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A core gameplay mechanic of Death Stranding involves building structures to improve your ability to traverse the game’s harsh environments. Death Stranding allows players to construct electric powered vehicles, bridges, shelters, and various other tools to help you beat its nearly 50-hour campaign. Besides explicit actions taken by players to shape the game’s terrain and speed up traversal, it turns out that players can influence the terrain of Death Stranding in less intentional ways.

I recently sat down with Weeabuds co-editor Micheal Willis and talked about Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding for our Weeabuds’ 2019 Holiday Podcast. We had been playing Death Stranding just before the podcast and noticed something strange about the landscape between our two save files.

At some point back I recalled hearing about an in-game mechanic I previously didn’t believe existed: as players traverse Death Stranding’s environment the surrounding terrain will breakdown or erode. This erosion is not just manifested as footprints, entire pathways are formed. To verify this effect Micheal and I compared screenshots of areas in our respective save files and realized this is a legitimate in-game mechanic.

Some examples of changes between our own save files included unique visible paths, the presence or absence of grass, boulders, and rocky ground. While these changes seem to have very minor impact on how the game is played, it just goes to show how much attention was put into the game systems. It’s unlikely these changes over time result in erosion of large hills or rivers but the realization that even the ground you walk on changes over time is a cool one.

Showing a rock and grass to the left of one Sam, but not the other…

Much of what makes Death Stranding work so well is its more understated elements. While there may be some distinct differences between Death Stranding and the real-life logistics challenges of our future, the game was described in our Holiday Podcast as Weeabud’s Game of the Year 2019 for reasons like this understated feature.

For more examples of player terrain differences check out these screenshots below:

Leaving Capital Knot City the paths and various rock arrangements are different

In front of the Craftsman, various rock, grass and path differences

Death Stranding is out now for PS4 and out for PC this Summer.

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