I can’t remember the last time I had such mixed feelings about a gaming experience as I have had with Death Stranding: Director’s Cut. It’s an awesome game by almost any measure, to be sure — that’s undeniable. But I still struggled to stay engaged at times and found myself pretty worn out the further I got. I was aware of the original release, and my great friend loves the game to this day, and I completely respect and get that. You should also read his review from 2019 as a supplement to this article. As for me, I’m new to the game — I have had Death Stranding (DS) in my backlog but intentionally held off because I was pretty sure the game would get a second life on PS5, given how close it was released to the launch of the PS5 itself. Turns out that has come true, and has taken form the form of Mr. Kojima’s Director’s Cut. This release represents far more than a port — the differences with the Director’s Cut (DC) span just about every aspect of the game, from graphics to story to gameplay elements, and they’re are woven in seamlessly.
What about those that bought and have the game on PS4? Well, good news — you can upgrade for just $10, and even import your savegame. I also read that by importing your savegame, you will unlock all of the Trophies in the DC that you earned on PS4 (but, I can’t confirm this as I started fresh). Being able to import your savegame has the obvious benefit of getting to experience the DC without having to start from scratch, but, if it’s been a couple of years you may be so inclined and well-advised to start fresh anyway, given how the new content is peppered into the game. Oh, and for those that are getting the game for the first time? The price of admission for this AAA first party title is $50 as opposed to the new normal of $70. Bravo, Sony.
All that aside, let’s take a look at what the DC brings to the table. There has already been so much written and long-plays done of the original 2019 release, and most of that is unchanged in the DC. So rather than re-treading the ground that all of those folks have already provided, our own Nathan Stevens included as linked above, I’ll talk about some of the specific changes in DC, as well as my personal experiences with the game to this point afterwards.
So first, and most obviously, the game looks, loads, and plays better on PS5. DS was already one of the best looking games on PS4, but now that mantle can be transferred to the PS5. Visually, DS DC thoroughly impresses. Players have two modes to choose from, Performance and Fidelity modes. I chose the latter, knowing enough about this game ahead of time to assume that closing in on 60fps wasn’t super necessary and that the art was interesting enough to want to reap the max quality. In other words, I’ll sacrifice some frames sometimes for better visuals all the time. The visual package was not disappointing at all, thanks to high res approaching 4K, great frame rates, and HDR. Of note, though I didn’t test this, the DC also supports 21:9 ratio for ultra-wide use, which might get more fanfare and practical use in the probable future PC release.
The audio also received a pretty nice upgrade, but I wasn’t able to test this due to not having compatible headphones. If your headphones support the PS5’s Tempest 3D AudioTech, the sound effects of Sam trudging through snow and your Odradek scanning and chirping are sure to sound that much more immersive. Speaking of immersion, there’s nothing like a long load time to take you out of the zone, so it’s certainly good then that load times are logically improved, to the point of being sub ten seconds. Lastly, as far as technical-side changes and improvements with the DC, we have full featured DualSense controller support, giving players a variety of haptic feedback and sensations to help draw you into the harsh world that Sam Bridges must traverse. Early on in the game, and indeed through much of the whole experience, I spent a significant amount of time holding down both L2 and R2 to help keep Sam’s balance as I crossed streams and negotiated steep and craggy terrain. The feedback you get from the adaptive triggers made a positive difference.
Most would probably agree that the early going in DS is tough, and it’s meant to be. The story, protagonist, and overall atmosphere and outlook of the game world is meant to be grim and intimidating, making the triumphs along the way all the more rewarding. The DC takes the opportunity to introduce several gameplay elements fairly early on that help players to not only have a less tedious start, but also some welcomed relief throughout the game. These aids take several forms, from a new ‘stun gun’ called the Maser gun which will allow Sam to disable MULEs at a distance rather than having to sneak right up to them. This gun, as well as the other anti-BT and MULE weapons that you get during the course of the story, can be tested out in the new shooting range. This area can be accessed from any terminal and it allows you to practice wielding your weapons and also take on some virtual missions that have online leaderboards if you’re into that. There’s also an optional race track you can build and race vehicles upon, but, I found this more of an uninteresting distraction than anything particularly fun or useful.
Fragile Jump is now more intuitive to use as it allows you to select your destination by map rather than by name, which is really helpful given how a lot of the area names overlap and are a bit confusing anyway. Being able to fast travel between points you have connected up to the Chiral network after you’re about six or eight hours in is a big help in making playtime more efficient. On the whole, it seems a concerted effort was made in the DC to be more respectful of player’s time and patience because other additions like the Support Skeleton, Buddy Bot, and Cargo Catapult all help with getting the seemingly endless amount of supplies from A to B. It’s especially satisfying to load up a bunch of cargo — be it resin, magazines, discs, medical supplies, what have you, on a catapult and launch these several hundred kilometers closer to point B where you’re trying to get them to. Most of the time this won’t launch them quite far enough to get to B, but if it saves you the trouble of having to traverse a steep mountain or work-around a MULE base, it’s a win. Having to control their parachute landing is a neat touch, too.
Two other new mechanisms Sam will have at his disposal (eventually as you get to them in the story), are Jump Ramps and Chiral Bridges. As the name suggests, the Jump Ramps allow you to fly over gaps between mountain tops (for example) with a vehicle — you can also perform tricks while you jump for extra kicks. Chiral Bridges are essentially smart bridges that you can deploy and go across, but they’re unique to just Sam, so you don’t have to worry about MULEs using those paths to chase you.
Then you also have a new area known as The Factory that has three missions relating to it. As far as I can tell this structure and its missions are the source of the biggest story additions that you’ll find in the DC. These additional missions are not all available at once, and they give you the chance to learn more about some of the key characters. As you may have saw in previously released material, the Factory is sort of a hat-tip to Kojima’s most popular franchise in that there is a lot of tactical espionage action available here, if you get my meaning.
So, clearly the DC is more than just a facelift upgrade for PS5. While you certainly get an impressive presentation boost with the graphical, aural, and load time enhancements, I think most of the appeal to the DC has to be in the seamlessly integrated changes to the gameplay. Most gripes about the original game stemmed from the doldrum task of transporting goods from A to B repeatedly, and dealing with Sam’s inclination to lose his balance and stumble about as you’re carrying cargo. As I played this game in preparation for review, I readily admit that I, too, struggled with the gameplay loop that had me transporting boxes from A to B with a few frustrating design decisions along the way. As I stumbled about to cross yet another river or hill, I wondered how a society so technologically advanced, yet so dependent on moving about goods, and yet so afraid and unable to go outdoors (due to Timefall and BTs) had not yet created drones or robots that could do the deliveries for them. Instead, the backbone of the scattered remnants of the former United States relies an awful lot on some random delivery folk, porters, that are, for whatever their reason might be, willing to traverse the space between facilities and risk their necks in the process.
Anyway, I get that it’s a videogame, and maybe the drone/robot idea isn’t fair to dwell on, but at the end of the day, players are asked to spend a tremendous amount of time in (potential, depending on your taste and tolerance) tedium as they lug goods from one area to another over a very lengthy amount of time. The changes introduced in the DC help, but even with those, I found myself reaching a point of increasing resistance to wanting to play. Now you see at first, I found the game in all ways to be strangely compelling, mysterious, and interesting — but after the first about ten hours, I became almost stressed at the idea of having to do this for 35, 40, or 50+ hours. I appreciate that new gameplay mechanics (especially in this DC) are dropped in at intervals that help keep you going forward, but I still couldn’t help feel a sense of diminishing returns. And this was despite a story with several interesting characters (though, I never grew very attached to Sam himself, he just came off as too gruff and crass — he eventually shows some more dimension) and a lot of wild sci-fi ideas that were cool even if a little tongue-in-cheek. The DC, by the way, includes additional dialog and lore-filling content from what I have read by the way (having not played the first, I’m not totally sure). I think that’s great, but at times I was feeling maybe a bit like Sam where I was getting a little fatigued from all of the explanations the NPCs talk you through.
I have a few other minor gripes I made note of as I played that I’ll bring up here. As I have aged, I have come to dislike foul language in the media I consume more and more. To that end, I wish games would start to filter language as much as they’re willing to filter violence, for example. You know, you often find an option in a game to reduce the blood and/or gore level. Personally, I’d be interested in a language filter, too, not just for me, but especially for those family or friends that might be around when I’m playing. I find myself less connected to a game, characters especially, when they lean on bad language for effect (not to mention harder to make time to play it when family or friends are around that I don’t want to subject to that). I have this very problem with Deathloop. To me, when used unwisely (which, is most use cases), foul or bad language cheapens a character(s) and makes them less likable and less relatable. I had that problem with Sam Porter Bridges.
Secondly, the menus are pretty cluttered and messy. Tabs and hold-to-activate button presses and extra graphical elements just made the menus less efficient and not as user friendly as I would have expected. It’s one of those things that you get used to and move on with as you play, but it was bad enough that I considered it noteworthy. Similarly, the ladders in the game seemed a bit strange to me as someone who has worked a lot on ladders in the past. There was once an area pretty early on where I wanted to use a ladder to go up a relatively small grade — if it were real life, it might have been a ten or twelve foot elevation change. My ladder, though, shot right on past this and went some twenty feet above what I was trying to get to, and I couldn’t apparently adjust this to the right height, nor step off at the spot that I wanted to — I just thought that was strange and a bit of an oversight. Also, when using a ladder, regardless of how much and how well balanced your cargo is, did not seem to detract any of Sam’s stamina, but in real life it makes a huge difference. Again, this is probably just me nit-picking, but I thought I’d mention this possible oversight in the game’s design.
So, where am I going with all of this? It’s ultimately pretty simple — if you enjoyed Death Stranding the first time around, or never got around to playing it (as was my case), the Director’s Cut is obviously the best way to play it. It’s still as divisive as a game as ever, though, and you’re probably either going to love it or loathe it. Or, maybe you’ll end up in between, as I have. You see, despite the awesome presentation — innovative and unique ideas, including the return of the asymmetric online social strand system — cool story and characters — and all around AAA production quality — my growing weariness of the core gameplay loop left me feeling unbalanced and at odds with myself. As much as I wanted to discover the plot twists and all the stories within the story, and see if Sam completes his mission, and what happens with BB, and all of that — the idea and execution of burning so many hours essentially hauling cargo became an increasingly steep order to fill. I got to a point where I was not enjoying playing Death Stranding, but I was enjoying watching Death Stranding to see what happened. For me, it would have been better, probably, if the game were much shorter, because I got to where I wanted to experience the story without having to deal with the gameplay. I rarely find myself in that situation! Even still, I recognize the sheer quality and accomplishment Death Stranding is, and the value the Director’s Cut offers, so I find myself still recommending this game. If you are at all curious, you owe it to yourself to try it out, and odds are, you’re going to enjoy it more than not.
###
