updated: The PC version of Death Stranding Director’s Cut will be released on March 30th. On this occasion, we present you again our article on the PS5 version, which is largely the same as the Sony version in terms of content. Just like the basic version on the PC, with Nvidia DLSS and AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution. For me, even in this version, Death Stranding remains a game that fascinates and irritates me in equal parts. You can read why below.
Original article, dated September 23, 2021: There it is, the director’s cut, which according to Kojima isn’t one because all the additional content was created after the game was completed and wasn’t cut before the release. It’s still a common term in video games to describe a massively content-enhanced experience, so we – and Kojima – have to live with that. Is basically secondary, if at all.
I don’t want to go into too much detail about the new things, in a game in which self-experience is so much in the foreground, as in this one, a list has to suffice. Corresponding fears of Martin, which I shared at the time, that the additions could possibly dilute the experience, have fortunately not been substantiated. In fact, they are well worth the 10 euros extra that the upgrade costs. Assuming you liked the base game. As a reminder, here is the overview in the trailer.
Or in just a few words: Everything that Kojima Productions integrates via director’s cut over the course of the 40+ hour storyline – all the new tools, the improved melee system, the new quests, etc. – serves the greatest strength of this game, the intimate experience of this breathtaking world. It allows players to make the shattered America even more at home, to stay here longer and thus sink deeper and more hopelessly into its atmosphere. Even if you prefer to ignore the racing game inserts, many of the other changes are simply there so that you can concentrate on the essentials: absorbing this beguiling end-time scenario, which could just as well be a start, to the fullest.
When I restarted the story for this test, I was right back “there” and instantly mesmerized by the mysterious landscapes unfolding in front of me. This magical dead silence is regularly punctuated by Yoji Shinkawa’s self-confident art direction. The materiality of armor and the quirky but always useful construction of gadgets and vehicles that Kojima’s legendary companion has mastered so well lend this world a very special texture. How majestic and yet in a lost position individual systems brace themselves against the downfall of mankind with sheer technocratic bombast, often enough out of sheer, rugged rock, that is simply impressive. At least as much as the almost endless expanse of this USA, where no one wonders why they could just as well be in a Nordic fjord.
It’s quite possible that it’s the most attractive and fascinating gaming universe in years. It’s the reason why the puristic A-to-B Death Strandings works as almost the sole game content. It’s also good that the concern that Death Stranding could become less exhausting and difficult due to the DC innovations has not completely come true. It’s still a game to get your back hurt and your feet sore – literally at times. Once you’ve gotten to the point where the Buddy Bot and Cargo Cannon take away some of your gaming worries, you’ve earned the relief.
Death Stranding Director’s Cut’s biggest problem simply – and this is where it gets a little awkward, sorry! – that it’s still Death Stranding. To me, this represents one of the most fascinating experiences in a long, long time – and one whose very nature ultimately works against the game. The “Kojima-ness”, the weirdness and strangeness of what is seen, is both a corset and a snare in which one of the last great rock star game authors gets more and more entangled as the story progresses. For every sublimely alien moment and every uplifting “WTF!?” Kojima serves up one or more plot twists that at least massively alienated me from this world because I could no longer believe the fiction behind it and could hardly empathize with the characters and their motivations. What seems fabulously clever at the beginning has bad silly features towards the end. For me it ruined a lot.
The game fluctuates, drunk on its own creativity, from wonderfully enraptured David Lynch moments, to Kubrick-like powers of observation in long, artfully arranged sequences, to M. Night Shyamalan twists, tiring explanatory sequences and repeatedly inappropriately resolved humor. You know that from Kojima: His games roll over with ideas regardless of losses, most of them good, but many of them one too many. Again and again he accidentally reaches into the sticky melodramatic box in search of depth or fathoms the thought that you just didn’t want to pursue. It’s a result of unbridled creativity that’s often enough worth letting off the leash! In fact, she’s also the reason I’ll always be curious to see what Kojima does next. After all, something unbelievably great comes out of it at least every second time, which only this master could manage. The games in between… well, liking the result is almost like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates – sometimes there’s just a little more liquor and truffles in there than is good for you.
Sure, that’s part of it, too, and makes Death Stranding special somewhere. Even if Kojima lost me halfway, I sometimes even felt a bit silly because of the exaggerated twists, meaningless confessions and the rain shower of symbol-pregnant empty phrases towards the end, I don’t regret this trip and take my hat off to the courage of a game that everyone should experience. And if only to experience how beautiful, liberating, sublime, disturbing, oppressive, exhausting and sad a video game world can actually be for its visitors. This is extraordinary and without equal. If you’ve missed it so far, you can catch up – with this director’s cut, which isn’t one.
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