“DO AS I SAY, and it will all make sense,” says Guillermo Del Toro’s character near the beginning of Death Stranding. That might as well be game director Hideo Kojima talking directly to the player, because, as with much of the Metal Gear Solid creator’s latest title, little does make sense. Even if you do as he says.
Set in a post-apocalyptic world, Death Stranding at least has a unique apocalypse. The worlds of the living and the dead became connected, rain began making things age (known as "timefall"), and invisible ghosts now wander the landscape, violently exploding any living people they touch. What remains of humanity has retreated underground, but the cities have become disconnected. Your job is to wander roughly from east to west across the US, delivering cargo to cities, connecting them to a "chiral network" that’ll magically solve everything, and avoiding the explodey ghosts (BTs), human terrorists (MULEs), and weirder things.
The cast, featuring captured performances from Norman Reedus, Lindsay Wagner, and Mads Mikkelson, in addition to Del Toro and others, makes for a remarkable-looking game, as does the reimagining of the US as a broadly green and gray environment, slick with rain and filled with snow-capped mountains, waterfalls, wide, empty plains, and dense forests. Despite some excellent ruined cities, this is the America of the hiker or the hunter, always keen to offer up a cave as shelter from the timefall, while also not afraid to throw deer off cliffs in their haste to escape from the BTs.