SPOILER WARNING: this is my take on Kojima's message, meant for those who have completed the game and are interested in discussing what it's about. Don't read this yet if you're still finishing the game.
TLDR; Death Stranding is a wake-up call to humanity
The events of the Death Stranding signify the arrival of video games as works of art that ought to be reckoned with on their own terms. Death Stranding is not a book or a film, but something new. Hideo Kojima has stated that its main theme is the importance of connecting with others1. Though his latest work has critics divided, one thing is clear: Kojima has a deeper message for us, if we can decipher it. What follows is not a review of whether the game is good, but rather a discussion of what Kojima is trying to say - his vision of the future, humanity, and a warning of the danger that lies ahead.
Death Stranding has been described as a "mess"2. It is huge, elaborate, and almost reckless in its ambition. But the word "mess" suggests a lack of intention, and this could not be further from the truth. Instead, Death Stranding is the pure expression of one creator's intent. Kojima imagines a future where humanity is connected on a global scale by a fully automated delivery network, then subsequently fragmented by an annihilation event. By placing us in a post-apocalyptic world where internet connectivity and delivery optimization have accelerated to their logical ends and beyond, Kojima invites the player to reflect on these real-world trends today and how they are changing us.
Early on in the game, Die-Hardman reminds us "there's no such thing as a free lunch. Connectivity and convenience have to come at a price."3 While Kojima asks us to consider the cost of modern technology, he does not completely reject the spread of the internet or the convenience of online services. In our own increasingly connected world, participation is not optional, and Kojima is by no means suggesting that we go back. Instead, mirroring his signature game design, he is alerting us that we are in dangerous territory and encouraging us to proceed mindfully.
Kojima has called out social media for causing people to "wear a mask, saying whatever they want"4 without considering others. While this fits into the theme of forging connections with others, it only scratches the surface of what Death Stranding stands to reveal. Modern technology is fundamentally changing us in ways we do not understand: not just in how we treat each other on Twitter, but in our conception of humanity itself.
Episode 1: The Man Who Turned Into A Stick
The "rope," along with the "stick," are two of mankind's oldest tools.
The stick to keep the bad away, the rope used to bring the good toward us.
They were our first friends, of our own invention.
Wherever there were people, there were the rope and the stick.
- From Kobo Abe's "Nawa"
Let's start with a big question: what does it mean to be human? This may seem a lofty question to ask, but luckily Kojima doesn't make us look far for his answer. The game opens with a quotation from the writer Kobo Abe, which provides a good start. "Wherever there were people," Abe writes, "there were the rope and the stick." Our humanity was first defined by our ability to take objects in the world and use them to achieve our aims. In other words, we use tools. Many animals have desires or fears. But humans use the stick and the rope, to keep bad away and bring good toward us, as means to serve our aims. To be human is to be, at the very least, a tool user.
For Abe, the stick is the original tool, the first invention of humanity. Kojima has said that "the stick and the rope formed the basis of our culture and civilization as early human beings." Entire ages in human history are defined by the material of our tools: stone, bronze, iron. But of course, human beings are not the only form of life to use tools. What makes us uniquely human must be something more, not just the fact that we use tools, but something in the way we relate to those tools.
Kojima imagines the first moment a human used a tool when he discusses the theme of hands in Death Stranding:
If you go back to the time of early humans, when we first started using sticks as tools - you grab the stick with your hand. [...] Next came the rope and you hold this with your hands too. [...] Hands are iconic. You can shake hands, but you can also make a fist, which is the hand acting like a stick. But then you could also kind of grab something and pull it towards you, which is the hand acting as a rope.5
The hand is the original point of contact between human and tool: between life, with its own aims, and stick, an object defined by its usefulness. More importantly, the hand is the point where the boundary between human and tool begins to blur. As soon as we grabbed the first stick with our hands, we also understood how to manipulate our hands into all sorts of tools. The hand is where we, as human beings, start to become the tool.
If this thought experiment represents the beginning of humanity's exposure to tools, then in many ways the world of Death Stranding takes this transformation to an extreme end. It is a world where human beings are treated as objects, valued only for their usefulness to others. Sam Porter is literally named by his profession, as are all the characters we meet throughout the game: the Engineer, the Photographer, the Craftsman, etc. Indeed our world is much the same. Will Smith, Harry Potter, and Lil Wayne all have surnames originally based on occupations. When we think of our own identities, we think of our professions and the value we produce - our usefulness to society.
At one juncture in the game, we meet the Geologist, a scientist so dedicated to his work that he develops a deadly illness from chiralium exposure. When we deliver the medication he needs, he rejoices at being able to continue his study without any concern for his own mortality: "Dying's not an option. My research is nowhere near complete. It's not just my life you're saving here, it's my life's work."6 He can only understand his own worth through his work, his legacy through his contribution to science. He has no name; he is simply the Geologist. He is, in essence, a tool. He has become a stick.
Kojima cites The Man Who Turned Into A Stick, another work by Abe, as inspiration for Death Stranding7. In this absurdist play, two agents from hell arrive on earth to collect the soul of a dead man, acting as a Corpse Disposal Team of sorts. The dead man takes the form of a stick, worn down by years of use and crusted with the grease of human hands. After a lifetime of being employed and used by others, the man has finally transformed into a literal stick. The agents find the stick has been picked up by a boy, who agrees to sell it to them. The agents respond: "You may imagine you've struck a clever bargain, but one of these days you'll find out. It wasn't just a stick you sold, but yourself."8
The Man Who Turned Into A Stick is meant to represent death. There are two deaths in this play. The first is the death of the man who turned into a stick. His death is not only the end of his life, but the end of his individual humanity. He has become a tool. The second death is even more tragic. It is the end of our collective humanity, our capacity for seeing the lives of others as anything more than tools. The man has already turned into a tool. But when the boy agrees to sell him, the stick becomes something else: it has become a commodity, something that can be bought and sold. This transaction marks the commodification of human life itself.
There is a sad irony in the slow descent of humanity envisioned by Abe and Kojima. What began with the basic desire to further human aims has in turn resulted in a loss of humanity, perpetrated by human beings against ourselves. In the half-century that has passed between the work of Abe and Kojima, modern technology has only accelerated this self-inflicted loss. Today, the flow of goods and services has become such a well-greased machine that it is easier than ever to disregard the human beings that power our economy. Kojima intends for Death Stranding to remind us of what has been forgotten:
Now everything is online. You just press a button and items are delivered to you, either by a drone or by a person. But the delivery still happens physically. I wanted people to think about the impact of delivering something from A to B. There is a person carrying that weight, someone you don't see. I wanted people to think about that while playing the game.9
Inspired by Abe's work, Kojima is restating the problem of the commodification of human life under the new context of modern technological society. In an age where the gig economy continues to bring down the cost of human labor, Abe's nightmarish foresight should be more relevant than ever.
We've come this far to state the problem. The question remains: how to move forward? In Death Stranding, Kojima not only calls our attention to the growing danger of modern technology. He also provides a framework for us to meet the challenge ahead. How can we evolve in our technological capacity on one hand, without losing sight of our humanity on the other? To understand Kojima's answer, we must first understand the baby.
Episode 2: Chirality
With chirality, if you put your hand in front of a mirror it may seem like the two images match but in reality they're asymmetric. This chiral philosophy is a theme of Death Stranding.
- Hideo Kojima
Chirality is a type of symmetry, referring to a shape that is not superimposable on its mirror image. The most commonplace example of this symmetry is found in human hands. Hands are mirror images of each other, but you can't superimpose them. More broadly, chirality refers to the duality of two parts that are mutually necessary, yet distinct. For example, Kojima has mentioned the chiral duality between the living and the dead in Death Stranding: "The world of the dead and the world of the living don't fit together and a 'voidout' happens when they connect."10 Death Stranding is not about a conflict between living and dead; instead, it is about restoring balance to both sides of this chiral duality.
Similarly, there is a chiral duality between the two notions of humanity that have arisen thus far: 1) human life as its own end and 2) human life as service to others. Today this balance has been tipped far to one side, and we increasingly see each other only as tools. In the spirit of chirality, Kojima does not flat out reject the transformative influences of modern technology - the multiplayer component of Death Stranding, for instance, encourages the player to consider how to be useful to others. Instead he challenges the player throughout the game to find and maintain a balance between these two sides of humanity, much like how we must vigilantly keep Sam's cargo from tipping over. Kojima issues this challenge to us through the unifying theme across the game's mechanics and story: the baby.
The baby is the first item in the game. In many ways, it is no different from any other equipment we use in the game: an object that serves a purpose, loses durability over time, and is eventually discarded. The mechanics of the game treat the baby as a tool. In the story, it isn't long before Deadman pushes us to incinerate the baby, once it is no longer deemed useful.
"But it's still alive."11 Sam's terse response in the first chapter of the game is enough to capture why he is the hero of Death Stranding. He understands from the very beginning that no matter where this baby came from, no matter what it may be used for, it is a human life that counts. Like us, Sam lives in a world that is constantly telling him that human life is only worth its usefulness to others. BB technology, once the result of controversial child experimentation, has become an accepted fact of life. Deadman is quick to remind us: "You should remember that BBs are just equipment. Try not to get attached."12
Kojima dares us not to get attached because he knows it is not possible. For this reason Death Stranding remains, at its core, a work of optimism. Despite the grave danger posed by modern technology, Kojima's belief in humanity to recognize the value of Lou's life is unshakeable. He refuses to believe that you can play this game and not develop an attachment for her.
The gameplay and the narrative of Death Stranding work together in chiral duality to create a constant tension between Lou's value as a tool and her value as a human life. This tension forms the crux of Kojima's challenge to the player: daring us to dehumanize the baby and then reminding us that as human beings we cannot. It is experienced firsthand through the gameplay, but ultimately resolved by the final developments of the plot.
As the story unfolds, we come to understand the deep trauma that Sam suffers from the horrifying origins of his life. Sam is the definition of damaged goods. Like the stick, he has been worn down by a lifetime of deliveries, covered in the black tar of ghostly hands. Sam has been used his whole life. But despite losing his parents at birth; despite being raised under a lie by the woman who killed them; and despite being alive only because of the mercy of that woman, Sam cannot lose sight of the value of human life. On the beach, Amelie tells Sam that the Last Stranding is inevitable, and that extinction is only a matter of time. But Sam still asks her to spare humanity, because human life counts. All life expires, but life is valuable nonetheless and what we do in life matters.
Sam's worth has never been recognized beyond his value as a tool, whether as the original BB in his infancy or as a porter later in life. His world has treated his life as a commodity with casual indifference, and given him every reason to do the same to the baby. But from beginning to end, Sam refuses to give up on Lou's intrinsic human worth. He understands that giving up on the humanity of one life is the start of a slippery slope that ends with a loss of humanity for all. By taking Lou out of the tank, Sam chooses to end this cycle. Through his love for the baby, Sam finds balance between his own life as service to others, and Lou's life as an end itself. In the words of Clifford Unger, Lou becomes Sam's "bridge to the future", just as Sam is Clifford's bridge to Lou.
At the end of Death Stranding, we discover the truth about Clifford and the terrible choices he was forced to make. In his dying moment, we learn the one thing he could not accept: for his son to live life as a tool. Like Solid Snake, Clifford saw himself as a lifelong military man who made a career out of violently furthering the aims of others: "Dividing people was the only thing I was ever good at." But he dreamed of a different life for his son. His message to Sam is also Kojima's message to the player: "Don't make the same mistake. Be yourself... Be free."13
Episode 3: Kojima As Prophet
Once there was an explosion. A bang which gave birth to time and space.
Once there was an explosion. A bang which set a planet spinning in that space.
Once there was an explosion. A bang which gave rise to life as we know it.
And then came the next explosion. An explosion that will be our last.
In the opening of Death Stranding, Norman Reedus describes four explosions. The explosions of the past are beginnings. The first is the Big Bang, the birth of the universe. The second is the supernova that triggered the formation of our solar system. The third is the Cambrian explosion, a period during which almost all present forms of life appeared. In the game, the fourth explosion is the Last Stranding. It is not the fourth beginning, but rather the sixth extinction event. The world of Death Stranding is a failed future. But for us, the next explosion represents, in Amelie's words, an opportunity14.
In Death Stranding, the next explosion is supernatural. In our world today, it is technological. We live in the computer age, a technological explosion that has given rise to the internet and modern online services. In the future of Death Stranding, the world is connected by delivery networks, automated to such a degree of efficiency that war and famine are no longer pressing concerns15. Technology was created to achieve human aims - to connect us, to provide for our needs. Kojima now asks us to look beyond. When the aim has been achieved, what becomes of the tool? What becomes of us?
In the game, Die-Hardman describes humanity's inability to evolve past this milestone:
The whole [network] was automated - AI-managed, deliveries carried out by drone. The belief was that taking people out of the equation would revolutionize the whole system... but things didn't quite pan out that way. Instead, we started seeing cases of what would eventually be dubbed "drone syndrome." It was too much for some folks to accept, leaving everything to machines and nothing for the common man. And indeed, the oxytocin deficiency and hormonal imbalances we confirmed seemed to back up that assessment. Humanity needed to be part of the process. So laws were put in place, and we stepped back into the picture again.16
People in the world of Death Stranding were unable to imagine their own value as anything more than a tool to be used or a commodity to be bought and sold. Through his vision of dystopia, Kojima issues a challenge to our own world: can we envision our humanity as something new, something more?
From the first time a human being picked up a stick to the present-day internet era, humanity has walked a long road of continuous improvement to our tools and technology. Along the way, we've encountered the imminent and growing danger of ourselves becoming those tools and dehumanizing each other as trade-able commodities. But we are nevertheless approaching a day when automation may provide for the basic necessities of life. Death Stranding is a wake-up call to humanity: the next explosion is here. We are nearing the end of the line, and it's time to start thinking about what's next.
Kojima is thus acting as a sort of prophet. Death Stranding reveals the dehumanizing danger of modern technology and gives us the framework of chiral duality to understand its impact on our humanity. But ultimately, it asks us to look far into the future and understand that the next explosion can be a new beginning, if we allow our humanity to evolve. To this end, Kojima doesn't tell us what's next. He leaves that to the player, asking only that we do not limit ourselves. As Amelie says to Sam on the Beach:
I had so many dreams of the future. I didn't know which ones to trust. Which is why I decided to share them with you and the others. But, to connect the dots, to make sense of everything, you need perspective. You need time. [...] All I could do was just show you the choices, and let you decide.17
Extinction events are inevitable. That we must work together to survive them is an obvious truth. The deeper message of Death Stranding is a warning not to lose our humanity along the way, and an open-ended call to boldly reimagine our humanity looking forward. It is a scathing rejection of the ease with which we have commodified each other in the present day. It is a defiant reaffirmation of human life; a reminder of why we set down this long path in the first place.
[1]: Kojima-san's Twitter
[3]: The Symbiotic Surveillance Society
[4]: Washington Post
[5]: Playstation Access
[7]: IGN
[8]: The Man Who Turned Into A Stick, p. 8
[9]: Playstation Access
[10]: Playstation Access
[11]: Episode 1, Order No. 3
[12]: Episode 2, Order No. 5
[13]: Episode 14
[14]: Episode 13, Order No. 69
[15]: Humanity's Biggest Problem? Logistics
[16]: MULEs and Drone Syndrome
[17]: Episode 13, Order No. 69
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