Learning to Quit Things
If you’re anything like me, quitting something can be a confusing mixture of cathartic relief and horrified guilt. How dare I quit a thing? Am I a quitter? A quitter of things!? Doesn’t everyone know that quitters are bad people and never succeed in life?! Thanks Anglo-protestant capitalistic mindset.
However, we logically know that quitting can be beneficial to us as people. Not a good match with your partner or friend? Choosing to end the relationship frees you both up to find others that are a better match for your time and energy. Don’t like your job? Choosing to quit can help you find work that fits with your needs and strengths. I’m not saying there are no downsides to quitting, but that is not the topic of this particular post. In fact, as someone who is much more likely to refuse to quit something I should let go, I actively avoid articles that talk about hte downsides of a quitter mindset. It’s not the message I need to hear.
In today’s post, I will specifically talk about my decision to not finish the video game Death Stranding and why I chose to do so. I’ve decided not to put this into the Gamer’s Guide category simply because I don’t feel that it’s fair to review a game I haven’t finished.
Main Reason I Chose Not to Continue
Horror - The number one reason I decided not to continue Death Stranding was its horror/scare elements. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the horror genre. I really like Rachel Caine’s Stillhouse Lake books, Lily Morton’s Black & Blue series, and games such as the Dishonored and Plague Tale series (both of which feature rats, hmm). I also like watching Creature Horror movies, especially when I’m alone in the house...Anyway, my point is that I have quite a bit of experience in the horror genre, but I’ve learned I can only handle certain types at levels of it. Death Stranding just had too much, too often for me to handle. Kudos to the developers for making a game that gives me erratic heartbeats though!
Things That Were Just Plain Weird
The Map – As the player character Sam, you’re supposed to help connect different cities of the US together via a chiral network. (Basically like creepy WiFi). There’s a map that your character can view which shows the cities you’ve connected and far you need to go. However, it is laughably not to scale. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a complaint about amount of map give nto the player in each section. It did not feel small at all, especially given the fact that you’re traversing much of the terrain on foot. But the supposed distance you travel to connect cities, did not have any sort of relation to the physical scale of the US. If they’d had a ‘loading’ screen between sections, I could reasonably expect to say they’d skipped large sections, right? But there was no loading for about 1/3rd of the supposed US. I know, I know, this is a weird hill to die on, but it was just so off-scale it bothered me, fiends.
Weird Sexual Connotations – Fiends, I don’t know if I’m the only one who felt this way, but all the women my player character interacted with felt really...weird. There is a scene where Sam’s mother figure is dying. She crawls out of her sick bed and on top of him in what was animated in a really weird, sexual way. Either the developers were going for horror and missed the mark or I just wasn’t getting what they were trying to communicate because it was weeeeeeird.
Nudity – This may very well be a CJ hangup, but there were soooooo many built-in nude moments. In order to get samples from Sam, you need to use the shower or toilet. I did not try the later, but the shower cutscene (which is unskippable) is pretty detailed. I think it would have been easier to deal with if I didn’t know that Sam was based off Norman Reedus. I’m certain he gave the green light for all of this, but knowing it was based off a real, live person made me feel like a voyeur each and every time I was required to use that particular facility. Just...ick.
Isolation – Another pet peeve of mine. I know that isolation actually alters the human brain and how it’s not good for us. I ain’t arguing with that. But the focus on how “humans are no longer connected” and “we need to connect to survive” was just strange to me. After living alone for 2 years during the pandemic, it just made me look down on these characters. You all can’t handle living in a large facility with 1,000s of other humans? You feel isolated? Like...what? Human up, kiddos.
Closing Comments
There were plenty of things I liked about Death Stranding. The creatures were delightfully intriguing and the horror set-up was really well done. Especially when Sam is near a creature and the Odradek starts blinking rapidly to show where the BTs are, and you have to hold your breath because of how close you’ve come. I couldn’t handle the resulting tension, but the ambience and the directing was really spot-on. The technology and how it was worked into human lives and the general story-line was also well-done.
I also really liked the motion capture performances of the human cast for Death Stranding. Mads Mikkelsen’s performances were so intriguing, and strung out into tantalizing bites, that I may google the plot line just to see how it all fit together. I appreciated Norman Reedus’s performances, too, but as I said above, the fact that he was a real person really yanked me back into reality a bit too much for my taste.
The delivery system was also very creatively made! Figuring out how to efficiently carry, track, and traverse the game with cargo was definitely right up my alley. I, too, could become a game MULE addicted to carrying people’s packages around in the most efficient manner possible. (I’m an organizer for a reason, fiends.)
But at the end of the day, I only have so many hours to dedicate to entertainment. If I’m avoiding or having heart palpitations as I’m doing my “fun thing”, then it’s completely within my rights to decide not to pursue that particular entertainment to the end. Life is too short to force myself to finish just for some completionist ideal or a sense of guilt from my culture. My mantra goes a little something like this: Quitting is evidence that I’ve made the effort to try something new.
To a future of more trying and quitting, fiends!