Death Stranding is my favorite game

death stranding is my favorite game of all time and for me it always comes down to just one word happiness a few years ago when this game was announced i decided to break away from the pc and i got myself a ps4 just so i could play death stranding i waited a few more months and when it was finally the big night i went to the only midnight release that i've ever been to me and about three other people all geeked out when we finally got our hands on the game and i immediately went home crying listening to i'll keep coming by low roar the song from the game's reveal trailer as some of you guys will know i was a pretty emotionless person up until about a year ago so why such a dramatic reaction to simply getting a game that i was excited for well it all starts with kojima see his game metal gear solid 2 sums of the patriots is kind of really important to who i am as a person my video on that game is what made me realize what exactly i was doing with this channel and i took that knowledge and used it to grow my channel into a full-time job mgs2 helped me come to terms with the relationship between my perspective and reality and that relationship has come to define a pretty major chunk of my life hell that video on mgs2 is the whole reason that i met my boyfriend so that game and by extension hideo kojima are both really important to me then i learned about all the awful things that had happened to kojima in the last few years before the game's launch shunned from a company whose relevance in the gaming world was being carried exclusively by him barred by lawyers from accepting his trophy from metal gear solid v's direction essentially one of the most respected men not just in the world of gaming but in the art world as a whole was stripped of everything but his reputation all because a mobile skinner box game turned a profit faster than mgs could and so kojima was made to start from scratch with nothing but the connections that he had made after being forced to work on a series that he had thought run its course for decades that's where death stranding came from those connections are what made this game possible first of which was his connection to sony while it's easy to say that all of this is just me romanticizing cold corporate politics the story of kojima's lost game pt tells me that he must have had honest-to-god friends very high up at sony friends that were willing to take risks on him i'm considering doing a video on pt as i think it may very well be the most insane story in the history of game development but i won't get into that now what's important here is that kojima productions was essentially expelled from konami and so they were pretty much an indie studio again and sony helped to fund this weird as hell insanely difficult to market game called death stranding this game is the definition of financial risk i mean kojima's name was still very well known but he himself said that just watching the game does a massive disservice to the experience of actually playing it simply put watching this game as boring as hell but playing it is one of the most incredible experiences i've ever had with a game and even if you do play it for yourself it's still a very divisive game that a lot of people won't enjoy at all tons of youtubers straight up said that they hated the game what i'm getting at is that if this game did turn a profit it probably wasn't a huge one and i'm sure sony knew that risk when they funded it so now kojima productions was an md studio with sony money behind them they then got access to the decima engine gorilla games the developers of the horizon series gave kojima access to their insanely impressive engine then you've got norman reedus mads mikkelsen gail mo del toro troy baker and some other actors to play major roles in the game all people who i'd imagine are not cheap but they were all genuine friends of kojima in a studio even conan o'brien is in this game along with a host of musicians film directors artists journalists all of these people that kojima had made connections with were given cameos in the game every time kojima goes out on stage you can see so many people he knows cheering him on they really do strike me as friends first and business associates second so this is why i was crying on my way home from gamestop the night that this game dropped a person who i literally idolized and who helped me define my career had his legacy torn away from him after decades of dedication also that they could make metal gear survive and destroy any interest anyone had in the series that kojima built all because a crappy mobile game made more money than his art could then he worked together with his friends people who are honest to god friends of the man to make a game that had a pretty slim chance of being significantly profitable it was a beautiful story about friendship triumphing over cold monetary concerns and it actually happened forgive the japanese speech but i just want to let this play out for a moment tell me this isn't [Music] so long story short we've got a game whose very core is connections the connections that kojima made over his career and it's fittingly a game that's all about connection it's a story about a character breaking past social hurdles and agoraphobia to become someone who's reconnected with humanity and come to terms with their inevitable death at the end of all things it's the tightest example of pluto narrative synchronicity that i've ever seen but what i want to focus on today is that key word that i teased at the beginning of this video happiness i mean happiness is the key point of this video and i found myself recording dozens of hours of death stranding gameplay way more than i need from the outside it all looks the same but the whole time i'm playing the game everything just makes me so happy that i keep on thinking to myself well of course i've got to include this footage in the video this footage perfectly proves my point about the game making me happy we've got a lot to get into before that though so let's start with the story in the world of death stranding humanity's experiments in the world of the dead accidentally caused an apocalyptic scenario known as the death stranding the beach a border world between our reality and the afterlife crossed over into our world in other words the souls of the dead are here on earth trying to take back what they lost when they died so scientifically speaking humanity has a pretty clear understanding of what happens when you die your soul goes to the beach where it passes on to the afterlife what we've essentially got here is a cast of eight key characters that all have a strong connection to the concept of death sam deadman die hardman fragile hartman higgs molina locke and cliff unger die hardman has so many near-death experiences in war before the stranding that he believes that he can never die hartman stops his heart 22 times a day in order to search the beach essentially limbo for the souls of his family fragile has level 3 dooms meaning she's able to pass through the beach freely stuff like that all of these characters are very familiar with and very comfortable confronting death and the beach all of them except sam this is where we get into spoilers for the game and i mean in-game spoilers so go ahead and play it before you watch further sam as an infant was a bridge baby like this little guy here his mother experienced brain death while she was pregnant with him he would have died but like all bridge babies he was artificially kept alive his soul along with his mothers left this world but his body remained and his mother's half-dead state served as a basis to keep his soul tethered to the beach instead of passing on to the afterlife that's exactly what's happening with lou and all the other bridge babies we see over this game the practical application of this half-dead state is that a bridge baby a bb is able to see what's going on on the beach and communicate that information to its user essentially it can see ghosts and tell the user where they are i know this is all really complicated kojima has literally created an alternate set of laws of physics for this game but we're almost done with the really difficult to grasp stuff so sam was a bridge baby just like lou but he was taken away from his brain dead mother and accidentally killed the godlike entity that governed america at the time bridget intercepted sam after he was shot as a baby and sent him to the realm of the living but his soul became bound to the beach this means that he was officially a repatriate death rejects him he can't die because every time he does his soul just returns to his body and he wakes up again it rejects death his body just heals itself no matter what you put him through i know that all of that is a pretty complicated route to just get to sam as immortal because his soul can't pass through limbo and he keeps returning to his body but it's pretty important to understand the fundamentals of death stranding's laws of physics if we're going to achieve a nuanced understanding of this game's themes and messages believe me i left out a book's worth of extra information that i don't think is especially relevant to the points i aim to make today anyways sam's immortality puts him in a pretty interesting spot theologically in a world where death is so understood that people are literally able to visit limbo and return to their bodies on earth death has kind of lost a lot of its mystique as humans in the real world no amount of faith can change the fact that we won't ever know what happens when we die death is an ever impending threat urging us to make something special out of our lives but in death stranding everyone in the world knows that when they die they'll just quickly move on to another state of existence no less valid than the one they're currently in sam though well he'll be around until the end of the earth or maybe until the end of time itself but one way or the other after enough time he simply won't be able to exist in this world anymore and then what what happens to minds that won't separate from their souls will he just be stranded on the beach forever will it just be eternal blackness will god just give the poor bastard a break and let him go to heaven in spite of his handicapped soul he doesn't know nobody knows and nobody can know so since he's the only one who doesn't know what will happen when he dies the immortal sam bridges is ironically the only one who has a similar relationship to death as us humans in the real world and if we look at how sam thinks at the beginning of the game the whole situation has him pretty nihilistic why are there caring about anything if all i've got is an eternity of emptiness waiting for me to meet the end of it all sam is really disconnected from the people around him his affirmafosm phobia causes him to literally break out in hives if he's touched by another human and his personality matches that posture well the last little bit of existentialism that sam has left in him urges him to deliver packages in this world where going outside is the most dangerous thing you can do and he's got a big package to deliver the cairo network so now it's time to go back into the physics of this world for a minute don't worry it's not going to be as complicated as the last one the cairo network chirality in chemistry describes a compound that has two symmetrical halves the classic demonstration of chirality is human hands parallel but opposite just like the beach versus our world they exist in the same space at the same time but they're opposites that's what all of that hand symbolism is about in fact chiral is literally the greek word for hand so the chiral network is essentially a network of computers that send data through the beach where time is essentially subjective to achieve pretty much endless data rates see because time is subjective on the beach you can essentially send data back in time through it which is why things that would require totally unrealistic amounts of bandwidth to be possible like real-time holographic communication with zero latency at such high resolution that it's indistinguishable from the real thing are possible in a world where the rain itself causes things to age rapidly a single dead body left unattended can destroy a city and ghosts make most places completely uninhabitable the old ways of telecommunication are pretty much dead good luck maintaining internet infrastructure or cell towers in a world like that thus the chiral network is the only way to connect a world full of forcibly isolated people who wouldn't last five minutes outside see here's the thing though the development of the chiral network is what caused the first death stranding in the first place it's what destroyed the world and brought forth the apocalypse essentially and now sam's job is to visit these isolated people all over america and convince them to get on the chiral network once more it's a tough sell but here's where we can get back into the game's key metaphor stepping out of your bubble and learning to be sociable well it's [ __ ] scary every time you go out there and ask out that person that you're crushing on or tell your parents that you love them or make a video essay about death stranding or wave to a stranger walking their dog or whatever there's always going to be that little voice in the back of your mind saying you really think you're ready to bury your feelings to this person they're going to think you're a freak i don't care what you're going through or what you're not going through we all feel that it's the human condition what if i really get to know this person only to find out that compared to them i've been completely wasting my life well debt stranding asks which is worse taking that risk or living your whole life without ever knowing for sure whether or not you've been wasting it see because we as humans need to find meaning in things social relationships are the foundation for everything that we are as a species how will we ever know if something is truly meaningful unless we show it off to someone else well that's what the chiral network is it's a way for sam and all these other isolated people to reach out and bring meaning to their lives again and finally break out of their isolation even if it's only digitally it's scary as all hell you might get embarrassed because you said something stupid over chiral twitter or you might cause a second death stranding and assure humanity's doom not to mention the uca the guys who give you all of your objectives they're portrayed like they might be a secret bad guy a plot twist that kojima is no stranger to those two fears the game's metaphor and its literal events are parallel they're chiral but facing those fears and being a part of an ecosystem of socially connected humans is the only way to assure that your life has any meaning at all in a world where death is understood and an afterlife is guaranteed for everyone it doesn't really matter if your life was meaningful or not who cares if you waste your life if you'll have all of eternity to make up for that lost time in the afterlife but sam he's not guaranteed an afterlife he has to make the most of his time on earth because once it's over that's it for him and his soul his nihilism and anti-social outlook makes him less enthusiastic about the chiral network than anyone at bridges but by the end of the game i think he realized that he has more to gain from it than anyone he learns how to make connections and how to grow relationships and more importantly than anything he learns that that was exactly what was missing from his life he might not have an eternal afterlife but that sanctity of death is what allows him to make more of his life than anyone else in the world could this makes death stranding into an absolutely beautiful story about facing the fear that comes with social ostracization and coming out of that struggle a happier person something that i know we can all relate to or at least look forward to let's talk about the most important and strongest relationship that sam builds over the course of this game his relationship with his bb lou lou much like sam isn't supposed to be alive so to speak had nature just taken its course she would have died in her mother's womb but that's not what happened over the course of the game sam nurtures lou keeps her happy and they learn to work together they understand each other more than anyone else in the world understands them and well at the end of the game sam is tasked with incinerating lou's body to avoid a crater as lou's brain dead still mother is experiencing complications that will lead to her death well sam hikes up one last time to the incinerator where his journey started and instead of killing lou he takes her out of her bb pod thus disconnecting her from her mother and her soul lou's soul at this moment leaves her and passes on to the afterlife but miraculously the kid survives and the game ends hideo kojima games are no stranger to having one impossible thing happening in the end that wraps up the metaphor perfectly you've got snake miraculously surviving fox die at the end of mgs1 or ryden finding the dog tags with the player's name on them and mgs2 stuff like that well there's an instance of that in death stranding also all throughout the game we've been taught that exposure to rain time fall accelerates aging it destroys our packages and our structures plants blossom and die in seconds and if it weren't for this special material that sam wears on this hoodie his aging would accelerate too but at the end of the game these two just stand there out in the rain without any protection and nothing happens to them there's one key detail here that i don't know if anyone else is caught yet but that i've been fixated on ever since i first saw the ending to this game the rainbow see all throughout this game whenever we see a rainbow it's upside down and it signifies that the time fall and bts are in the area rainbows are seen as a threat son of a [ __ ] rainbow well as is specified over a time with hartman there isn't any blue in the inverted rainbow the theological theory behind this is that blue is the color of life something about how most bioluminescence and sub-aquatic life is blue whatever the point is that time fall is just water dripping onto the earth from this place called the seam essentially the underwater section of the beach that's why the rainbows are upside down they're from the opposite world and that's also why there isn't any blue blue is the color of life and there isn't any life on the beach but at the end of the game we see a right side up rainbow that does have blue in it it's not like the death straining was just miraculously ended when lou was taken out of her bb pod no this is just a straight-up magical thing happening which has no basis in the game's laws of physics and that's fine because it ties up this game's metaphor so incredibly perfectly now that lou is out of her bb pod and disconnected from her still mother she's lost her soul now neither her nor sam will ever know what's going to happen when they die if they do have an afterlife it's not going to be the same one that everyone else is gonna get but that's okay that fact liberates them now that they have a reason to fear death and they're able to live more fulfilling lives than any of these other people who all know what's coming to them this is where we get into the concept of an extinction opportunity extinction opportunity is the paleontological concept that says that whenever an extinction event happens like a meteor strike or an ice age it just provides an opportunity for more sophisticated forms of life to show off their survival skills those creatures that weren't really cutting it amongst the dinosaurs but managed to survive the meteor that killed off its cousins they took advantage of an extinction opportunity the game takes note of the fact that this has happened during all five of the mass extinctions that have happened in earth's history in metaphorical terms extinction opportunity is a way of ascribing virtue to the concept of death if humanity goes extinct that means that sam and lou die for real and don't get to pass through the beach to the afterlife but that threat of extinction serves as an opportunity for them to evolve into more social creatures and enjoy their lives like nobody else could in this world so that's why the rainbow is right side up and why the rain doesn't kill the daughter and stepfather at the end of this game death stranding literally refers to an event in nature where an aquatic animal washes up on the shore and suffocates death stranding pretty much means dying alone and the death straining in the game was set to assure that all humans would die alone and disconnected from their neighbors but lou and sam have found a way to thrive in that world and be connected so that's why they can just survive the rain at the end of this game they've evolved past that by taking advantage of their extinction opportunity evolution is a concept that heavily surrounds this game even outside of the game itself this is where we rap all the way back around to that crazy and heartwarming story about hideo kojima rebuilding his career as his team developed this game see the new mascot of kojima productions is called homo ludens their slogan is from sapiens to ludens in other words it's referring to an evolution in humanity from homo sapiens to this new species called homo ludens so what is homo ludens well maybe you've heard me or other gaming youtubers talk about something called pluto narrative dissonance this is when the gameplay doesn't match the story like a horror game that isn't actually scary to play even though the protagonist is [ __ ] themselves and thus pluto narrative harmony is when the two do complement each other i'm not exactly sure how latin works but if i understand correctly the prefix lu means both play and enlighten you know you might illuminate something or you might elude suspicion by dressing up and pretending to be someone else to learn and to play so essentially homo ludens is a symbol of that concept the concept of expanding one's mind in one's world through acts of play you know like how mgs2 made me understand what exactly the point of my youtube channel was i played it and i learned and if you think about it kojima productions experienced a bit of an extinction opportunity too they lost control of the metal gear series the company was at risk of going under so they used that as an opportunity to evolve to evolve from homo sapiens to homo ludens as it were all of this stuff is really fun to deconstruct and piece back together in fact i'll bet anything that that's why sam names his bb lou but if all of that is the case how exactly does death stranding aim to bring out the loo in us sure it's pretty obvious how it lets us play but how does it let us learn and evolve well it all boils down to the thing that personally makes this my favorite game of all time the social aspects and the asynchronous multiplayer this is where we get into the gameplay there are a lot of games that make me laugh more than death stranding a lot of games that make me cry more or think more or whatever but nothing i've ever played makes me as happy as this game even all these years later so for those who don't really know what this game is all about kojima described it as the first ever strand type game a term that's been memed all to hell since then but what he meant by this is that it's a game that's at its core about the disparate connections that players have with each other you never directly interact with another player but you see the echoes of what other players have done as you traverse the world it's like the sign mechanic of from software games but taken to its natural conclusion if i place a ladder over here some other player's going to see it and if they use that ladder or give it likes because they appreciated it their connection with me grows stronger and then we're both more likely to see each other's traces as we play i'll see their climbing rope they'll see my abandoned reverse trike and sooner or later we'll probably remember each other's names we'll have never talked to each other or done anything specifically to help each other but we've connected in that subtle way next thing you know i'll be having a tough time in a boss fight and their soul will emerge from the tar to give me a weapon to help me finish the fight or i'll call out and hear that other player say i'm calling back to me i'll take a certain route through an area that player will then see the footprints i left behind and choose to take the same route then other players we're connected with will follow the same route and eventually that route will turn into a proper footpath through totally natural impulsive decisions me and all these people i'll never talk to have made this area a bit more passable than it previously was it's a really cool beautiful thing i could talk to someone in the replies on twitter and they're just a person on a computer somewhere but in death stranding these simple interactions do more to remind me of the humanity of the other people playing the game than anything in any multiplayer game or social app has ever done for me i don't know what you look like what you sound like i don't know what your pronouns are or your name or anything but we're going through this together and i'm happy that the things i did to overcome a challenge were able to help you do the same and here's the thing those connections are helpful sure but you'll always be able to do what you need to do this game isn't especially hard it's not like there's some survival necessity to liking other players structures or getting likes on your own for all intents and purposes those likes don't mean anything the most they do is level you up which offers so few benefits so rarely that it isn't even really worth mentioning other than just bragging rights this guy who's somehow managed to get over a million likes doesn't see other people's structures any more often than i do with my few hundred thousand likes they aren't a currency they don't mean anything really but boy do they feel good that's all it is just sharing a smile with someone else just for the sake of it and that's the core gameplay of death stranding just doing nice things for other players it's the driving motivation behind everything you do in this game and it's an experience that i can honestly say i've never seen in a game before or since and sometimes those connections even extend beyond the game itself i've had a couple people tell me on twitter or steam that they saw something i left behind in death stranding and that helped them immensely with something they were struggling with in the game and that's such an incredible feeling that i can hardly put into words i never would have imagined a video game could provide such a human feeling death surrounding is such a lonely game just endless miles of empty dead earth but you never feel alone you can always feel the presence of the other people around you going through the same trials that you are even when you're disconnected from the chiral network meaning you're in an area where you haven't yet unlocked the ability to see what other players have done you know that they're out there and when you finally do get that area on the network you get to see that amazing experience of watching all those little dots light up on your map and see the stories that other players have forged going down the same lonely roads as you have it's a game in which you're always following in someone else's footsteps and yet you're always trailblazing making the world more passable for the next player at face value it's one of the loneliest games in the world but just below that is a world of small social interactions that motivate everything you do i didn't get 100 achievements in this game for the sake of bragging rights i did it because it was something to steer me in the right direction while i made the world better for the next player i know it sounds like i'm really stroking my ego right now but that isn't just me that's everyone who's playing this game because again the core mechanic of this game is helping people just sharing a smile with them like i said way back in the beginning the core reason that i love this game so much is happiness it makes me so happy to feel these connections with other players so this is all really cool and unique but i've got a much more personal connection with these concepts than just enjoying them see being queer in a small southern town and being a gamer in a small southern town i know all about being socially ostracized as i expect many of you guys do you feel so alone for so long that you eventually start to like the feeling other people start to scare you it's the classic situation that i bet a whole bunch of us gamers know of finally working up the courage to leave your room as a kid only for your mom to say something like i thought you were going to be in your cave all night come grab a plate and say hi to your cousins when you're a kid and you're so self-conscious and awkward that burns like a hot knife and that's where sam is at the start of this game he's in a world that's been destroyed by communication personal relationships are few and far between he's disconnected from his family and really from the whole world and this very much comes across in the early game you're constantly going to new places disconnected from the chiral network unable to see other players structures and being so new to the game that you really don't know whether or not you're going to be able to handle whatever tricky paths might lay ahead of you it's lonely scary and confusing you feel like a kid that's lost track of their mom at the grocery store but as you go through the game you meet all these characters and you connect more areas to the chiral network you make the world more passable for other players and they do the same for you and by the end of the game both you and sam have so many friends that you never really feel lonely anymore even as you go hours at a time without so much as seeing another human in the flesh however much like the arc that sam goes through even these entirely positive connections with other players have a way of just making you feel a bit self-conscious from time to time i remember in my first playthrough of this game i had to cross this especially wide and deep river and so i used a bit of visual calculus to put together this weird combination of a rope and a ladder in order to make the stream crossable and as i was crossing the river i thought to myself man if you stumble across this and don't know how to use it i'm gonna look like a real idiot for putting a climbing anchor on the ground so i inched my way back and put in some extra science to try to communicate the intent it was just a little moment but it perfectly encapsulates that apprehension and self-doubt that comes with any social interaction hell i'd even catch myself spamming like on something super helpful and for a split second i'd think man whoever built this thing is gonna think i'm super desperate for social interactions if i'm leaving 300 likes on a random ladder it's a freaky feeling to see captured in a game so naturally then you've got the way that the preppers that you deliver to will just chew you out if you mess up even a little bit that's all you got for me with all the gear at your disposal i reckoned you do better i would have and looking at a lot of what kojima was saying around the time of this game's launch he was going through that same sort of social apprehension getting ready to release a game that was so weird and expressive and divisive it's exactly the type of apprehension that i feel whenever i upload a video but ultimately death's training is about overcoming those apprehensions and that's what happened to sam and myself over the course of this game it's a story that really gives you hope and because it does such a good job at putting you in sam's shoes that hope ends up translating to the real world you start to look at random people on the street or in traffic a bit differently you realize that this road you're driving on was made by other people and you get to reap the benefits of their work the street lights the stop signs the park benches the car itself all of it was made by someone else in order to make your life easier and a little more pleasant the food in your grocery store was provided by someone else the education you've received the language you speak the culture you inhabit all of it was produced by a network of people who each had their own goals and motivations but found a reason to collaborate and help each other to create a world that better suited them and that's exactly what you do in the game death stranding really is a game that gets you in the mood to hold the door open for someone or wave at a stranger as you pass them on the street and that's a beautiful thing and it's something that again parallels my own life i used to be so scared of other people i was terrified to express myself or be in a one-on-one conversation with someone i was horrible at maintaining eye contact i would always trip over my words and go home embarrassed that i spoke my mind or kicking myself for not speaking my mind when i had the chance basically i was the opposite of a social creature going home and playing video games or listening to music was basically my only solace it was the only way i could cut other people out of my life and feel at peace but much like sam i eventually learned how to let other people in i learned that the people around me had been through just as much [ __ ] as i had and that they really did want to help me and get to know me every step of the way was horrifying and filled with self-doubt and embarrassment only stayed by an ever-shrinking ego but by the time i was well on my way in that journey i'd unlocked something that i never knew i was missing it's the reason i'm able to do this channel or be in a relationship or have a bigger circle of friends than ever before or maintain eye contact or any of that stuff what i unlocked was the understanding that interacting with other people just makes me happy while death stranding didn't come out early enough to be the thing that finally pushed me out of my bubble it came to me at the perfect time to help me reflect on the journey that i'd gone on and the growth i'd experienced and it served as an incredibly potent reminder that that journey won't ever really be over other people will always have something new to teach me and even when they don't teach me something just interacting with them is enough to make me happy death training is a game where everyone knows what's going to happen to them when they die the afterlife in this world is a documented and understood place sam however can't die he keeps coming back so he doesn't know what's in store for him when the earth is tarnished and all things have met their end he knows what happens when other people die but he doesn't know what's gonna happen when he dies and rather than spend his whole life stuck inside his own head he learns to go out and make the most of the life that he was given who cares what's waiting for him on the other side what matters is that he gets to experience the joy on this side and make the best of it all and help the people around him and now as i'm well past the game's credits and just chugging away at my 100 s ranks that's where i'm at too i don't even think about how scary this game is anymore or how lonely and dangerous these same environments once felt when i play death stranding now all i'm thinking about is how i'm connecting with people and having fun with them i'm constantly discovering new things and having a good time learning about them and maybe even trying to teach other players about them with a suggestive sign like at this point when i realized i could use a cargo catapult to safely knock out enemies from a distance i built one here and put a sign next to it hoping that the message would be received by the next player to come along a few years ago i would have placed that sign out of fear that the other person wouldn't understand why i'd want a cargo catapult there like with the latter and the climbing anchor i talked about earlier but now i do it because i look forward to helping players learn how to survive and thrive in this world things like this are fantastically rewarding even as they don't offer any benefit in terms of the gameplay then you've got the tie-ins with other games and brands i'm sure we all know about monster energy in this game but there are so many other tie-ins you can get a little headcrab to take the place of your hats or you can get johnny silverhand's silver hand from cyberpunk 2077. you can see little holograms of alloy from the horizon series i mean hell look at this this should be on an episode of yeah this stuff is all silly obviously but for a game that's about connection it makes so much sense i mean here's a blatant death training reference in half-life alex i guarantee you that kojima productions didn't pay valve to put the gravity gloves in the game or the other way around they were simply put in there because the creators liked each other's games or they were friends and that's so i'm sorry but wholesome is the only word for it it's just plain makes me happy and then when i'm exploring the world and i'm tasked with carrying a companion cube or a courier chip to a certain delivery point it almost feels like i'm connecting with the fan bases of portal or cyberpunk suddenly the huge group of friends that i've tangentially interacted with in this game just grows wider and wider and i just feel more and more connected to the world around me and all these people who share similar interests to me that i may never meet outside of the game the whole thing just makes me so happy it's really the only word for it what started out as a game about loneliness depression isolation and fear of death turned into a game about simply sharing a smile with other people just for the sake of smiling depressing barren landscapes turned into symbols of a shared history in a difficult journey that we all went on together it's beautiful and it's a journey that i think every human goes on over the course of their life and it's a journey that kojima productions masterpiece documents for us i've got a million other things to say about this game but at the end of the day it all boils down to one simple fact death stranding makes me happier than any other game i've ever experienced have a pleasant journey [Music] before i close out this week's video and get to work on the next one i just like to express some extra gratitude compared to what i usually do in these post-credits scenes my previous video was me talking about my patreon and in that video i pledged that if we could get the patreon to three thousand dollars a month i would stop running ads on any future videos and within just a few days we're already almost halfway to that goal so again if you feel like donating and these videos mean a lot to you i'd appreciate it if you did of course you don't have to i'll still be here regardless but anyways as usual i'd also like to give a verbal thanks to the patrons who donate 10 or more monthly sorry if i have to do some jump cuts here there's a couple new names those patrons are ada avery almost dead again amy marshall anatoly volnov askell atheit bendaline big time jim bobby blitz royal lemming bjorb calioparonnis cass charlotte chun gina cornelius nelson darius fazier deadly marceline demise dennis vashakumar dominic johann eduardo roca emma plays go erica fluffy puppy casey franz johannes fuelner george rosenbaum haunted mystic holly schmidt i cash iron ijk joannis jake everdeen joit jonashi jonas jp julian my julian k caleb kenneth infinger knife laffy legally graphic lola bunda lilith van pass hibiscus lily leones liv luz m madison crater michaela megan walker monkey monks monkey monk monkey monks monkey monastery ramrod 1999 nearest neurofilter nicole oblusion oaken poof donut cracks a battle rackspan robert bertang roon fox ceelo sean hamilton shane o shea theis steli swatch box yas the boss zoe and zyroblee again i'd just like to thank you guys so much for all the support that i've been getting lately it's a really great feeling to be less afraid of my audience and less afraid of expressing myself i mean if i had done this much live action you know two months ago i would have been horrified the entire time and the video never would have come out but it really is you patrons that give me the confidence to do more strange things like this so hey hopefully my videos will get even more interesting from here on out thank you [Music] you

Channel: Leadhead

Views: 64,658

Keywords: analysis, explained, essay, review

Id: prAG_FQqB94

Length: 41min 2sec (2462 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 02 2022