Death Stranding Review: 9 Ups & 3 Downs

3. A Phenomenally Original World

Like the characters and themes that are explored in cutscenes or in-game character "Interviews" you can read at your leisure, the overall world of Death Stranding has a ruleset and level of depth all its own.

Things like whenever it rains, the droplets that hit accelerate cellular degeneration, meaning skin ages or items pass through time faster through contact alone. The existence of small, alien-like "Cryptobiotes" that restore health and have something to do with the phenomena of a crater-filled world.

Ghosts, demons, babies that can see the dead - even the Death Stranding itself, which mostly exists as a mystery, has thrown the idea of life and death as we know it completely out of whack.

Kojima has clearly sat down and thought of an entirely original world, with terminologies and rules that make sense within themselves, and it's a joy to take in.