"What does Death Stranding have to say about our online world? Death Stranding isn't about a world connecting, it's about a world that never truly connected. Releasing in 2019, we play as Sam Porter Bridges, a courier tasked with reconnecting Continental America following a catastrophic event that left the remaining population scattered across the continent. The game wants you to believe that you're an everyman reconnecting the remnants of civilization, but in fact, it's the opposite. Through the gameplay, the player painstakingly navigates Sam across the US, navigating rocky mountainous terrain while carrying cargo on his back. Slowly, communities are brought back into contact, their leaders celebrate, their network expands. But contact isn't connection. Each of these populations can now exchange information and goods, but what Sam cannot give them, what the network cannot give them, is presence. The only real relationships in Death Stranding are those that are in person, like BB and Fragile and Hartman. And even then, the walk is still his alone, but the solitude of the journey is as real as the connections he makes in person. Death Stranding puts a mirror to the world and asks, what are we doing when we call ourselves connected? The answer it gives is uncomfortable. The space between us grows every day. We just built better tools to pretend otherwise. So I'll ask you the same question."