There's only a handful of Christmas-themed video games, but there are even fewer New Year's games. In fact, outside of a few seasonal events, there may not technically be any gꦅames that take place on or c✃enter around the start of a new year.
It's no wonder why the Christmas holiday overshadows New Year's, but there’s a lot of rich themes to explore when it comes to New Year's too - though they may not be the ones that first come to mind. For many, the new year is a personal reset button; a way to evaluate the year before, set new goals, or change directions for the year ahead. This couldn't be more wrong.
If you spent your whole life passively absorbing the New Year's propaganda from Planet Fitness designed to sell gym memberships, you probably think New Year's is about new beginnings. Most think it's an opportunity to reinvent yourself and become a better person - a person with a six-pack that speaks a little Japanese.
Death Stranding Captures The Lonelineꦦss Of The Road Like Nothing Else
Death Stranding is one of the few post-ap𒀰ocalyptic games to capture The Road's unique feeling of isolation.
But New Year's isn't about looking ahead to another year, it's about letting go of all the crap that happened to you in the year before. New Year's is a celebration of human endurance, a mile marker on a long, grueling journey that only gets harder the longer it goes on. It's about reminding us that, no matter what you've been through, the only choice you have is to keep moving forward. If there was ever a game that represented what New Year's is really about, it's Death Stranding.
The world of Death Stranding, much like our own, is strange, hostile, and utterly inscrutable. There's a lot going on, none of it makes any sense, and most of it is none of our business anyway. The character you play, Sam Porter Bridges, is a simple man with an important responsibility: he has to walk super far carrying really heavy stuff, and if he doesn't do it, then his failing society will crumble even further. There's a lot of reasons for this - some geopolitical, some metaphysical, some interpersonal - but whether you or Sam understand them or not, it doesn't change the fact that there's a job to be done. No matter what nonsense is happening in the world around you, your only choice is to keep moving forward.
Sam isn't the personification of tenacity, but he's a person with a history too. In the prelude - the story’s ‘last year’, if you will - Sam has to deal with a lot of terrible things. He’s attacked by BTs and watches a fellow porter die. He discovers his mother is alive, that she's the president, and that she's about to die. Before she does, she forges a job contract between him and the UCA, then she dies on top of him and Sam is forced to carry her body up a mountain to be incinerated. After all of that, Death Stranding begins. Sam has no choice but to reinvent himself. New Year's resolution: become the savior of America.
When you look at Death Stranding through this lens, you find a lot to admire about Sam. He's constantly surrounded by danger, suffering, and the bizarre machinations of Hideo Kojima’s mind. His associates are dudes in metal masks with names like Die-Hardman, and he’s psychically linked to a baby that will never be born. None of it makes any sense. You would be consumed by madness if you tried to make sense of it all. So Sam doesn't try, he just keeps it moving.
He's not disinterested or robotic; he just focuses on the things he can control and doesn't worry about the things he can't. Despite all the madness in the world, his role in it is incredibly simple: pick up this container, carry it over this mountain, and deliver it to the customer. This is the best way to experience Death Stranding, too. Absorb all the things going on around you, but just focus on what you have to do next. When you hit a wall, find a new path. When stuff breaks, fix it. When phantoms from another dimension threaten you under a blanket of time-warping rainfall, throw a jar of your own piss at them. Keep it simple, keep it moving.
Death Stranding is the perfect game to play during New Year's. It is not going to help you stick to your lofty resolutions - nothing can help you with that, other than quitting before you disappoint yourself. Rather, Sam's journey serves as a reminder that life is about taking hits, suffering traumas, and listening to a cacophony of confusing nonsense from the ether. You'll never unburden yourself from all that weight - in fact, life will demand that you just keep adding more to the load. But you get stronger, you gain more tools to help you carry it, and hopefully, you harness all that hardship to do some good for the world.
As we roll into 2024, don't worry about what you're going to do or who you're going to be. Just think about all the weird crap you had to deal with throughout 2023, and take the next step forward.
