Slow Walking and World Wandering in Death Stranding

“Oh don’t worry! Its not just a walking simulator!”

Why not? Of course, there exists ‘more’ within Death Stranding than the categorisation of ‘walking simulator’ would suggest, but why should such a description be seen in a negative light? More often than not one will find the descriptive of ‘walking simulator’ to be used pejoratively: to put down a ‘contentless’ game, almost to the point of stripping its right to call itself a piece of interactive technology. The dominant conversation that surrounded many of the (at the time) tight-lipped pre-release content and trailers was questions of what the game actually was. All we had seen in the way of ‘gameplay’ (a problematic term in of itself) was Norman Reedus’ character Sam simply walking with mysterious boxes on his back, sandwiched in between cinematic cutscenes filled with recognisable faces. ~‘Yes but what do you actually do?’~ Many asked. Little did they know that to an certain extent there was nothing more; no hidden mechanics, no ‘secret game’ only revealed after pressing play, and no deceit on the part of the marketing. To cut an incredibly dense game down to a few words, Death Stranding is simply a game about walking from one place to the next. It has combat mechanics that do come into play semi-frequently, and it is technically an open world, but the large majority of your time playing the game will be spent walking, running, riding, and even falling between a singular point ‘A’ and a singular point ‘B’. What separates the game from essentially every other is how Kojima approaches and embraces the actions and rhythms of walking, crafting an intimate relationship between each player and the landscape they traverse through and across. Whilst Death Stranding is a game where the player spends most of their time walking, it is more concerned with what the act of walking produces, and how it can enable an interaction with landscape that only a small handful of other games have managed to get close to.

The primary function within Death Stranding that immediately stood out to me was the form in which the player interacts with the world, and what there is to ‘see’ and ‘do’ within the world. The game is — by definition of the word — open world, as there is no limit to how far the player can travel within the game’s two regions at any point. However, there are somewhat limiting factors that discourage the player from doing so: chiefly in the form of a disconnect from the ‘Chiral Network’ — the game’s way of linking fragments of other players’ worlds to yours, making it somewhat difficult to traverse the land at points. Perhaps the most critical feature that inherently discourages the player from venturing out on their own is the distinct lack of ‘traditional’ video-game things to do and see. There are no towns or cities to visit, no side activities to complete, and certainly no ‘emergent events’ to encounter upon your travels. In fact, there isn’t a single living being — human nor animal — to encounter out in the wild, only the occasional (less than human) porter, and remnants of lost travelers past adventures. Of course, I am being slightly facetious here and omitting the wonderful landscapes and earth-formations that are spread throughout this Scottish-Icelandic hybrid wasteland of America, but within that omission lies the key to understanding what is special about Death Stranding. The landscapes are lovely to look at, but what truly differentiates them from a game like Dear Esther or Mýrdalssandur, Iceland — which posits itself as a first-person near replica of the land we see within Death Stranding — or even more bluntly, Google Earth? As mentioned earlier, there exists functions such as combat which separate Kojima’s game from the former entities, but it is simply the act of (and strong attention to) walking, and carving a path through a world that place Death Stranding in a category of its own. An extension upon QWOP and Octodad: where the ‘content’ is the ground you step on, and the motions taken to step upon such ground.

One must be constantly aware of each step they take when playing Death Stranding, scanning the landscape as much to interrogate a route of traversal as to take in the wonderful scenery. You will find yourself before moss-covered hills, fast flowing rivers, snow-flooded mountains, and treacherous cliff edges. You are given a singular destination from a singular start point and it is up to you to decide the route and which tools will help you succeed in such a journey. Will you have enough ladders and climbing ropes to handle the elevation of a shorter route? Or will you have to take the longer way and deal with cargo degradation and potential foes? Furthermore, are there things you can do throughout your journey to make it easier not only for your own return journeys, but the journeys of others also? It is within these treks that you craft a connection with the landscape; where you feel the effects of nature upon yourself, and concurrently begin to see the effects of yourself and others on nature. Mankind initiates the rebirth of an unrecognisable America, and upon a land that looked not far from the beginning of the earth emerges bridges, watchtowers, and roads. All converge to support and eventually supplant the walking process, and the player engages with new technology from exoskeletons to reverse-trikes and trucks to make the journey easier, quicker, and safer. Yet, it is exactly when the player feels most comfortable within their newly transformed world that the game moves forward, forcing their soles back upon the earth, into terrain mutated beyond the access of new technology. It is within these moments of difficulty, where one is humbled by new environments, that I find the game most enthralling. It returns the player to the challenges of traversal and to the importance of rebuilding the world. Where other open world games pepper the players travels with small distractions to keep them engaged and interactive, Death Stranding deposits the land itself as interactive, forcing the player to be aware of each action they make, consequently turning the menial act of walking into a (sometimes) herculean task.

It is no secret that Hideo Kojima is enthralled by cinema, and intertwines the forms and languages of film with his own games. Beyond more surface-level inclusions like the character of Snake (torn straight from the lens of John Carpenter), it is clear that Kojima seeks the complicated and undefined notion of ‘the cinematic’ within his work. Whilst one could argue that Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is Kojima’s most ‘cinematic’ game purely due to the (in some people’s eyes) incessant amount of cutscenes, I believe that Death Stranding is a much more deserving game of that title. It is easy to look towards factors such as the inclusion of ‘traditional film’ actors (such as Norman Reedus and Léa Seydoux,) and — like Guns of the Patriots — the great number of cutscenes (which indulge heavily in the ‘language of cinema’) as to why I believe this game to be his most ‘cinematic’. Instead, it is within the act of walking that I find the game’s most ‘cinematic’ moments, more so than the former two more ‘traditional’ elements. Walking as an action is inherently tied to the cinematic image, but it is specifically the use of music at points within the game when you are walking that recall the language of film. Kojima places these ‘musical moments’ at key points within the game, accentuating their impact by adding a third audio layer to the existing visual and interactive planes. These moments are still just walking, but they are elevated to a level of cinematic importance by the injection of music. The silence of the ambient world suddenly is filled with sound, leaving you helpless but to think that what you are doing at that moment is important, as if you are part of something. They give rhythm and feeling to the ever present footsteps of Sam Porter Bridges, at points switching the formerly static focal length to an extremely wide angle view, once again giving scale and importance to your actions in that moment. Furthermore, the song title, artist name, and music label fade in next to Sam’s moving body, as if to initiate a music video directed by the player. Perhaps the best way to explain this intangible cinematic heightening is to recall the famous ladder climb from Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. It can be construed as Kojima frankly taking the piss, but it also outlines his commitment to using music as a way of crafting cinema within the mundane. It might appear more naturally than an extremely long ladder, but walking within Death Stranding maintains the same purpose.

Death Stranding is undoubtedly a walking simulator, but it stands alone in its commitment to the act of walking itself. Where other walking simulators (and as an extension, other open world games) engage their players through the objects and people that inhabit their worlds, Death Stranding grants its players attraction within the very earth that they step on. Walking is simply foundational to the design of the game; to the changing landscape that greets the soles of one’s feet, to the connection one strengthens with the world by how one journeys through it. An entire world reconnected via the feet of one great porter.

In connection with this piece I created a video ‘Walking Diary’, complied of clips from my time playing the game. I found it important to track the journeys I made, not through the sights I saw, but through the ground that I stood upon. The rhythms of my playthrough accompanied by two of my favourite songs from the game, in an attempt to emulate the feeling of the musical moments I discussed. You can watch the video here.