On Death Stranding, Bike Touring, and Cultivating Personality

the following video was sponsored by dash lane [Music] almost a decade ago I bicycle to cross the United States from East Coast to west by myself no smartphone no GPS just a bunch of paper maps and a compass and a sunset that always points west another asset along the way was a website called warm showers org a social network for bicycling tourists where families or campgrounds offer lodging for the night so for two and a half months every other day I would depend on the help of strangers to make it through the next couple days carrying about 60 pounds of water jugs dry food repair parts and camping equipment for a hundred or so miles of bicycling using human powered transportation fueled mostly by Gatorade and trail mix so that whole experience might have a thing or two to do with why I ended up loving death stranding I know that a lot of times when reviewers claim they feel a personal connection to a game it's regarded as pretentious but I don't know how to make it any clearer that I'm not pretending here I really did this and because of that I really did feel a personal connection to the game the two most important virtues that bicycling 3,000 miles across the continent taught me were patience and personality you're going nowhere fast you gotta accept that fact and then develop a sense of humor about it all in death stranding you walk bike and drive 3,000 miles across a post-apocalyptic America going from East Coast to West delivering packages installing people's internet and paving roads over the course of oppression curve that starts you off with just a backpack and a pair of shoes and ends with you slinging around a fleet of delivery trucks across a network of highways but every step of climbing that curve is dedicated to solving problems of how to traverse rough terrain as efficiently as possible that's the core challenge despite how dramatically your gear strategies and activities change despite how weird things get that's a consistent theme that underpins damn near every second of gameplay from the end of the first hour long cutscene to the last hour long cutscene how do you traverse this rough terrain efficiently well like waiting for stealth game guards to walk out of your way it's a bit of a test of patience you're going for efficiency rather than speed trying to carry as comically oversized as load a possible over as little terrain as possible around as little danger as possible and though dangers sure are there the way des training interprets danger obstacles penalties and failures is a clever as hell it's an M rated video game pushed out by a first-party console manufacturer that has big monstrous boss battles and nameless bad guy bandits who exist more to justify the FPS style shooter system than anything else and yet I beat this game without ever really needing to where the hell even feeling the temptation to kill a single one of the very very few human enemies that are in this game this is a game where most of your enemies are hills mountains rocks in the rain level design is passive dirt and pebbles and otherwise empty fields because at its core death stranding is a nonviolent action game the millisecond the millisecond gameplay mechanics you're playing with or less about gamifying the blow to blow of a fight and more about gamifying a marathon an introspective self-facing endurance test which for my metaphor felt like playing a game of fight cross country by which was an action-packed adventure where there was real danger a real risk of death and injury and I did get robbed it was full of hundreds of interesting problems that could be turned into real interesting games but you know eight to ten hours of slowly bicycling in one direction all day is probably gonna turn most normal people off so how the hell did this video game try to make walking in just one direction all-day fun for most normal people I don't know if I'm normal since it worked on me and not others but a long list of clever as hell game design tricks total up to the grand result of making des trainings quiet time interesting and in an endurance test of a game about walking by yourself in one direction for hours on end all that quiet times got to be made interesting so okay here we go des training is a game that asks you to think in terms of large-scale performance evaluations although you're not harshly penalized by the scoring system for it every single step of your way there is taken into account both as you deliver packages and when you get paid in the field you're gonna take a dramatic hit not to your health but to your time your rhythm and your pacing if your character slips falls and the packages come spilling out which happens easily because your character slips and falls easily there's this feeling of multitasking micromanagement as I walk I'm paying attention to Sam's movement animations I'm remembering the trickling degradation of all his supplies which is very mgs3 by the way plus any kind of time limit I'm keeping track of plus me visually processing and mentally planning around obstacles visible 5 to 20 seconds into the distance while deciphering all that information to figure out how I should delicately have hold this strange claw grip of strange pressure-sensitive analog controls along the way so you're managing meters inventory and a steady rhythm of consistent inputs for 5 to 10 minutes at a time that'll add up to a dramatic release of all that tension like when you're waiting to see your score at the end of a run or mashing your way out of some ghosts chasing you to actually just multiply all that tension by 3 when I'm going through ghost areas and the game has a wonderful sense of pacing to it it's a calm steady stimulating navigation and management challenge that you maintain over time which is bookmarked by very occasional splashes of excitement if you screw up for so many reasons I ended up really digging this gameplay from start to finish I think I just described what's happening in my brain when I play so let's talk about what's happening inside my eyeballs remember how I said every step of the way matters that's because the textures on the ground underneath Sam's feet are important gameplay variables my eyeballs are constantly darting from the ground underneath Sam's next step to the ground up to the horizon line where I'm planning out my moves for the next few steps up to the aesthetic beautiful background where I'm looking at obstacles I'm gonna be hitting five minutes for the next step in other words my eyeballs are visually processing a chronological flow of gameplay information that looks like a completely natural and organic landscape which maximizes the utilized space on the screen minimizing HUD elements and other non-diegetic floating interfaces if you abstract this enough you can see a visual flow of information here that's not that different from Guitar Hero on the other hand if you go back and play some old Metal Gear games this is what your eyeballs are probably gonna be looking at most of the time he'll if you go back a couple years and play breath of the wild foot travel across large distances involves just two inputs with one piece of visual information for processing there's rarely any reason not to go in a perfectly straight line and this is what my eyeballs were glued to for a lot of that game I know that walking that navigation is far more interesting than this in real life and does stranding managed to make walking interesting in a game so now I'm hoping that we'll be seeing a few more Triple A games in the future experiment with ways to make walking more interesting than just holding a stick forwards and that's something I have griped about for years hell we've already standardized a lot of useless role buttons that are just there to give the players something to do while walking forwards let's take it to the next step if Gears of War can put a minor little minigame attached to its reloading button that you don't really got to pay attention to why can't the more slower-paced walkathons out there and sent avise a little bit of strategic movement across the ground for let's say a little bit of a speed boost so death stranding doesn't just have you hold the stick forwards and wait for your character to get there you gotta decide where the mount you want to dance left and right around pebbles pebbles slow Sam down rocks are a tripping hazard and and you don't want to jam downhill too hard in this game that is unless you're using the forward momentum boost downhill to your advantage which is a viable strategy another clever game design trick here is from Mirror's Edge go forward in a straight line and Sam speed boosts up go forward in a straight line with a real heavy load and it becomes very hard to stop or turn which makes deciding whether or not you want to dance left to right around pebbles on the ground interesting you have to commit to your own momentum and this is a thing in real life downhill hiking but in the game Sam speeds up to something absolutely unrealistically fast that makes distances feel smaller than they actually are which means you're not going to be spending an entire day doing nothing other than watching the same mountains in the distance get slightly taller like when you're bicycling down us 90 west through Texas which brings to mind another classic game design trick there's mountains everywhere if you pack an open world map with tons of small little mountains that look like big mountains you've created borders and sight lines players can cross these mountains in five minutes but it'll still feel like they're covering much larger distances than they really are so combined with that and Sam's actually pretty fast sprinting speeds and the ground felt like it was moving out from underneath me at a pretty quick clip here but time flies when you're having fun anyway right I've talked about my eyeballs let's talk about my fingers death strandings delicate controls were something I really had to gradually get used to like the inventory puzzle of making sure you're distributing weight evenly to the left or right which is also a real thing strap weight on your front wheels and turning in that direction takes away more pressure than before if you don't have it right you might end up having to bike for an hour to leaning towards the one direction or you'll fall over in the game if you're ever having trouble with these weight shifting button prompts experiment with holding either the triggers or the stick only half way down and just kind of tickling it and start playing with what happens give it six to eight seconds and your hand might find its way in a position in a stride that'll get you going a little faster than if you closed out and go back into a menu I also got flashbacks to that day where I had to carry my bicycle and the bags over my head while waiting through a muddy swamp in Louisiana the sleeping mat fell off and fell in the mud and whenever that happened at death's training I just kind of shook my head and went yep yep yeah I've been there before that's fair about time they turned that struggle into a game in real life when you're hiking uphill lower your center of gravity and keep your mask close to the slope if you have to climb rocks get down on all fours and make sure you have three points of contact on the rocks at all times so in death stranding whenever you're hiking up a big hill press that Crouch button and play around with what happens Sam's gonna have a better time crouching his way up hills rather than walking up them in real life if you ever find yourself descending a mountain made out of incredibly loose volcanic soil that might as well be sand there's gonna be very little traction you'll need good shoes and you'll need to keep your stride perpendicular against the grain of the slope which means you have to pay attention to every single step so in death stranding if you're packed with heavy gear and going down a rough mountain slope focus on Sam's shoes and gently flow them into a zig zagging descent pattern with those half held analogue tickles I realize that like gameplay like that even describing it like that is not going to be everyone's Jam but I have a frame of reference here that makes this really exciting and personal and relatable to me I am thrilled to see a lot more of those relatable adventures and problems turned into game mechanics and good game mechanics of that executed with the Japanese craftsmanship of exaggerated animations detailed movement with responsive controls and a healthy sense of humor decisions require players to weigh their load out against their time limit against calculated risks against their ability to control a clumsy heavy character with the kind of lengthily maintained precision and all those decisions you make flow into some very focused theming each new area and new gadget opens up clever new ways to explore the possibilities and the problems of how to traverse rough terrain as efficiently as possible and it does justice to its fantasy there's a real vintage romance to be a pioneering delivery man on the American frontier with you waiting through uninhabited wild lands to isolated families that gradually develop an infrastructure of signs bridges and roads is you connect together a network of construction made by other players this makes a real kind of sense to me I identify with the conflicts and problems presented by the millisecond a millisecond gameplay and I feel like I have faced many of those same challenges in real life and although it's not a familiar scenario for video games I feel like I've grown up under pop culture influences where this scenario is depicted as a fun adventurous fantasy you'll be responsible for ensuring that the cargo reaches its destination so I'm gonna be a delivery boy exactly all right I'm a delivery boy [Music] the second most important virtue that the bicycle tour taught me was how to develop and present a personality something happened out there I was a weird lonely gamer kid without a lot of friends before that but almost immediately afterwards like the day I got home from the bike trip I suddenly had way more interesting stories to tell people and that suddenly meant I was finally able to do small talk which finally made things like introducing myself to new people are doing job interviews and going on dates so much easier than they used to be and I guess that's because that after college bike tour was really the first big step I took towards establishing what I wanted my adult and professional personality to be after two decades spent consuming other people's personalities it finally felt like I had one of my own hmm for those new the channel I'll try to make this quick and probably mess that up death strandings auteur personality is Hideo Kojima the son of a Japanese World War two veteran who died during hideo's childhood which instilled a whole bunch of weirdness in the kid in terms of how he'd grow up to view soldiering wars and nationalism he was born in the 60s which means he got a big dose of American soft power during the Cold War two real big obvious motifs in his work or Hollywood movies and the moon landings he went to college for economics but then made a series of spy action games that caught on with Western audiences around the turn of the millennium because cool Japan but the games really broke new ground by actually being about very political and personal topics like nuclear disarmament the military-industrial complex post nationalism social media scandals fifteen years before they started happening space Healthcare daddy issues projecting shame over your fetishes the Guantanamo Bay detention camp all of these serious topics are presented with the stupidity of action figures rubbing against each other which helps him slip them into a video game to date scientists have been unable to conclusively determine whether or not Metal Gear is really stupid or really smart and jumping between those two readings is part of the fun but oh no his bosses wanted him to make 25 years of Metal Gear Solid sequels forever the games got too expensive and took too long so he was pressured into resigning and making new studio elsewhere where death stranding was then openly marketed as something he could not have gotten away with in his old it's one of the uncommon triple-a events where they've openly advertised a game as being avant-garde and experimental and that's the real Kojima code right there Kojima is writing and storytelling is something that might have become too popular too soon because the good stuff is really Jeremy blasting in tomokazu Fukushima Kojima's English has never been great Kojima's writing has never been consistent and with this game his localization people are just letting him drop out what is the most redundant and egotistical long-winded Kojima English ever as divisive as this game is I think that's something we can all agree on that is to say it's redundant it goes on for far too long characters say the same things twice multiple times more than once they'll repeat things that is to say hammer at home through recurring linguistic motives by that I mean Kojima's writing and storytelling chops are inconsistent but most of his games have been consistently well-received on the gameplay front particularly with how they incorporates stories into gameplay I'm gonna dig up that old Greg casts of him talk on exposition versus narrative for this because the exposition dumps that explain the DES training itself are terrible but the narrative behind the whole experience and how a lot of those non interactive aesthetic elements relate to Kojima's career in the game we're playing and what we're doing outside the game that's actually pretty good stuff exposition is a comprehensive description and explanation of an idea or Theory narrative is an account of a series of related events for the classic example look at Resident Evil cutscenes of exposition dumpster dumb as hell no one plays the game for that stuff but the narrative you make as a player going through the game when you start out struggling with the controls and camera running out of supplies until you feel just safe enough before the window dogs scare you back into a panic again that is a Hitchcockian build of suspense and release that is what we in the business call a good narrative design and for me in particular I'm a fan of how both games have weird control schemes made to build suspense so there's like three different layers here that work to three different degrees of gracefulness there's the expository layer that dumps the stuff coming out of people's mouths in their emails cutscene dialog is both too long-winded and too slow-paced emails and flavor textu redundant but I do like how many side stories there are to discover as you deliver people's extra packages and come to have a little email drama play out in your inbox and then there's the narrative of the story layer where you got to figure out the rules behind the science fiction magic of it all and how the continuity of nonlinear flashback scenes are supposed to work evidently Kojima has been watching a lot of David Lynch lately so we're going up a notch from the magical realism of Metal Gear into straight-up surrealism where things are not supposed to make perfect sense big plot revelations are communicated with body language facial expressions or visual metaphors long dark sleepy shots and lethargic droning music frequently triggered a trance-like meditative state where the dialogue just melted into noise but I still felt some kind of emotional punch anyway did you know David Lynch is a Transcendental Meditation guru some people hold sorrow for years and you want to visit them and cheer them up but it doesn't do anything you get them the chance to transcend and watch what happens sorrow will lift away they'll be back on the road I've always had my suspicions that you're supposed to be dozing off there is movies anyway but Kojima's writing is what misses the subtlety to really pull that off David Lynch movies are understated they are full of silence in mystery and Kojima does not exercise that degree of restraint I do like this story I just wish I didn't have to read synopsises to figure out what complicated family tree drama was being communicated through body language I didn't get it the first time I had to read some articles and re-watch some cutscenes but then there's a third layer in there somewhere and an angle where if you hold s training up to the light and read between the lines it turns into a mirror it goes from a game about what it's like being a frontier delivery man into a game about what it's like being legendary game designer hideo kojima there are references themes and an underlying philosophical message to the multiplayer features that all fit an impressively coherent and kind of inspiring logic death stranding is not just weird because it's a big expensive walking game with us worried about ghost babies that has a multiverse involving a dinosaur afterlife it's also weird because it's a big expensive game of freestyle jazz Expressionism my God if we thought mgs 5 was a Hideo Kojima game a little did we know holy cow for someone who actually went on record in 2006 saying video games are not art he's really doing an about-turn with this one a game about reconnecting Americans after an apocalyptic event features this massively cooperative multiplayer system where players work together to go anywhere just like the astronauts that so inspired him as a child it's a game featuring Kojima's favorite celebrities favorite movies favorite science fiction his favorite latex babe these days but it's also a game featuring Kojima's anxieties and ambitions like mgs 5 it's a game about juxtaposing typical video game heroics against the drudgery of the repetitive labor that creates them and oftentimes becomes gameplay that plays with the idea of conclusive endings and also with unlocking content via massively cooperative fan campaigns and even the corners that dester and Aang's budget cuts like the duplicate packaging warehouses everywhere still evoke a faceless soulless mechanized mega employer that actually collects Sam's blood in his sleep while simultaneously feeding him constant hollow praise flattery and appreciation from the fans every step of the way it's a game about Kojima's visibly distant celebrity filtered understanding of how political polarization in the West is happening and that is not me looking too deep into it this has been confirmed in interviews the post-apocalyptic event of the death stranding is Trump in brexit and it's repeatedly hinted at in-game with the subtlety of a Kojima game which means no subtlety at all you're reconnecting Americans in particular after a terrible apocalyptic event using an electronic communication system that pays you in likes that's a reference to des tranning is a game about what it's like growing up to watch Kurt Russell struggle through the snow and the thing it's about how fun and relaxing it is to go on hikes with your friends it's about how scary it is to become a father it's about how kojima can't escape from escape from new york it's about how drastically different he thinks games could have been this whole time and by the way I did mention all the endless hours of empty praise you get right I guess that's what it's like being Kojima too this is the most self-indulgent game I have ever played in my life and you know what I'm all for it honestly my expectations were met they were exceeded after the release date trailer showed that Sam would pretty much talk like Sam snake and also it showed this corridor shooting sections I actually ended up pretty surprised at how weird the final product really did turn out being and after learning that it actually was about hiking across empty mountains all alone I was surprised at how fun I ended up finding that hiking game play I liked this better than mgs 5 4 and Peace Walker but I'm more excited to see what kind of influence it has on other games if this sparks a few years of games getting more detailed with their movement mechanics if this sparks a few years of games that don't chase after high review scores that explore more nonviolent activities that still provide the thrills of a highly produced slick action gaming experience then I am all for it because within the usual genres of triple-a gaming within the world of all the first-person shooters and open-world sandbox collectathon that still play like games did a decade ago within that world I never would have found an experience that so completely captured memories of the best two months of my life this is a game that should have happened a decade ago so hey if you've watched it this far and thanks and if you're as afraid of connecting with people online as the game is then keep your identity and passwords secure with dashlane who have sponsored this video with a 10% off discount for super bunnyhop viewers - Lane is an app for desktop and mobile devices that stores your passwords address forms and credit cards safely encrypted across multiple devices to help you stay connected no matter where you end up or what you're using - Lane also sends you relevant alerts if your favorite websites have been hacked and even includes a built-in VPN for bypassing region locks so check out the link in the description - Lang comm slash super bunny hop and use the code super bunny hop for a 10% off discount to the premium features thanks - Lane and let's - on to the next Lane [Music] you [Music] you you

Channel: Super Bunnyhop

Views: 352,515

Keywords: Death Stranding, Death Stranding review, Death Stranding gameplay, Death Stranding analysis

Id: k86mmvZR-sI

Length: 24min 16sec (1456 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 19 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

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[u/ArmoredMirage]

Wow great video. SBH does it again.

I’m really glad I gave this game a try despite negative reviews. We need more games that try something new like this.

[u/PeteOverdrive]

Glad to finally hear him dig into this. There's a ton of smart mechanics this game uses to keep the experience engaging, and while the whole game clearly isn't for everyone, I'd be very disappointed if the next Elder Scrolls and Red Dead titles weren’t inspired by how this game handled its map screen, encumbrance system, and terrain.

[u/DesignForDummies]

Just started playing this a couple days ago and really enjoying it. Wasn't sure if I would but I'm starting to get the hang of running and carrying a huge pack. I just turned it off yesterday eyeing a motorcycle parked next to the bunker I just saved at and I'm really excited to get back to it tomorrow. The BT sequences have been a little annoying when you have a large pack because it gets int he way of the thing that tells you where they are. I wish you could zoom the camera in and out a bit to be able to see it better.

Everything is just weird and I'm excited to see more of the story though. Good Kojima shit.

[u/Jordamuk]

Fucking finally a person that perfectly captures my thoughts on this game. This was a really good review.

[u/anon1984]

I’m half way through this game and hate spoilers. How spoiler-y is this review?

[u/kkawabat]

It makes me a bit sad that a polarized game gets mediocre metacritic score because of all the 0s and 10s averaging it out. I wonder how many unique games got overshadowed and forgotten simply because it wasn't universally liked.

[u/Labourdor]

Another game that does this fantastic and doesn't get any of the credit it deserves is the Mudrunner/Spintires series. I thought "oh look a shitty truck game, well can't hurt to try it, it's on massive sale" and found myself playing it for weeks and weeks on end. Never before had a game just made actual sheer realistic movement the main gameplay mechanic and even though Mudrunner is simple, like Death Stranding, it's a delivery game, every meter you fight for and is an on-going, living puzzle that requires planning and skilled reactions. Never has a game made me feel so good for doing literally a fetch quest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qug39sgUN3o
This little video shows how skilled you have to be to traverse in Mudrunner.

[u/AnOfferYouCanRefuse]

George does a great job explaining why he connected with the game. I liked the movement mechanics, but it didn't override the strange UI choices, annoying NPC's, and dreadful writing. I thought I liked the one thing that Death Stranding did well, but George (and presumably others) got something more meaningful out of that than I did.

Probably George's best video in a long while, this is what a great review looks like.