Some thoughts that I had stuck in my head:
Explore the world looking for a solution, a connection. Together. Maybe not physically, not by the same routes, maybe not delivering the same

It is difficult for Death Stranding to reach you playing it alone. Its nature emerges more easily online, and it's a great gesture and a statement of intent that you don't need a subscription to ps plus.

Kojima presents a digital world that is difficult to interpret and unite in words, a fiction that shoots directly into our reality.
Cursed, heartfelt, but also emotional. embrace the connections between things, but question them. a celebration of human duality
More prophetic than MGS2 and with better observation, generalizing and at the same time specifying the difficulties of our day to day, articulating them in the total art of videogames.
From the most abstract to the most literal, collective fears, traumas and very recognizable memories materialized. Visible, audible, and even palpable in an alien America full of dualities, of people who only intuit and show themselves through holograms and numbers.
But we are here. Maybe not next door, but in the same world. And the proof is the ladder that I have used to create an improvised bridge, I have left it here, for you, for me, for everyone. And that rope on the cliff, that capsule, that package on the ground. We are here.

Where the rejection of what forces us to leave this world is manifested in a kind of allergy for those who are more akin to these fears or have experienced them to the limit.
Where people are baptized for their present, for their office and condemned for their past. Where the heroes deliver packages and letters. They come to our futuristic shacks and install an esoteric Internet.
Everything is Sam Porter Bridges, whose name makes it STRONGLY EVIDENT what Death Stranding is about, and at the same time no, you cannot perfectly encompass anything as complex as earthly and afterlife connections, the natural and the mechanical, the Software and the Hardware, the "Ka" and "ha". reality and dreams. Much of Death Stranding's recontextualized iconography seems to suggest that.

It is a work that calls for thinking in an unprecedented way about it, because it offers an unprecedented reinterpretation of the transition and relationship with our environment, especially for gaming standards, obsessed with the mechanical-narrative relationship or the challenge, the suggestion and the satisfaction as a criterion to generate interpretations that are autopsies or descriptions. That in the best case.
At worst you have Far Cry 3.
Every species has the game in different facets and areas as a form of intellectual and emotional connection.
Children play and learn/relate, animals play to understand each other. We play to replace war.

Even before having sex we played.

Homo ludens. And Kojima welcomes a lot of this.

We need to be playful without losing focus.
There is no need for subtlety, just answer honestly to human questions. Use the forms of play as a response to the bitter obstacles of reality.
The example is the "Social Strand System", a mechanical reinterpretation of social networks where the game of deliveries and recovery of packages, manufactures and constructions has an impact on likes and statistics, but also on turning the environment into something more livable and peaceful, at the same time, shows that a more altruistic and ethical form of social interaction is possible.
It sounds naive to say that the reconstruction of the collective environment in an online video game is a lesson in altruism and community, even more so when there are likes involved, but the exercise of life begins somewhere, and now that we are waking up from this techno delirium -competitive utopian in which social networks had us flooded, now that we know how important they are to connect with each other more than to raise our ego, this "Social Strand System" shines more than in 2019.
Through the textures of slow gaming, an experiment of self-knowledge and updating is proposed, there is the unprecedented, in how the game confronts us with situations without necessarily connecting their thoughts or ideas and still achieving a certain cohesion. As in life, no one knows "what it is about" and yet we walk through it with what we own and what others leave for us.
And for a game that wants to embrace these themes without giving up the nature of its medium, its foundation, it's something really admirable.
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Not a single day goes by that I don't think about Death Stranding. Perhaps because of what has been happening in the world since 2020.
On arrival at Port Knot City.
How the corpses of people who have left explode, leaving an emotional and physical void in the form of a crater. Cities with people locked up, invisible. In the networks. In their inverted rainbows. How work becomes playing with its dozens of tools to transport, how enemies are my reflection, silence, likes, photos, stories... In life, how life can be everywhere.
And I can't even put into words practically anything that this game is for me. I plan to return to it in 2023 now that a sequel has been announced that begs the question: Should we have Connected?

some of the environmental art direction here is the best in the series. I love so many individual elements in this game: the life cycle of the pilgrims, the graceful Pontiff Knights, the Cathedral of the Deep, Irithyll Dungeon, and the cataclysmic surrealism of the DLC. The Twin Princes are my favorite tragic bossfight since Astraea from Demon's Souls. It's sad that so much wonderful art design was paired with so many tedious lore callbacks and easter eggs that make DSIII feel more like a dwindling continuation of a cycle (lol hmm) held back by lorehead and fan expectations than its own dark fantasy universe. I thought this was the most difficult of any of the games and not in a good way: it has the same fast-paced combat speed as Bloodborne, but with none of the counter and mobility toolsets that made that freneticism work. I'm also not into the 8 phase bossfights with constant attack animation changes requiring a lot of rote memorization, but I've never really enjoyed this series for its challenge level like a lot of people seem to. I felt frustrated and overwhelmed a lot of the time, or like I was being pandered to as a DS1 superfan in ways that cheapened the experience.

I'm enthusiastic that fromsoft are exploring new universes with Sekiro (even though I had issues with that game too) and now Elden Ring, because I don't know how much more they can realistically mine from the Dark Souls license without robbing future titles of the surprise and uncompromising experimentation that made the series so great in the first place

I'm extremely upset that I had nobody in my life to pull me aside and tell me that this series is actually an anime as hell Metal Gear-esque pulpy war melodrama with super rewarding arcade gameplay rather than the dull military flight sim I expected it to be. This ended up being one of the most invigorating and intense gaming experiences I've ever had and NO ONE is more surprised than me! Every level has a unique and interesting mechanic that challenges and totally reinvents your concept of how to play, all alongside one of the most rousing soundtracks in modern gaming that's effectively used to create some real and memorable m o m e n t s. When the weather effects fog your windshield as lightning rages while dogfighting in a desolate canyon, all while the immense ost blasts... it's so fucking good. The story is INSANE anime gibberish told via these outrageous hyperstylized cutscenes and i wouldnt have it any other way. Can't wait to explore the rest of this series and see what I've missed.

FYI this is still the best one. Most inspired soundtrack, most painterly and phantasmagorical setting, best hub zone and maiden, and laden with the most lyrical sense of tragedy and loss. Sure the gameplay is a little bit clunky compared to (some of) the later titles, but Deal With It!!

it makes me deeply sad that the online has been discontinued and we haven't heard anything about a re-release. Still totally playable offline, but the full experience deserves to be remembered and kept alive!

EDIT: WAIT I SAID RE-RELEASE NOT SLEEK HIGH POLY REMAKE DEVOID OF ATMOSPHERE AND RESTRAINT!!! WHY MUST THE DEVILS AT BLUEPOINT CONSPIRE TO MURDER EVERYTHING I LOVE