felt like such a boss, when I was able to do something so simple as to place 2 ladders to form a bridge connecting one piece of land to the next, which were seperated by a wide stream. I just read that sentence back. Still sounds strange, but it was so satisfying creating this nifty shortcut in the game. There was a small rock in the stream, and I was able to place the 1st ladder so it connected to that rock, and after going across, placed another ladder to the other side. Buildin' those bridges. Moving on...

Another feature is calling out to 'other Sams' - that theoretically are in the same space as you but in another dimension. The connotation being that there are other players occupying the same space in their game world. You are able to call out to them by using the touchpad, and if it so happens that you are not alone, you will hear back from them. Very cool concept and execution. So far this has aided me in locating ladders and ropes left by other players and I'm interested to see how/if this feature allows you to do more once my Sam's chiral network bandwidth increases.

So far I've had two (mandatory) encounters with BTs - those floating dark figures you may have heard about. The Odradek Scanner, connected to BB starts to flash and blink - getting faster as your distance to a BT gets shorter. The gameplay here is that of a mix of stealth, minesweeper, and a game of 'Hot & Cold' - with elements of 'What's the time Mr. Wolf?'
I'm curious to see who actually understood what I was trying to say there, if you did - be sure to send me a tweet and let me know @Mau2X15
'What's the time Mr. Wolf?' - because every time you move, you lose sight of the BTs, and then when you stop moving you can once again see their positions.
It's an intricate game navigating any areas with BTs and Kojima Productions did a great job on building tension throughout this portion of the experience.

My first encounter with BTs went pretty badly because I panicked. I decided to run and was swarmed by the creatures from the black drip, and swept away by the blackness - and ended up running and jumping for my life between sinking terrain to get away from that giant monster that was after my life! I survived, but barely.

The second encounter went a little better, but was probably even more tense than the first. Between you being cautious, BB getting stressed out, and possibly protecting precious cargo - you can really feel the atmosphere's stranglehold on you. I know I did.

Something on the other end of the spectrum is Sam's place of Zen in the world of Death Stranding... The Private Room.

I particularly enjoy spending time here between runs and chilling in the private room, just looking around while Sam occassionally breaks the 4th wall and points you towards things you should check out. It's isolated, and even meditative space for you and Sam with the option of selecting music tracks you may have acquired. It's a grounding experience and let's Sam (and myself) take a breather. I can use these opportunities to stand up, stretch and maybe go make a hot drink in the real world, whilst Sam can knock back a couple of Monster energy drinks and boost his stamina gauge by 25% - some good R&R goes a long way before returning to the order at hand.

The Lingua Franca / My Understanding of terms:
With this world, comes a lot of new conceptual learning and tutorials. It's a lot of fresh ideas that really helps to flesh out your surroundings. It's nothing so overly complicated but it is high in volume because it is essentially like learning the language of the world. Lots of new information will pop up in boxes or on the lower right hand corner of the screen and I made sure to use the 'Share' feature to take screenshots and review them later.
Now my understanding of some of the following terms are just that. My understanding. How I interpret what these elements are may differ to someone else's - some of which are more universal to understand than others.

I was quickly introduced to the word 'timefall' - in a physical sense it is rain, but with qualities unlike the rain we are accustomed to. The drops of timefall will age anything they encounter and then return to normal when they hit they the ground, so it's heavily emphasized that it's not advisable to be in the timefall for very long. I think there may also be a link between timefall and BTs.
BTs are Beached Things, or the paranormal entities you should avoid at all cost!
BB is that Bridge Baby you carry around, which in actuality is just a device (which looks like a baby in a Pod) that is able to detect BTs using echolocation (similar to the way Dolphins or Whales use sound to communicate). There's clearly a lot of thought that's gone into this, and I'd be genuinely interested to hear about how these ideas came to fruition.
I could be here for a while explaining more but those are the basics, and maybe in another post I'll talk more about other terms/concepts like, 'voidout' for example.

The Social Strand System / Chiral Network:
I think this is the real world term for the mechanic - in the game it's reffered to as the Chiral Network. The strands that bind us. So the S3* is what allows other players to interact with your world and provide you with some help along your travels. So calling out to other Sams, could guide you to a ladder placed by someone else which you can then use. If it's particularly useful, you can choose to give it Likes, so that more of those player's constructs appear in your world.

What I particularly found great satisfaction in was encountering a package in the world that originally a player in Japan had set out to deliver, but were only able to carry for a certain distance before placing it in a shared locker for safe keeping - for whatever reason they couldn't carry on. Since then it had changed hands twice, moving towards it's final destination. I was the fourth person to get a hold of it. I happened to be not so far away from it's final destination and decided to accept the cargo thinking, "this is going to be great! I'm part of the story of this delivery that 3 others before me have taken part in!" - in some way I felt connected to this mission. Not to mention the hefty sum of 'likes' I would get.
Then it started to rain.
I really did not want to mess this up, so in my mind the pressure was building - in a weird way I didn't want to dissapoint these other Porters, whom I'd never met. With not knowing enough about the world and the connection of Timefall to BTs, that aspect started to play on my mind, "I really hope I don't encounter them now..". It also made me think that maybe the cargo was cursed? Maybe it causes timefall which is why it's passed hands so many times. Did the others go down because of it? The story began to write itself in my mind.
I am happy to report that I did manage to succesfully run the last leg, and deliver said cargo. This notified the other players, and we all shared in the reward of this delivery which was oddly satisfying.

The shared lockers in the world also allow you to donate or receive items players leave behind so there is a sense of not being so alone in the world, and genuinely helping one another.

Something more selfishly rewarding is leaving the Private Room and being notified of all the players that may have used or liked something you placed in the World. Like those two ladders I left to create that bridge...

Personal Interpretation / Symbolism:
I keep finding myself talking about the fact that there's a lot of things left to you to interpret. Along with that there is also a lot of symbolism used which I quickly became familliar with.
An upside down rainbow in the sky was a sure sign of danger, something that I don't think is explicited spelled out (or maybe it was) but it's easy enough to get the hang of.
As mentioned earlier, the BB is supposedly just a piece of technology and Deadman's character tells you not to get so attached to something like that. Is Kojima using a metaphor for our attachments to our smartphones and other devices? I wouldn't put it past him. It's just one of the things that I thought about.

There is a part of the game very early on, which was very close to the chest for me - where Sam has to take the corpse of the President (who is also his mother) to the incinerator for cremation. Although it appears that Sam has no strong feelings of connection to his mother, I felt very compelled to carry out this task properly. It's personal for me because I lost my father earlier this year. I found myself being extra careful moving with the President's body on my back, and being very respectful because this really hit me deep. I felt somehow less connected to Sam Porter Bridges but that didn't matter so much because the mission was to carry out this final task - and it was the task I felt strongly connected to, because in many ways I could relate to carrying this load.

There's a lot of meaning you can derive from the game you play through and this is a world where Kojima intentionally tries to create rooted meaning. Now, that may be something completely different player to player, but it's defintely there. This is one of the reasons I feel that this is more than just a game, it's an experience. To call it just a game almost doesn't do it justice.

Other things of note / Cool Features:
Upon first starting the game, I was personally very happy to see the Kojima Productions intro in a game for the first time. It's a little animation of the mascot, Ludens planting a staff into the ground which then unravels the flag of Kojima Productions. The first game of many I'm sure.

The Codec is Back. This might not mean much to other gamers but as a die hard fan of the Metal Gear Solid series, I was smiling from ear to ear to see Deadman using the Codec to communicate with Sam. Brought back some nostalgia feels for sure, and I'm glad that this is how characters interact with your Sam. So with that all said, I guess that leaves the one question that everyone seems to be asking...

What is Death Stranding?
The critics seemed to be divided when the game was first played by those who were sent a copy. On November 1st 2019, the embargo went up, and I thought the word was generally good. Still divided, but good. Now the public had a chance to see what their favorite influencers thought. But having now played it for myself, I don't believe for a second that anyone could have told me what I was going to feel, think and experience in my first 10 hours of exploring the game.

At it's core, it's an experience about Isolation and Interpretation. Connections and Communication. Sure, it helps that the game looks beautiful, and runs smoothly - but if you're going to get hung up about improving framerate or nitpick about what could be done slightly better - I really think you're missing the point.

I love Death Stranding. Yet I've decided not to recommend this game. Generally speaking. Not because any part of it is bad or that I don't enjoy it, but simply because I can't guarantee anyone else that you'll understand what you find. Or find what I found. Or even like it. If you do want to give it a try, my advice would be to go in as blind as possible. I don't recommend going out of your way to watch someone else play it because I feel it would rob you of the intended experience. Finally, make up your own mind on what Death Stranding means to you. I hope I've helped you understand just a snippet of what it means to me.

Thanks for reading! :)
-@Mau2X15



Notes:
*- Whilst writing about the Social Strand System I used the term S3 - I just realised that this was the same acronym used in Metal Gear Solid 2 to refer to the Solid Snake Simulation. Coincidence?