Death Stranding Review: 9 Ups & 3 Downs

5. Varied & Conceptually Awesome Characters

Kojima has never been short on memorable character designs, and while he might stumble pretty badly (MGS 4's Beauty & the Beast Unit or MGS 5's Quiet), at least they're anything but one-dimensional.

In Death Stranding's case, Kojima has taken on a strange naming convention, calling everyone the most obvious thing yet, depending on what they do.

However, by getting names out the way and treating the role of humanity in this desolate world as more cargo, it forces you to focus on everyone's human qualities even more. If nothing else, calling a character "Deadman" or "Die-Hardman" only makes you wonder what else is going on.

And in this regard, every single main character has a ton of original, innovative components making them up.

Without giving too much away, Fragile's body from top to bottom is a subversive comment on how Hideo has framed women in the past. Mama's title and relationship with her child is fascinating, Higgs embodies his name completely, and Heartman's setup could only exist in this strange reality of life and death combining.

You can tell Kojima had a blast conceptualising the world and its characters, and considering how legendary every last one of MGS' heroes and villains are, it's great to see he's done it again.