Hideo Kojima famously said that his 2019 Death Stranding game would be the first of many “Strand-type games” and spawn their own genre. Fast-forward six years, and Death Stranding 2 is now out and is the only other such game to have launched in all that time. It begs the question: why?
Both games are addictive enough to warrant interest
Death Stranding 2 very closely follows the beaten path of the first game, containing more or less the exact same gameplay loop as its predecessor. You pick up orders, deliver them across treacherous terrain, rinse and repeat.
You also perhaps lay the groundwork for other players to do the same much more easily by repairing highways, extending the monorail, or leaving about all sorts of PCC-produced stuff like generators, timefall shelters, and so on.
Both games are spitting images of each other in this respect, with Death Stranding 2 being as direct a sequel as possible. And, being so, it is just as addictive. Many consider “Strand-type” gameplay to be merely a walking simulation, but that couldn’t be further from the truth, as I explained in another article on the matter.
This addictive loop has proven, twice now, to be quite successful at ensnaring players for dozens of hours, which further complicates the question of where are all the Strand-type games that Kojima envisioned would come.
It is also interesting to think of what such a game would even look like. In both Death Strandings, this would mean to have a title that revolves around picking up and delivering orders while participating in asynchronous multiplayer, where player activity can show up in any given world. And honestly, there are literally no games like this.
The Strand-type genre has two games only, both produced by Kojima and both immensely successful, both on the PlayStation and PC.
Why is it that developers never hopped onto this trend? Is it too difficult to pull off? After all, it’s a pretty simple gameplay loop. Add some story in there, perhaps some cutscenes, and you’ve got yourself a Strand-type game. If variety is your concern, change the setting, go from esoteric sci-fi to some other genre, make the game set in our own contemporary world but stricken by a plague (we did live through one already, so that shouldn’t be too difficult).
But even so, no developers even tried to pick up the genre, which is in stark contrast with what happened to FromSoftware’s Soulslikes.
It happened to Dark Souls, so why not Death Stranding?
That company, be it purposefully or not, spawned an entire cultural movement within video games that saw them as the basis of a new, neo-Metroidvania genre, aptly named “Soulslike.”
And how did others do it? Simply. Bonfires to mark objectives, death returns you to the last bonfire lit, and boss fights are the only true mark of progression. Everything in between is interchangeable, from combat to settings to story emphasis. There are, by now, countless games in the Soulslike genre, to the point it’s becoming actually quite tedious to open up Steam and be swarmed by them at every corner.
It’s not even that the Souls titles are some gameplay ideal that everyone should follow. Infamy could have played a role, but Kojima is perhaps the most infamous developer of them all. No game of his is conventional, and Metal Gear sure has its own set of copycats and inspirations across the genre.
If it is combat that’s lacking in Strand-type gameplay, or rather if it needs to be faster and more visceral in its execution, then that’s perfectly doable as well.
Though both the Death Stranding games have quite a good chunk of combat against a variety of enemies and bosses, it can be considered a bit too easy at times. Any given developer could improve on that by pumping up the action, making deliveries more difficult, and each run a challenge, while making sure the perceived tediousness of the originals never seeps through.
Walking simulation, though not really present in the Strand games either, could be reduced by different maps, terrain, moment-to-moment gameplay, dynamic events, and so on. It’s not like there’s not quite a lot to work with in this potential genre.
The foundations are there in the original games and can be reshaped like clay into something new and refreshing, just like what happened with Soulslikes, Roguelikes, and Skyrim-likes as of recently.
But unfortunately, no one seems to be giving it a shot, for whatever reason that may be. Kojima remains the only Strand-type developer, and I honestly hope he never stops reiterating and refining this genre if no one else will.
What do you think, Destructoid? Should there be more Strand-type games out there? Is the Death Stranding gameplay loop enough of a basis for a new genre to spawn from? Let us know below.
