The Best Parts of Death Stranding 2 Are When the Characters Acknowledge They’re in a Game
Hideo Kojima is famous for directing video games that break the fourth wall. Perhaps the most-cited example is the Metal Gear Solid boss fight against Psycho Mantis, in which he would “read” the player’s memory card, comment on it, and even predict the player’s attacks. The Death Stranding series is no different, often using fourth wall breaks as opportunities for levity and commentary about the game’s story. Even though Death Stranding 2 is a very serious game about grief, the best parts are when the characters acknowledge they’re in a video game. And in Death Stranding 2, those moments are not always just there for comedic effect; sometimes, being in a video game is serious business.
Of course, Death Stranding is a series in which characters have names like Die-Hardman and Dollman and Rainy. The characters’ names are often very literal, almost like the games are morality plays. Writing the characters in such a way that they seem more like paper dolls than people does explain some of the game’s excessive reliance on tropes, but mostly, it allows the player to understand very quickly what characters’ motivations are in a world with a fairly complex mythos. The larger lore of the Beach and BBs and Extinction Entities is confusing enough, so at least the characters and their personality traits are simple.
By extension, simple characters have simple roles to play. And if they don’t play their roles, the game might just come to a screeching halt—literally. Death Stranding 2 opens with a perfect fourth-wall breakage that happens when the player tries to say “no” to Fragile when she asks Sam to become a delivery porter again. If you say no on Sam’s behalf, the game shows an animation of the scene rewinding like a VHS tape, looping back to the dialogue option where Sam can make the choice again. But, as my former colleague Ian Walker found out and covered for his blog Tell Them I Died, if Sam says no twice in row, the game rewinds even further to “the game’s actual opening, where we meet Sam and Lou in media res during the tail end of a delivery and learn the controls as they return home. It’s here that I thought Death Stranding 2 was going to punish my bullshit by making me play through the entire sequence again before Sam screamed and the game returned to his conversation with Fragile once more, accompanied by an appropriate record scratch. This time, however, the only option it provided is saying yes to the job.”
Sam’s frustrated scream at the very idea of rewinding back to the beginning of the game is hilariously relatable in this moment, because it’s how the player would almost certainly react if this is what the game did to them. But instead, Death Stranding 2 doesn’t give Sam the option to refuse the call. He’s the hero, so he has to undergo the hero’s journey. From this point forward, I’m going to spoil some far more significant plot points in Death Stranding 2, so don’t keep reading if you don’t want to know what else happens in the game.
As funny as this early moment is, it’s actually also quite poignant. There turns out to be a very good reason why Sam might want to return to the beginning of the game when it’s just him with Lou in a baby carrier, hiking over the mountaintops together. If Sam agrees to go on the mission that Fragile is assigning him, that means Sam will be entrusting Lou into Fragile’s care, and the thing that happens very shortly after that is Death Stranding antagonist Higgs returning and trying to murder Fragile and Lou. Even though baby Lou actually survives this encounter, she gets trapped in a hell dimension for years on end, and it’s not until she’s an adult woman that she returns to Sam’s world. Meanwhile, Fragile actually does die at Higgs’ hand.
The player doesn’t know this yet, of course, and Sam doesn’t either. But there is a retroactive sadness to this fourth wall break, because it imagines a world in which Sam could have said “no” to the original exchange and, perhaps, Fragile and Lou wouldn’t have been attacked by Higgs on that fateful day. Perhaps Lou could have grown up with Sam and had a normal life, and Fragile could have lived out a long life too.
There are plenty of fourth wall breaks that are goofy for goofiness’ sake, much of them on the part of Dollman. For example, Sam accrues a small collection of famous novels in his private room on the sci-fi ship that the game’s ensemble cast uses to get around in Death Stranding 2, and every time Sam picks up one of these books, his talking doll friend Dollman starts cracking wise about the book’s contents. When Sam picks up Frankenstein, Dollman notes that actress Elle Fanning starred in a biopic as author Mary Shelley, then says, “Now wait, where have I heard that name before?” (Fanning plays one of the major characters in Death Stranding 2.) When Sam picks up Moby Dick, Dollman notes that the seafarers on the Pequod have a lot in common with the developers at Kojima Productions, then admonishes Sam for not being familiar with Kojima Productions.
But what does it really mean for Sam, his friends, and his foes to be aware that they’re in a video game? In practice, it allows for the narrative to also include commentary on the nature of how the game was made. I have always put great stock into Leigh Alexander’s theory that the Metal Gear Solid series is a metaphor for Kojima’s own career in game development, specifically the era during which Kojima Productions was owned by Konami. Death Stranding and Death Stranding 2 are Kojima Productions’ first two games since becoming independent, and notably, they star independent contractor Sam, who despite being the son of the President of the United States (well, technically, the United Cities of America), repeatedly rejects the idea of being a “chosen one.” It’s definitely a narrative that fits with how Kojima might want himself to be perceived publicly, as more of a humble everyman than an egotistic auteur.
In Death Stranding 2, which takes place amidst the ascent of a new UCA President, Sam begins outright complaining about the implication that his actions could come across as Western imperialism. The second game takes place in Mexico and Australia, where Sam gets forced into a white savior-esque role whether he likes it or not. Sam states his wish to refuse the call multiple times in this game, but just like in the opening scene with Fragile, the dialogue options never allow the player to support Sam’s desires. The only true choice would be to put down the controller and stop playing.
Death Stranding 2 is also notably easier and more fun to play than the first game. Connecting all of the United States to the chiral network in the first game was tedious and difficult. Death Stranding 2 sands off a lot of the friction in the walking simulator aspects of the game, and also puts more of an emphasis on traditional combat encounters, filling its world with bandits for Sam to shoot at (all of the weapons are described as “non-lethal,” but in practice, they feel just like the real guns from any other game). Perhaps this is a commentary on how tantalizing it can be to fall into the classic dark patterns of so many modern video games, with the player rewarded for constant expansionism and violence. Sam may be against it, but they just keep on getting easier and more fun, so of course the player can’t help but continue, even against the protagonist’s own protests.
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