Sins of the Father

Playing Mom in Death Stranding

When I played Death Stranding in 2019, I played for nearly ten hours before I even saw an enemy NPC. When you finally do, you see they look just like you, wearing the same gender-neutral jumpsuits—and you pretty much just run away and try not to trip. Like in Kojima’s previous games, you can choose to kill enemy NPCs, but this doesn’t just cause you to lose points. Death Stranding goes beyond disincentivizing killing—the game barely provides the mechanics to do so and penalizes flagrant video game killing with both a fail state and a permanent crater-sized pockmark in the otherwise gorgeously designed open world. My mom would like the game. I love it. Continue Reading