Death Stranding: Feeling like a climate change denier for a second

[CaitSeith]

For some context, Death Stranding game is set in a post-apocalyptic world where survivors are trying to put themselves together and adapt to the new world. As you travel your goal is to convince people to join the effort and connect their homes to the chiral network (post-apocalyptic Internet with 3D printer support). At mid of the game, it's hinted that extending the chiral network may eventually trigger a new Death Stranding event (aka. the end of the world 2: Electric Boogaloo), and there are already reported tangible effects at that point.

What can you do? The game wants you to press forward and keep expanding the network, unlocking more tools in the process, connecting other players' useful structures to your game and allowing your own structures to help them in return. The benefits are obvious, not only for you and other players, but for the NPCs too. You have gameplay incentives to keep going with only a fraction of the narrative telling you to stop. Besides, the antagonist's ridiculous superpowers might as well be the cause of the weird readings (heck! He can control the weather itself!). You can only keep on keeping on, hoping that it's just the antagonist's shenanigans, or that the scientists eventually discover how to avoid a new end of the world that might wipe out humanity for real.

I don't know if this was intentional or an accidental outcome of gluing several ideas together (Kojima's political messages are usually as subtle as a Hundred Hand Slap on the face, as the rest of the game shows). Either way, I found it interesting and can't wait to see if there is a conclusion to this or if it doesn't go anywhere.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

To be fair, humanity flying too close to the sun is a common trope. We could just as easily say the first Death Stranding was WW1, and rebuilding the Nation, ie Europe, could lead to a second War if nothing changes.
Or the Death Stranding is the first sacking of Rome, and if the Romans change nothing about their social or political structure, a second sacking is inevitable.

I'm not sure its a direct message about climate change as it is another Man's reach exceed his grasp story, just with more ghosts and babies and Monster Energy Drank

 

[CaitSeith]

To be fair, humanity flying too close to the sun is a common trope. We could just as easily say the first Death Stranding was WW1, and rebuilding the Nation, ie Europe, could lead to a second War if nothing changes.
Or the Death Stranding is the first sacking of Rome, and if the Romans change nothing about their social or political structure, a second sacking is inevitable.

I'm not sure its a direct message about climate change as it is another Man's reach exceed his grasp story, just with more ghosts and babies and Monster Energy Drank

I made the comparison because the catastrophic event had a world-wide impact in the atmosphere to the point of blocking satellite communications, making air travel impossible and rain itself deadly (and there seems no solution to fix it). I still have not reached the point where the causes of the Death Stranding are explained (or even if it was man-made in the first place).

PS: As a funny coincidence, the game sends you back to WW1 for a short time.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

You haven't finished the game yet so I will refrain from spoiling it for you and getting into the specifics of its backstory but broadly speaking:

Postapocalyptic fiction, like most speculative fiction, really, has always on some level engaged with various fears of its time. Technology getting out of hand. Nuclear war. Environmental collapse. And so on and so forth. Most of those are almost instinctively recognizable by now.

Death Stranding is extremely interesting because it tries to offer a genuinely unique and contemporary spin on post apocalyptic fiction and expand its visual and thematic language. The wasteland Sam Porter Bridges crosses is a wasteland we all live in, make no mistake. It's a vision of the future informed by social alienation, environmental collapse and the sins of humanities past catching up to it. Remains of the old world breaking through lakes of black, oily tar, creatures trapped between life and death haunting the ruins of the old civilization, rain contaminated with pure entropy... If there is one thing Death Stranding is making clear it's that it has something to say. Behind all of its Twin Peaksian mysticism, there's a guy who's taken a good look at the state of our world and is deeply and profoundly worried.

 

[CaitSeith]

snip

I finally finished the game (damn! It took longer that I expected!), and I can say that the parallel with climate change denial was probably coincidence, because the character who hinted about the Chiral Network causing a new Death Stranding never brought the topic again. Also the event in question ended up being a natural (or technically supernatural) phenomena that already had happened in the distant past, several times, and the antagonists definitely want the end of the world to happen.

 

[CaitSeith]

You haven't finished the game yet so I will refrain from spoiling it for you and getting into the specifics of its backstory but broadly speaking:

Postapocalyptic fiction, like most speculative fiction, really, has always on some level engaged with various fears of its time. Technology getting out of hand. Nuclear war. Environmental collapse. And so on and so forth. Most of those are almost instinctively recognizable by now.

Death Stranding is extremely interesting because it tries to offer a genuinely unique and contemporary spin on post apocalyptic fiction and expand its visual and thematic language. The wasteland Sam Porter Bridges crosses is a wasteland we all live in, make no mistake. It's a vision of the future informed by social alienation, environmental collapse and the sins of humanities past catching up to it. Remains of the old world breaking through lakes of black, oily tar, creatures trapped between life and death haunting the ruins of the old civilization, rain contaminated with pure entropy... If there is one thing Death Stranding is making clear it's that it has something to say. Behind all of its Twin Peaksian mysticism, there's a guy who's taken a good look at the state of our world and is deeply and profoundly worried.

The problem is those worries and concerned looks at the state of our world will go unnoticed or at the very least overlooked, because the game?s thematic language and aesthetic flourishes make it so difficult for most people to take seriously. I mean, it?s supposed to be entertainment on one hand, but like Kojima?s other games that hand reaches so far into the ?weird? box that it serves - regardless of intent - as an impulsive disconnect from reality, meaning the serious message at hand never really had a chance.

Sure, it could be dissected and explained in hindsight by super fans months later, but by that point it?s far past its prime impact potential.

 

[CaitSeith]

You haven't finished the game yet so I will refrain from spoiling it for you and getting into the specifics of its backstory but broadly speaking:

Postapocalyptic fiction, like most speculative fiction, really, has always on some level engaged with various fears of its time. Technology getting out of hand. Nuclear war. Environmental collapse. And so on and so forth. Most of those are almost instinctively recognizable by now.

Death Stranding is extremely interesting because it tries to offer a genuinely unique and contemporary spin on post apocalyptic fiction and expand its visual and thematic language. The wasteland Sam Porter Bridges crosses is a wasteland we all live in, make no mistake. It's a vision of the future informed by social alienation, environmental collapse and the sins of humanities past catching up to it. Remains of the old world breaking through lakes of black, oily tar, creatures trapped between life and death haunting the ruins of the old civilization, rain contaminated with pure entropy... If there is one thing Death Stranding is making clear it's that it has something to say. Behind all of its Twin Peaksian mysticism, there's a guy who's taken a good look at the state of our world and is deeply and profoundly worried.

The problem is those worries and concerned looks at the state of our world will go unnoticed or at the very least overlooked, because the game?s thematic language and aesthetic flourishes make it so difficult for most people to take seriously. I mean, it?s supposed to be entertainment on one hand, but like Kojima?s other games that hand reaches so far into the ?weird? box that it serves - regardless of intent - as an impulsive disconnect from reality, meaning the serious message at hand never really had a chance.

Sure, it could be dissected and explained in hindsight by super fans months later, but by that point it?s far past its prime impact potential.

Anyways, even though the game contains paralels to Climate Change, the one that caught my attention (Sam causing the end of the world as a side-effect while people suspecting about what was going to happen trying to warn him and stop him so it didn't) was dropped after the Mama/Locke story (as Locke was the only former naysayer who warned Sam, and she never touched the topic again).

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

Anyways, even though the game contains paralels to Climate Change, the one that caught my attention (Sam causing the end of the world as a side-effect while people suspecting about what was going to happen trying to warn him and stop him so it didn't) was dropped after the Mama/Locke story (as Locke was the only former naysayer who warned Sam, and she never touched the topic again).

I...don't get this criticism? The entire point of the chiral network to begin with was to trigger the Last Stranding. It was EE's plan the entire time to build and weaponize it. She wouldn't have been able to do it without the chiral network, as that was her means to merge all of humanity's Beaches and trigger a planetary Voidout. From a narrative standpoint, Lockne's warning was foreshadowing, she was the one who figured it out, and while she didn't have the entire picture she wasn't wrong.

The whole point was that humanity -- and life on Earth -- was already doomed to extinction and nothing could be done at that point to avert it. The conflict stemmed from whether humanity had the right to accept and confront extinction on its own terms.

If we're going to go the "climate change" route, I'd proffer the suggestion the chiral network is metaphor for nuclear energy. A dangerous technology which saw its genesis in weapons research, that poses the threat and capability of global devastation, which through intentional and unintentional means has already unleashed destruction across the globe...but at the same time the alternatives are even worse, too small-scale, or too immature to have the necessary impact needed to avert disaster. A technology that's feared and hated by those ignorant of it, or those trapped in perceiving it on exclusive terms of its legacy, who refuse outright to use it.

 

[CaitSeith]

I...don't get this criticism?

That's because it isn't criticism. I was pointing out something I found interesting.

When Lockne's foreshadowing happens, you don't know that the actual purpose of the chiral network is to trigger the Last Stranding or that the President wants to end the world. I highly doubt that real world fossil fuel companies owners' goal is to cause Climate Change; that's the parallel that I found interesting while it lasted.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

That's because it isn't criticism. I was pointing out something I found interesting.

When Lockne's foreshadowing happens, you don't know that the actual purpose of the chiral network is to trigger the Last Stranding or that the President wants to end the world. I highly doubt that real world fossil fuel companies owners' goal is to cause Climate Change; that's the parallel that I found interesting while it lasted.

Well, yeah. If you knew what the endgame was before you became invested in the game's story, you'd be likely to say "aw, fuck this" and turn the console off. I've always said the first and last thing to always consider with Kojima's games is he's meta as fuck, loves to toy with player/character dichotomy, and his statements can be generally found in metanarrative. In my mind, Death Stranding is more of a spiritual sequel to MGS2 in that regard than anything else one might say about it.

The game's environmental storytelling throughout is its biggest clue at the true endgame. The general state of the world informs the player humanity's extinction is an inevitability, and the best that can be hoped for is to improve quality of life before the end. The only genuine "hope spot" in the game is the bit about using Timefall to speed crop growth, which is a solution to one problem out of a panoply of less-emergent, but much-greater ones. That's in stark contrast to the game's narrative as told through dialog, which is merely enough to give the player impetus to proceed despite whatever growing reservations they may have.

The narrative purpose of Lockne's bit, was to smack the player upside the head with a cluebat, provided they've gone through the game thus far with blinders. Simply put, the game was never about saving humanity. It was about giving humanity a dignified end.