@cosmiczeppelin

4 years ago

Everyone who suggest that Death Stranding would be better as a movie hasn't understood how it's using gameplay to tell a story. Some spoilers incoming: The gameplay loop consists of 2 main parts of which people that rushed through the game (aka most reviewers and let's players) mostly interacted with the first part: The struggle. Everytime you progress though an unexplored path of America you are on your own. You have to find your own path withstand the obstacles and the forces of nature to connect this part of land to the network, unlocking footpaths where other Sams walked have before and structures that make traversing the world easier. The second part of the gameplay loop is to contribute to this infrastructure which not only helps you,  but might help someone else as well. This is where a lot of the reward comes from in the game. Building an efficient zipline network through an area where you once had to struggle to get through is one of the most rewarding experiences I've ever had in a game. And this is what in my opinion Death Stranding does better than most other games, where gameplay and story often seem like they are two seperate and mostly unrelated elements. Death Stranding tells it's story through both, cutsenes and the interactive gameplay of all the players. It shows that if we pull our own weight and work towards a common goal we can overcome great challenges. It isn't idealistic about the whole connection theme by suggesting that it's gonna be easy. Quite the contrary. It's gonna be hard, and some part of the society might not be pulling in the same direction (there's always gonna be people blocking paths, or misleading people) but if we focus on self-improvement, we indirectly make society stronger. If you play the game long enough you'll notice that there is a 3rd part of the gameplay loop: Just because you and others worked hard to build the land up doesn't mean it's gonna last forever. Without maintanance the infrastructure (and society) will start eroding. This means we can't rest on our laurels once we think we've accomplished something. If we do for too long everything we've built up will fall apart. The important part is that maintanance requires less effort, but it still requires some effort and recources. If we decide to let it fall apart we'll have to start from scratch. It's impossible to maintain everything, so we have to choose which parts we're gonna keep and which parts we don't need anymore as our outlook and our objectives in this world change. Tomorrow is in OUR hands.

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