Death Stranding
Once upon a time, games with new ideas felt pretty commonplace. Many of them were bad ideas, or ideas that were poorly implemented, but at least designers were constantly trying out new things. Then, as design principles for shooters, open-world games, and other genres became more refined and more widely embraced, it became rarer and rarer to encounter big-budget games that really felt like they were rolling the dice on bold, untested ideas. Leave it to Hideo Kojima, though, to take just that kind of big swing with Death Stranding, an extraordinary game with ideas that I expect we’ll see other developers riffing on for years to come.
By that, I don’t mean that I think we’ll see a slew of cargo-carrying simulators, or numerous games in which you fight giant whales made of goo. I mean that I think we’ll see games that embrace Death Stranding’s asynchronous approach to cooperation, making you feel like part of a larger network of players who are all building infrastructure to help each other. Heck, even leaving a standee to revive other players in Super Mario Bros. Wonder feels like an echo of putting down a well-placed ladder or rope in Death Stranding. I’m excited to see how games of the future follow Death Stranding’s lead and explore new ways for us to build a better world, together. — Carolyn Petit, Managing Editor
