Forums > Submission Feedback > pickhut's Death Stranding review

It's interesting to see a positive review for this thing. Opinions about it are all over the place, seemingly for good reason. The premise sounds completely bonkers on paper, but beyond that, it does not seem to hold up well to scrutiny. For example, if the rain accelerates time, the bunkers the humans live in would be completely buried in soil and decaying plant matter within a short time. When the timefall happens, you can see the flowers growing, blooming, wilting and dying, which looks cool, but this should create a fresh layer of soil that would eventually build up and bury things. This is apparently not so in the world of Death Stranding; the jagged mountains and rocks of America (which for some reason look like the fjords of Norway) remain uncovered.

Also, is the Timefall a local phenomenon limited to Earth? If so, the plants would not get enough photons from the sun to flourish before the accelerated time snuffed them out; therefore the "rapid proliferation" of plantlife would actually not be possible.

Other questions also irk me. Why is there a problem when BTs consume a human body, but not, say, an animal's body? Can animals become BTs? If not, why not? Is all of this explained somewhere in the walls of text that accompany the game? If not, it comes across as very homocentric; it might even imply that animals don't have souls or that they don't matter in the way humans do.

By the way, when I heard the term "BT", I immediately thought of Scientology - That faith purports that all human suffering is caused by ancient disembodied souls, called Body Thetans (abbreviated as BTs). Black, oily tormented human souls who are too close to the world of the living doesn't sound too far off from that. If I had been in Kojima's shoes, I might've done more research before using that acronym in my game.

I sort of want to play this thing to see it for myself, but I won't be able to do that until next summer when it's released on PC. Until then, all I have is second hand knowledge. However, from what I've seen, it seems to be a mess conceptually and only really works during its first half, when it's basically just a post-apocalyptic American Truck Simulator.

placid like acid

I... think Kojima was more focused on making a video game that's entertaining to play than something that's supposed to be scientifically-accurate. There's a lot of implausible things in Death Stranding in comparison to how Timefall works, but I can't really go into detail without going into major spoiler territory. I think I might recommend skipping Death Stranding if that kind of stuff bothers you.

I head spaceshit noises.

I guess I just hoped that, in a game that is so heavily story-focused, that the world building might be a little more thought out, especially since it is supposed to be a science fiction game and not a fantasy game where an angry god cursed the rain or some such. Perhaps I'll find out for myself when I finally play it. Or, maybe not...

placid like acid