What happens when you do the same thing over and over again? Well, you get really good at it. Then it gets kinda boring.
That’s how I feel about the BTs in Death Stranding. To be fair though, they’re so cool, and they’re really spooky since we can’t see them. The first time we get caught in the rain, and the BTs come out, there’s a serious amount of tension there. We step lightly over every rock and bump in our path, holding our breath as we pass by these invisible freaks. Never knowing if one of them detected us and is silently coming to drag us into the deep. I mean, what do these things even look like? Aliens? Skinny people? (what?) What will it look like when our bodies get torn a part by a thousand gooey limbs?
Then we make it out alive. And that feels good. But then we make it out alive again and again. And again, and again and again. Suddenly, it don’t feel too good anymore. The arrival of BTs doesn’t make us shudder with fear. They’re just a bunch of dumb blind idiots that can probably see us just as well as we see them.
That’s probably how Sam Porter-Bridges feels too. This is a guy that’s been doing this for years. He knows all the tricks and we do too. Why would BTs freak him out? That’s a part of his trade. It’s a part of our trade too.
Have you seen the picture of those guys smoking on a beam in the middle of the literally nowhere during the construction of the empire state building? Like, aside from that beam, they’re just floating there! Now that is scary. Do you think they cared about that? Probably not, they just accepted it as a hazard on the job. So, does Sam. (Well, Sam has DOOMS. That would be the equivalent of a parachute for these guys.)
Once the trick has run its course, what is the point of these beached things? To pop out of nowhere and give us a good spook? They don’t even do that. They just sit there. If you still have braincells left in this modern age, I commend you, because I don’t. But if you did, you would probably never actually get caught by these things on purpose, they’re just there. I actually felt a sense of dread whenever it started to rain. Not because I was scared of the BTs, but because I knew I would be bored for the next four minutes.
That’s fine. It’s just a part of nature now in this world. The same way we avoid wild animals or fish. That’s why BRIDGES developed BBs and employed people with DOOMS and all that other lore.
From an actual game standpoint, it makes sense too. Kojima-sama said that Death Stranding was not supposed to be a hard game, that anyone can play it. Like your grandparents. And that’s really cool. Games have more accessibility features than ever in the industry right now, and hopefully games will have more in the future. (I’m not saying that making a game easy is an accessibility feature. I’m just saying it makes it more accessible.)
But my complaint (I’m not really complaining at all honestly) isn’t that BTs should be harder. I just want them gone. Straight up. Lore, narrative, design, and whatever other word you can think of, be damned.
Now I’m bordering on the edge of stupidity, I know. I, generally, really don’t like it when people complain about such central parts of games. So much of the game revolves around the concept of BTs. The whole artistic purpose to Death Stranding’s entire existence would completely disappear without BTs, I know. The narrative would fall apart too, and so would everything else, I know. When you even think about these kinds of things it annoys people. Like, just play another game! Why ruin the vision? Play Journey or something.
Let’s just imagine though, that we lived in a world where only brainless entertainment existed. Where people only cared about consuming empty works of art who’s only purpose was to produce ‘fun’. Then I would say a couple of things.
First of all, Death Stranding was probably my favorite game of 2019 (Yes, I’m aware that no one asked). What I got out of that game was the simple pleasure of walking around. The environmental design was on another level. It looked real, but also looked like something out of Alien: Covenant or Prometheus, like some extra-terrestrial planet. I have never seen anything like it, and it wasn’t because of some crazy new technology. It was just made by really talented people. But this isn’t a review of the game, so let’s move on.
I would rather have that for the entire game, but let’s assume that isn’t possible. Let’s assume BTs have to be in the game.
One issue that I have with the BTs is where those scenarios are always located. In random open fields where there’s nothing else to think about besides the BTs. So, we end up just walking in a spaghetti pattern around a bunch of BTs that are too lazy to actually follow us. We hold our breath occasionally when we get comically close to one, close enough to touch us. They just yell at us. Then we clear the minefield and move on.
It’s been almost a year since I played the game, but I can’t recall a more than one or two locations with BTs that wasn’t an open field somewhere. If we treat BTs as another obstacle in Sam Porter-Bridges’ path, why not mix them in with the actual interesting terrain of the environment?
That single time where BTs weren’t in an open field was when we had to go to the abandoned town during the third chapter of the game in the Midwest. That was genuinely really fun! We had to use our tools and knowledge to traverse collapsed buildings and debris. To scale walls with ladders and descend them with climbing ropes. Find not so obvious paths within the ruin, like a hole under an escalator, to carefully avoid BTs rather than take a wide arc around them. And we weren’t entirely sure what awaited us around the corner. In a field, we could tell when we were too close to a BT because they would appear ever so faintly. That doesn’t work indoors. So, we peak carefully around corners, not knowing if we would come face to face with a BT. That’s tension, and a really engaging BT encounter. (There is one more at the end, which is equally as interesting)
If BTs were treated as another obstacle, it would be really interesting to see how they were mixed in with some of the other absolutely wilding out environment design that we see. There are gigantic fissures that branch out in really weird ways. More buildings that have interesting architecture (that aren’t used). Sheer cliffsides where we have to actually think about where we put our climbing ropes. There is a forest…but it doesn’t really do what I’m talking about. It looked amazing though!
Maybe I’m advocating for a more ‘puzzely’, lock-and-key feel to the game. Which might not be a good thing. The moments that I remembered most clearly were when Sam the Man and me were walking into the sunset, listening to some chill tunes, and having a good time thinking about shit. Not stressing out over where to put my next climbing rope so I don’t fall to my death or get gotten by a BT.
I’m trying really hard not to sound like I’m nitpicking, but I know I am. Yet, I feel kind of sad that we didn’t get more of those interesting BT encounters…
…but we got the horribly long snow section at the end of the game…sad times.
Slickaria! 