With rare exception, every piece of cargo, weapon, ammunition and tool you pick up has its own physical presence on Sam’s body, and its own heft, all managed by an incredibly fiddly inventory menu. But Death Stranding turns that routine into a grueling exercise in frustration thanks to what is possibly the most aggravatingly literal inventory system ever conceived in a video game. We’re all accustomed at this point to walking through vast game environments carrying an arsenal of weapons and items – that’s a description that could define anything from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild to Grand Theft Auto V and just about everything in between. And it’s just as well, because I wasn’t really given any say in the matter the opening hours are so ploddingly paced that it makes the whole thing seem like a personal attack on the speedrunning community. What makes the repetitive objectives somewhat bearable is that the scorched landscape of Death Stranding is staggering in scale and rich in detail, to the point that initially I wanted to slow down and pore over every inch. The bad news is that these side missions are also fetch quests, undertaken mainly to unlock additional items or customisation options. Sounds pretty repetitive, right? Well, the good news is that there are also side missions in Death Stranding. With the exception of certain tutorial missions which introduce the basics of the combat system, boss fights, and a handful of other combat-oriented diversions, advancing the plot in Death Stranding amounts to taking item X from location A to location B, over and over again. The vast majority of its 70 main story missions are structured in the same way as the optional side missions we’ve all run in countless other open-world games.
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It’s definitely an intriguing story setup, but if you think that playing the role of a courier makes it sound as though Death Stranding could be one continent-spanning series of glorified fetch quests, it’s because that’s exactly what it is. What We Said About Death Stranding: Director's Cut on PS5Ģ39 Images If Death Stranding sounds like a series of glorified fetch quests, it’s because that’s exactly what it is. Sam has additional motivation to undertake his epic expedition: his sister Amelie is held hostage by Higgs on America’s westernmost edge, a destination appropriately called Edge Knot City. Sam is allied in his pursuit by a quirky cast of characters with quirkier names like Heartman and Die-hardman, and opposed by Troy Baker’s wonderfully maniacal villain Higgs, who has an appetite for both licking faces and chewing scenery.
Sam’s quest is certainly a compelling one to reconnect the isolated remnants of civilisation by completing an endurance-testing sequence of delivery jobs from one city to the next, earning the trust of their citizens, and bringing them back online in the government’s “Chiral Network” as he makes his pilgrimage west across North America.
You are Sam Porter Bridges (Norman Reedus), a post-apocalyptic postman with a ghost-detecting baby strapped to his chest named BB who, like most infants, is as adorable as he is insufferable.
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