Death Stranding Explained

The main theme of Death Stranding is the bonds that link people together. I’d argue that the main narrative tension in the story of Death Stranding is what I call « the ambivalence of contact ». This ambivalence is present everywhere in the game : from the game’s title, which is a play of word between the word « stranding » as in driving a boat aground on a shore, and « strand », a link, that can attach things and people to each other to the game’s visual symbolism and game mechanics.

To describe the kind of bonds that link people together, Kojima uses the metaphor of « the rope and the stick » borrowed from novelist Kobo Abe. Death Stranding is built on the anthropological postulate that there are two main ways through which people connect with one another : the rope (or as I would argue, codependence) and the stick (basically coercition, oppression or domination).

This metaphor describes human connections on multiple plans, both diegetic and extradiegetic : geographical, « cyberspatial » (within the chiral network and between players IRL), political and emotional.

---The Apocalyptic Impact of Death in Communities

Death Stranding is a story of a man who has been traumatized by the loss of his family in an apocalyptic event called a « voidout ».

In the game, the symbolism of the beach, is used to represent the frontier between life and death. Between earth, the visible world of men and the unfathomable abyss, representing the world of the dead.

When the player’s health reaches 0, Sam passes into the world of the dead which is represented by an alternative version of the game’s map, flooded with water.

What allows the player to ressuscitate Sam (or repatriate him within the game’s jargon) seemingly is his link to BB through the umbilical cable, as shown by the visual sequence preceding the player’s return to the game. In a way, Sam is very similar to BT’s : as the sole survivor of the voidout that took away his entire family, he is stranded in the world of the living, unable to join them on the other side. Not really dead, but not really alive either.

It’s not just Sam who is traumatized. The entire world of Death Stranding is a traumatized world, carrying the stigmatas of the Death Stranding. In the real world, when a couple loses their child, it often results in the estrangement of the two former partners because the abrupt severance of their bond to the child renders them unable to form deep attachments again. Death Stranding is the story of trauma survivors who are trying to reconstruct their lives over the ruins of their past, in a world haunted by the spirits of the ones they lost.

It’s not just lives and communities that were left ravaged and fragmented by the Death Stranding, the landscape too has been rendered completely shredded by apocalyptic voidouts. In this way, voidouts serve as a powerful metaphor of the effect that death has on relationships and communities.

By reconnecting the scattered territories of America, that have been separated by the craters left by voidouts, with roads, bridges, ziplines, trails etc.. Sam is also rebuilding families, friendships and civilization.

---Colonization in Death Stranding

In a way, the game is a subversion of the idea of manifest destiny. Much like calvinists ideologues theorized the colonization of the American continent and the extreme violence that befell on the native communities as a result, Sam (uncle Sam?), is once again enjoined to reconnect America, but this time instead of using the stick to tie up by force survivors to the UCA (United Cities of America), he will try a different method, a method that doesn’t rely on coercition.

This preference of Kojima for the rope over the stick didn’t start with Death Stranding, and to my knowledge, extends at least as far back as MGSV. This is something that a lot of commentators of Death Stranding miss because they never analyse the game mechanics in terms of their contribution to the narrative.

In Death Stranding as well as in MGSV, non-lethal stealth is often more efficient and rewarding than brute force.

Frontal attacks in MGSV or DS often stem from sloppy preparation and will result in a messy operation.

This philosophy might be influenced by Bushido values of « tactical minimalism ». Samurais don’t value strength and power, whether that would be in duels or large scale battles, as much as they value speed and « elegance ». The best duelist is the one who manages to defeat his opponent with the fewest possible moves.

A good tactic isn’t necessarily the most violent one available, it’s the one that manages to reach the battle’s objective, while minimizing the assets used as well as the number of victims.

Americans would have a lot to learn from Bushido…

But anyway, Death Stranding is in the direct continuation of MGSV because whether that would be in MULE camps or showdowns with Clifford, the most efficient tactic is often to sneak up behind the enemy’s back and tie them up with Sam’s rope, neutralizing them in a non-lethal way.

Beyond MULES, survivalists and Homo Demens, there are of course a lot of characters in Death Stranding who are open to dialogue. Sam never chooses to impose the chiral network on them, instead he tries to prove to them that they have something to win from being a part of the network.

---The Social Contract in Death Stranding

In the beginning of the game, Sam eventually chooses (reluctantly) to join Bridges, drawn in by his love for Amelie. All Bridges members have to wear high tech handcuffs, which act as communication devices linking all of the characters with one another. These handcuffs perfectly symbolize another aspect of the « ambivalence of contact » : the tension between freedom and the restraints that come with living in a community.

In DS2 Sam trades his handcuffs with a simple ring, showing that the contract that unites him with Drawbridge is looser than the one with Bridges. Perhaps this is Kojima’s way of promoting a form of anarchism where individuals are allowed to choose the jurisdiction under which they wish to live, instead of having one mandatorily imposed on them by the state on the basis that they were born on a certain territory like in the UCA.

I think that what makes Sam such a relatable character, is that he’s a perfect illustration of the modern proletariat. Modern workers are encouraged to think of themselves as small entrepreneurs working for themselves (although they are completely dependent on the platform for their activity). This is perfectly exemplified by delivery drivers for platforms such as uber and the such…In a way, they are very similar from workers in XIXth century capitalism…

Anyway such workers tend to develop a very individualistic and frankly egoistic consciousness like Sam’s attitude in the beginning of the game. The whole character arc of Sam is about him recognizing that literally carrying his weight alone, by himself, may result in an illusion of freedom and autonomy but in reality, it’s a miserable existence.

---Time and Hope in Death Stranding

Another important feature of Death Stranding’s world is the timefall that accompanies the BTs appearance. As its name suggests, timefall affects the flow of time. Everything that is touched by timefall, whether it would be vehicles, plants or animals, ages in an instant.

As a result, after the Death Stranding, humanity sort of lost its sense of time. When exactly the game takes place is never mentioned explicitly neither in the dialogues nor in the game’s codex. Judging from the fact that some people still remember the Death Stranding and that the pre-Stranding world that they describe sort of resembles ours, we can assume that the game takes place somewhere in the beginning of the XXII century but it’s impossible to know for sure. The important point is that, paradoxically, with the advent of timefall and the loss of most pre-Stranding knowledge, humanity got stuck in a form of permanent present. The future disappeared.

Without a future there cannot be hope. All the characters of Death Stranding and especially the player character Sam, are all « anchored » in the past, unable to let it go.

By connecting people together, Sam is not only carrying literally and metaphorically life (through the obvious symbolism of pregnancy) he’s also bringing hope to the survivors. As he extends the chiral network, futuristic structures start to populate the landscape and carrying your load while facing the existential threat of nature’s inhospitality and the ghostly manifestations of the finitude of human existence suddenly becomes much less daunting.

Alone, survivors might protect themselves from voidouts and the pain of losing a loved one, but by isolating they are also precluding any interaction that would make their lives more bearable and above all meaningful.

More on that below.

---A Link to the Past

Of course, the narrative of Death Stranding isn’t as simple as « connection good, separation bad ». There are many bonds that should be cut off, and most notably the bonds that link characters to the past and to the dead.

This is most evident with the character arc of Mama. The bond that unites Mama with her dead baby, the game constantly enjoins the player to let go of the past to make room for the future.

As is often the case in Death Stranding, this idea is illustrated quite literally by the fact that after the first delivery with Mama, the player obtains the ability to push BTs out of the world of the living using the very thing that unites Sam with the other characters : his handcuffs, modified by Mama so that they are able to turn into a knife capable of cutting BTs umbilical cords.

The idea is that people’s fixation on the past and the dead precludes them from forming the attachments that would allow them to rebuild their life.

---The Metaphysics of Death Stranding

Later in the game, we learn that there has been other Death Strandings in the past corresponding to the « Big Five » extinction events in the history of life on Earth. The Death Stranding taking place during the game is the sixth and last extinction that will bring an end to all life on Earth.

We can see here that the metaphor of the rope and the stick isn’t only used by Kojima to support his anthropological speculations. In Death Stranding he develops an entire metaphysics, a « Weltanschauung » one might say, of the stick and the rope. The metaphor doesn’t just describe human relations or even living things in general. The opposition between BTs antimatter and the world of the living or the fact that the main antagonist is named Higgs, after the Higgs boson in the standard model which gives it’s mass to fermions (electrons and quarks) as opposed to the mass of matter which comes from the binding energy (metaphorical rope?) between quarks.

It seems that according to Kojima, Being is characterized by connection, from the most fundamental elements of the material world (which result from the fusion of hydrogen atoms with one another), to societies and civilizations through complex molecules formed by bonds between atoms. On the other side, atomization, fragmentation or disintegration is synonymous with nothingness, with oblivion.

This is why I love the world of Death Stranding so much. It’s thematics and questions cover the entire chain of Being making it what we could call a « metanarrative », a narrative that encompasses an entire worldview. There are very few media maintaining such an ambition especially in a world that is so wary of such totalizing stories, instead emphasizing difference and particularity in everything.

One other example that comes to my mind of such a metanarrative would be Evangelion. In a similar manner to Death Stranding, Evangelion extends the thematic tension between the need of its characters to connect with one another on one hand and their fear of melting into one another on the other, into a sort of Schopenhauerian/Kabbalistic metaphysics. The tension between individuality and the multiplicity that results from it in appearance on one hand and the fundamental unity of Being on the other.

---The Hedgehog’s dilemma or the gamble of existence

Another similarity between Death Stranding and Evangelion is that the connection between people is always ambivalent : it can be a source of warmth and affection but it is also dangerous.

This ambivalence is well illustrated by Schopenhauer’s famous analogy of human relations called « the hedgehog dilemma ». Hedgehogs seek the warmth of each other, but as soon as they get close to one another, they hurt each other with their quills. Hedgehogs like humans, are torn between the desire to connect with each other and the fear of being hurt by others.

According to Schopenhauer, the only way to overcome this fundamental tension of human existence is to abandon the desire to connect with others altogether through resignation.

This is the solution that Higgs chose and also the one that Sam chose at the beginning of the game.

All throughout the game, as Sam extends the chiral network, he is constantly reminded by other characters that doing so might very well cause a new Death Stranding or a resurgence of the one that has already occurred. But they all take

the gamble that this risk is worth it, because life is not worth living when you’re alone.

Even if the Death Stranding must necessarily happen one day or another, even if human life is bound to end eventually no matter what, even if marriages will fail, loved ones will die, and friends will leave, Death Stranding asks this central existential question : why even bother to live?

Why not isolate like all of the preppers or Sam in the beginning of the game, and at least protect oneself from the pain of mourning and separation?

Because, and I’m very serious when I’m writing this, the goal of life, not just individual lives but Life in general is not its end, but it’s the friends we made along the way.

In the end of the game, instead of dismissing BB in the incinerator, Sam chooses to save his capsule in extremis from the flames. He prefers to try and take BB out of the capsule, even if it means taking the risk of losing him and being disappointed again. This shows that he evolved as a character, and he’s now able to form a genuine attachment with another person. Sam is able to see Lou as his son, and not just a tool to fulfill deliveries. He’s able to withstand the fear of losing him.

---Conclusion

Although Death Stranding is not the first « strand-type » game by any means, (I can think of a few other titles that emphasize cooperation between players as opposed to competition) it’s the first game that puts this mechanic at the center of its gameplay on such a large scale. As a hikikomori who has a lot of trouble connecting with other people, I wish there were more games like these where you’re able to simply be part of a community, without fear of being judged or being inadequate.

So, in the end, did Kojima succeed in revolutionizing the video games industry?

Personally, I would say : yes, absolutely.

Mission accomplished Kojima, that is definitely why you are the Big Boss of video games.