Cognition Dissemination: One Key Feature Death Stranding Could Use
I started playing Death Stranding after receiving a copy early this week, and I’m having a good time with it thus far despite its wonky gameplay concepts. It’s a game where you play Sam Porter Bridges, a guy with an unsubtle name who delivers cargo to communities that need it across an America ravaged to an unrecognizable state, and there’s ostensibly little else to it. But it’s more fun than it sounds thanks to how tough the game makes it to merely trek across its uneven and rocky environments — there’s no option to hold down a button to easily traverse here. Time will tell if I feel its gameplay still holds up as I continue playing through it, but so far so good.
It doesn’t hurt that the game is a hell of a looker, to no surprise given the development team and publisher involved. Hideo Kojima is a well-known name after the Metal Gear franchise’s success at Konami, and Sony Interactive Entertainment gave Kojima Productions the budget to realize this project’s concept. The environments are largely devoid of humans, but that hasn’t bothered me (yet?) thanks to how gorgeous it is. They somehow managed to make it look great even on a base PlayStation 4.
There are points where I like to stop and take in the environments. But in games this pretty, it’s useful when the option exists to preserve this feeling by capturing the best photos, to either share them online or make backgrounds out of them. So, it’s a real pity that’s not possible here because Kojima Productions and Sony somehow released this game without a Photo Mode, despite Sony publishing several games with the option in the last few years. What gives?
It’s clear that Sony doesn’t mandate this for all their games, so this was likely Kojima Productions’ decision in the end. There could be multiple reasons why it’s not included here, including the development team’s desire to focus on more important issues to make the deadline to complete the game. But it’s a feature dearly needed. See the screenshots in this article? I’d love to take those with the option to hide the UI, remove Sam out of the picture, or snapshot them with him doing special poses — the kind he can do in the Private Room. I’ve used the feature with several games throughout this console generation, including all the Uncharted games and remasters, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Assassin’s Creed Origins, and Horizon Zero Dawn.
Kojima Productions has prioritized other matters for recent and future patches, including gameplay and practicality-related options like giving players the option to delete player-created elements (some players were using vehicles to block others from progressing down narrow pathways) and enlarge the text. They haven’t so much as lightly alluded to adding a Photo Mode. But this could change with enough requests after they’ve addressed other issues, because it’s possible to add one as downloadable content. Remedy Entertainment, for instance, added a Photo Mode for Control via a patch in mid-October, nearly two months after it launched.
Adding one to Death Stranding is certainly doable; the question is whether the development team wants to. I sincerely hope they do, because the lack of one hurts. I won’t even be too mad if they add it just after I finish it, almost as if to spite me. A wise man once said: “It be like that sometimes.”
I originally planned to discuss the need for a music player here too, the absence of which was initially surprising given how Kojima’s last few console Metal Gear Solid games had one. But it didn’t take long for me to realize the background music that plays when you enter certain areas depends on the player not doing or listening to anything else. The music tracks are mostly licensed ones from Low Roar, from what I’ve heard so far (I’m not that far in), and were carefully chosen to suit the areas.
On the other hand, a music player would be great for optional deliveries, where music typically doesn’t play. Several tracks can be selected as Sam is performing a bunch of activities in the Private Room, a time to see how there’s already a good amount of licensed music available that doesn’t play during the quest. The number of choices, however, don’t compare to the dizzying array of licensed tracks available in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Maybe there’s a way to implement a player that only works for non-story delivery runs.
Kojima Productions should continue updating Death Stranding until, and perhaps shortly after, the PC version arrives in summer 2020, published by 505 Games. This is a good time to continue providing requests for more features, though whether they’ll actually get around to them is anyone’s guess. It doesn’t sound like it would be too resource intensive to implement a Photo Mode, especially if they work with a developer like Horizon Zero Dawn’s Guerilla Games to do it, considering this game also runs on the Decima Engine like that one.
About The Author
Geoff
News Editor | Geoff is some nerd who writes for a blog and thinks he's knowledgeable. He write a lot about video games, but is capable of writing about other subjects, too. Twitter
