This is an opinion I posted on Death Stranding reddit about the game - thought I might as well post it on my website

I wanted to hear more opinions on the ending (this is actually the first time I´'m doing this for any game I've played, such was the impact the game had on me). Obviously, spoilers ahead.

This is one of my wife's favourite game, so I thought on giving it another chance (I churned from the game on the first time I've played a bit before delivering the bomb to South Knot). Have in mind that I'm actually a fan of Kojima, having played all Metal Gears and such - I just thought the game wasn't for me. But reaching the end game, I thought the story was becoming just insufferable to me.

Quoting myself talking to my wife, before the last 10 minutes of the game: "Kojima actually managed to make me NOT want to play Death Stranding 2."

After the last 10 minutes (the last delivery), and after recomposing myself from bawling my eyes out: "ok shit what a masterpiece, I'll play Death Stranding 2."

I thought for quite a bit about my feelings on the game, and the main problem for me was the whole Extinction Entity thing. It felt like a piece of the puzzle that didn't quite fit into the entire picture of the importance on connecting with other people. Kojima has this way of creating stories in which every character revolves around the concepts he wants to talk about in his games, and that's part of the charm of his games, corniness and all (with the exception of Princess Beach, that one made me actually angry). But I couldn't feel how EE's fit into the whole picture besides working like a glue for character motivation - and even so, I feel that character motivation could work without EE's. The whole setting could pretty much work without talking about EE's at all even, and I think it's a Kojima problem of verbalizing explanations about absolutely everything. The Death Stranding borrows some things from cosmic horror, but a very important concept of cosmic horror is the horror of not understanding the beyond - you are not scared because you know what is going to happen, you are scared because you are not allowed to understand. And EE's explanation of the whole thing is just lackluster because there is no character agency on the extinction event besides trying to work around it as a natural phenomenon (so I don't actually care about Amelie as a character), and creates more questions that doesn't matter for what is really important on the story.

But the whole part of connecting with other people, and SPECIALLY the end - I got completely by surprise with the Lou/Sam memories plot twist. This one made everything worthwhile, and it actually made me want to play the game again so I can understand the gaps the story creates the first time you play.