Critical analysis reveals themes of eco-trauma and environmental grief in Death Stranding's mechanics, highlighting tensions between nature as victim and antagonist.
Key Points
To examine how Death Stranding uses traversal mechanics and narrative resources to evoke environmental grief and eco-trauma amid the context of the Sixth Great Extinction.
Textual and mechanical analysis of Hideo Kojima's video game Death Stranding.
Application of theoretical frameworks centered on eco-trauma and collective environmental mourning.
The core gameplay of arduous overland traversal creates sustained opportunities for players to contemplate ecological loss while simultaneously casting the landscape as an adversary.
The game's reliance on chiralium—a thematic analog to fossil fuels—forces players into technological expansion that directly conflicts with the ecological mourning suggested by the ruined environment.
Player agency is constrained such that refusal to participate in the resource-driven network expansion can only be achieved by quitting the game entirely.