Death Stranding Director’s Cut is Kojima’s most self-indulgent game to date

Death stranding is a juxtaposed story. In this game, someone can monologue about the unity and division of the United States for 10 minutes, and then Junji Ito suddenly asks you through the communication link if you have seen his statuette. This is a legend that unites a divided society and what it means to stay connected in a world without a body, constantly knocking down Mads Mikkelsen and the cliffs fighting ghosts with grenade made from piss and shit. On the cliff.

Death Stranding Director’s Cut is a more juxtaposed game. Not too content to let its 2019 products lie, almost two years later, Kojima Productions and Norman Reedus’ Sam Porter Bridges are back. The result is a more polarized addition: for every visceral moment of discovery in the new story content, there is a racing mini-game that is close to annoying. For each of the key mechanisms integrated into the overall concept of death stranding, there is a real cannon that can shoot out cargo for you to sprint forward and recover. During the re-release of “Death Stranding”, many smaller additions were scattered, and they did not necessarily care about the integration with the previous content.

It is impossible to check the new content of Death Stranding Director’s Cut without first re-examining the above-mentioned basic game concept. In 2019, “Death Stranding” continued the game director Hideo Kojima’s fascination with American culture and society. If the Metal Gear series represents Kojima’s obsession with the imminent shadow of the United States on the world stage, and the spread of politics and proxy wars around the world, then death stranding is the core of looking at the United States inwardly through social norms, examining how people have been in the past 300 years After always imposing a culture of self-protection and personal interest on them, they play a role in a completely different society.

Broadly speaking, this is the core idea of ​​”Death Stranding”. This is mainly an assessment of how people unite to help each other after the crisis, but it has a unique position in the context of the United States’ commitment to personal achievement and personal freedom. Yes, this America is full of ghosts. They emerge from the ground and drag people out of the veil. The babies in the jar can feel the ghosts, but if you are discovered by them, you will be very angry, but its core foundation is based on The above check simple interactions between people when the world they know almost disappears.

The shared world of death stranding is the symbol of this exam. My Norman Radus may share a world with your Norman Radus, although if we stand in the same place at the same time, we cannot see each other’s Norman Radus, but we can still pass Communicate with each other in a very specific way. For example, I might lay the foundation for a highway, and it invites all other Norman Reedus in this shared world to gather together and donate their precious resources to help build a road that will be impossible. Avoidance benefits everyone who travels through death stranding areas.

There are also sharing tools available to every player in the shared world. If a porter pops a climbing anchor from the top of a cliff and descends to the bottom, when the first player leaves it, the climbing anchor will be left as a gift for other players to leave, and it will be left behind on purpose for others You can use it and benefit from the precious equipment sacrificed by the first player. Death Stranding provides players with these opportunities to help each other as they travel through the ravaged United States. If players choose to help achieve the greater cause of reunifying the United States, it provides countless relief channels for others.

Every aspect of “Death Stranding” is designed to incorporate this philosophy of total struggle between players, and this land will kill you. Each step you take is calculated based on the terrain you walk on and the weight of the package you haul between points A and B. Every piece of equipment you make and leave for others to use is a victory over the collective mountain. Every player on the server is trying to reach the top. There is no material reward for defeating that mountain, but Death Stranding teaches players before asking them to participate in collective struggles to help players they have never seen before, and admits that those closest to the “reward” will be satisfied. This comes from Your shared equipment or donate to items that others “like”.

The new content in Death Stranding Director’s Cut will not affect this balance because it does not directly affect the aforementioned system. The feature of Fragile Circuit is that Lea Seydoux has opened several brand new tracks for players, allowing players to accelerate cars and trucks and beat others in the best possible time. This does not mean that it directly affects the overall narrative of death stranding on any large scale, but it provides players with a relaxing distraction between hauling goods and hauling goods from ghosts. To be honest, this is all very interesting and will not affect the overall severity of the more pathological moments of death stranding, because it will never come close to infringing on said territory.

Or, even a robot mover like Buddy Bot who transports goods for you will still not affect the balance. Buddy Bot can be programmed to follow the player, or sprint forward to a designated delivery point, passing through the cliffs and hills of the United States as it progresses. Although Buddy Bot directly affects the way you deliver goods and the gameplay of Death Stranding every minute, it is crucial that it does not let you really opt out of the busy work of delivering goods itself. Buddy Bot just wants to be a partner, as it says on the can, something that can help the player, just like Cargo Catapult can temporarily relieve your burden, but you still need to pick it up and it will land a few hundred away from you. Meters away and deliver the goods personally.

The re-release of “Death Stranding” with the new director’s cut version is not about Hideo Kojima’s review of the game foundation he has helped build over the past four years, but to see if he can throw into the melting pot and escape without destroying anything. . Undoubtedly, some people will be surprised by the addition of new content such as racing mini games. When you remember that this game is from a series of designers, the series features a man shit violently on himself, and a woman wears it by the side because She breathes through her skin without wearing clothes, and you have every right to blame Kojima’s strange sense of humor.

Death Stranding Director’s Cut is indeed worth judging on its own merits, yes, but it also needs to be analyzed in the context of who first created the game. The re-release of “Death Stranding” is an indulgence of Hideo Kojima. It is an exercise in which creatives can reasonably escape the product when they already have a solid working foundation and a loyal audience. If death stranding is the cornerstone of American social identity being challenged in the context of different players helping each other, with Nicholas Winding Refern dying every 20 minutes and the 1980s version of Lindsay Wagner (Lindsay Wagner) is difficult With the enduring quotation of Super Mario, the director’s cut version is a pleasant second help from one of the most famous game creators on the planet, immersed in self-indulgence.

Disclaimer: Tested on PS5, copy of the game is provided by the publisher.