Effect of Choices on the status of NPCs
Yesterday, a report was shared on a reddit thread in which Kojima sat down to give us some insights on the world of Death Stranding. In his presentation, Kojima explained the player’s relationship with NPCs and with other players. He mentioned that, while traveling, the choices that the player makes will have an effect on the lives of NPCs. These statements were made on October 4th at the Garge Museum of Modern Art in Moscow.
The theme
Kojima talked about the relationship between the player and the NPCs. The game largely deals with reconstructing and removing divisions at a macro level. However, in order to achieve this large scale goal, the player has to work on smaller goals first. Kojima followed with an example:
We have a character who lives deep underground. He is sick and needs medicine, and Sam can deliver it. Since this happens at the beginning of the story, this is a must. After completing this quest, the player himself chooses the following actions: you can constantly go to the old man and carry medicine; can deliver other items; You can listen to his stories from the past.
But the player is constantly moving forward and moving away from the character. And I’m sure that there are gamers who forget about this old man. And then they will remember and return to it. Since they have not carried medicine to him all this time, he will die by this moment. Through such actions, a connection arises with the character.
We really hope that the significance of the connection between people – how it is formed, how it develops – will be revealed, and it will be interesting for you to play it.
There are still plenty of questions left unanswered. For one, it remains to be seen if saving one NPC entails spelling doom for another. Other than that, the topic also failed to point out if the player’s performance affects the game’s ending.
Players play the role of observers
In addition to the player’s relationship with NPCs, Kojima also shared some insights on the connections in Death Stranding. He described the interaction among players and how strands come into play.
Imagine that Katya and I (Ekaterina Inozemtseva, senior curator of the Garage Museum) are sitting in cardboard boxes. And how do we play on the internet? Katya is sitting in her box, I am in my own, and we shoot each other. And there are two ways to go beyond these boundaries: the first is to tear cardboard boxes and hug. But this is difficult, so I decided to go the other way – we tear the boxes, but we can’t see each other.
We can only see traces – this is a connection through an “intermediary”. We see that somewhere another player exists, but we can’t touch him … And Death Stranding actively uses an approach with user interaction through third-party things, but without direct contact.
Several images of the public talk were posted on the productions’ social media account.
Public talk was held at Moscow’s Garage screen, in Garage museum on 10/4. Thank you for all the people that participated.
#garagemuseum #DeathStranding pic.twitter.com/XQ0q5o2lGw— KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS (Eng) (@KojiPro2015_EN) October 4, 2019
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