Death Stranding Has Ruined Other Open World Games For Me
Playing as post-apocalyptic courier Sam Porter Bridges has permanently changed the way I think about traversal in video games.
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What I love about Death Stranding is that it’s secretly an amazing hiking simulator. Yes, it’s a big, emotional epic about a heroic post-apocalyptic courier saving the world from an invasion of shadowy phantoms. But it’s the drawn-out spaces inbetween—the long, exhausting treks across stark Icelandic landscapes—where the game really shines. While most video game characters can merrily skip across even the most rugged terrain, Sam Porter Bridges is not as nimble. He can fall, stagger, tumble, and lose his balance —which makes crossing a surging river or climbing a steep mountain the challenging, arduous task it should be.
Compare this to something like, say, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, where hero Eivor can scramble to the peak of a treacherous, snowy Norwegian mountain in minutes without breaking a sweat. Sure, you can hear her breathing heavily and grunting with effort to suggest hardship as you climb, but it’s all an illusion. She’s basically superhuman. Granted, Sam is no mere mortal. You try carrying that many packages on your back without collapsing in a broken heap. But he’s still very much at the mercy of simulated gravity and physics, which makes him feel more human, and more fragile, than the majority of video game characters.
This makes traversal in Death Stranding meaningful. Terrain doesn’t really matter in most open world games. Whether you’re ascending a mountain or crossing a grassy field, the experience is essentially the same in terms of how it feels. Your character is not affected by the topography of their surroundings—except maybe skidding down a surface that’s too steep to walk up. However, when you encounter a sheer incline, a rock-strewn valley, a dense forest, or some other natural obstacle in Death Stranding, you really have to pay attention. You have to respect it, because a misstep can mean losing or ruining your cargo.
Death Stranding can be gruelling, especially on some of the longer late-game deliveries. But there’s something utterly hypnotic about it. When it’s just you alone in that barren landscape, the wind howling mournfully around you, it’s a strangely serene experience. I love meticulously picking my way across a stretch of rough terrain. It’s the same feeling I get when I’m on an actual hike—quiet and peaceful, but with the lingering fear of losing my footing or taking a wrong turn and getting in trouble. Death Stranding doesn’t sell itself as a hiking simulator (for obvious reasons), but it’s easily the best one ever made.
The more you play, the less of a threat the environment becomes. You unlock gadgets like the power skeleton and reverse trike, and frequently stumble on player-built bridges and ziplines. But even with all this tech helping you, the world is still formidable. All it takes is one mistake to knock Sam on his ass, and next thing you know your priceless cargo is rolling down the side of a mountain or being swept away by a river. You also have aggressive cargo thieves, BTs (ghosts, basically), empty batteries, and equipment damage to contend with.
I’m not saying every open world game should go to the same lengths as Kojima Productions when it comes to traversal. But I would like to see some of Death Stranding’s ideas riffed on by other developers—even if it’s only a nod to them. I’m playing Ghost of Tsushima at the moment, and while its climbing challenges are fun, reaching the shrine and fetching my reward doesn’t feel like an achievement. It’s more like I’m triggering a series of animations rather than actually engaging with the environment in a direct, physical way. If it was more of a struggle, the reward at the top would be all the more sweet.
Link Source : https://www.thegamer.com/death-stranding-directors-cut-ps5-open-world/