Death Stranding, a new style of game

Death Stranding is the new title for PS4 released the last 8th of november and it proposes itself as an unique experience compared to what you think about a videogame. A game that has a whole world for itself behind it, which aimes clear and maybe a little bit utopian purposes, but that is anyway able to amaze and fascinate.

Death Stranding

A poetic story, thin allusions permeate the narrative, it talks about birth, but even and especially about death. It touches many topics: from the myth of the american border, to the fatherhood experience, from the existentialism, to the oriental mystic, passing by notions of orienteering. But there is even much more, there are infact allusions about current topics like the controversies about Amazon and its logistic ruled by the AI, the war, besides that about a deep thought about the isolation that the social networks create.

It isn’t only a videogame so, but a large text that goes beyond the screen’s borders which brings us to important thoughts. The title is a project realized for the first time fully by Hideo Kojima, which is famous for the Metal Gear saga.

The location has something of desperation with spectrals notes, by exploring the places we will see Iceland’s fields, between black volcanic rocks, through snowy peaks between the Alps until some paths between the Pyrenees. Kojima is focusing on the concept of chirality, for which an object isn’t overlaps to its own reflected image. An experience that will generate known feelings to who usually plays a lot with the console.

The most explored feeling is surely the loneliness, for this reason thanks to the trip we will bring to life, step by step, the draw to reconnect the human beings. Re-connecting relationships and being so able to re-build a community.

The story

The protagonist, Sam Porter Bridges, has the purpose to reconnect the cities which are now isolated and to re-build so the fragmented society. We do it through the delivery of the boxes, every trip must so be planned, by deciding which one and how many objects bring with us, the weapons and the way to take. The bridges and the roads must be built, but they will remains available for the other players.

Infact the space of game is “contaminated” by the passage of the previous players, we won’t play together, but they can leave messages and signs to help the protagonists in his mission. Obviusly in order to not create too much mess, there is a limit about how many elements can be put during the match. But the sharing in Death Stranding doesn’t finish here, infact it’s possible even to share weapons and instruments obtained during the game. By creating a real donation economy, creating a virtuous system of relationships.

Another interesting element is the time: the chronorain makes the people and the things older, even the structures and the bridges made with the time, so, will deteriorate until to disappear from the map.

The gender

For its particular connotation the game is hardly integrable in the classic categories. The story then isn’t only desperation and loneliness because the human is right under the corner. Starting from Norman Reedus (which plays the protagonist Sam Porter Bridges) that in the moments of break winks to the player and encourage him to go on. The events narrated are dramatic and demented simultaneously, for this reason the title is an really particular experience, unique of its kind, completely to experiment.

This post is also available in: Italiano