You’re not meant to feel an emotional attachment to your BB, a digital recreation of Guillermo del Toro tells me. They’re tools, ripped prematurely from their mothers' wombs in order to help you survive the horrors of this post-apocalyptic world.
She’s called Lou.
Through flashbacks, soothing her cries, and his constant proximity to Lou, Sam Porter Bridges begins to care for his BB like she’s his own child. In a way, she is. Looking after her is an act of self-preservation, sure, but reassuring her with gentle rocks to and fro makes it impossible to not fall in love with the jarred foetus. This little yellow capsule contains a human life. A beautiful, fragile, human life.
I, Sam Porter Bridges, tiptoe along the edge of a cliff, peering over the precarious edge, triggering my vertigo. I, Sam, grip the left strap of my overburdened backpack to not slip and fall. I, Sam, crouch to maintain balance, and so that the horrifying ghosts known as BTs don’t detect me. I, Sam, creep past, taking each step as quickly and carefully as the terrain and my terrified calves allow. The baby strapped to my chest starts to cry, a warning that the ethereal beings are encroaching on our position. I put my hand over my mouth, which usually soothes the baby’s cry until we can reach a precious bastion of safety.
The cries persist.
Confused, I, Ben, hit pause. Lou is fine, I realise. The real baby on my real chest is awake.
Parallel Play
I’m playingDeath Strandingwith my newborn son in my arms. Born just days before, he is cradled in the crook of my elbow as I clumsily hold a controller while I attempt to rock him back to sleep. It adds a complication to Sam’s arduous journey over the vertiginous terrain of post-apocalyptic America, but a complication with surprising parallels to the game itself. I have to pause often. To reassure him, to soothe him. To shift my weight so my arms stop aching. I am Sam Porter Bridges. Sam Porter Bridges is me.
Sam, too, is trying to balance a precarious load. Admittedly his task is more treacherous than my own, but I feel an affinity towards him. I swap my son to my other arm. Sam braces his weight against his backpack to counterbalance an awkward incline. I hit pause to walk my son around and soothe his cries. Sam stops to avoid detection by Mules or, worse, BTs. Our circumstances are different, our actions the same.
In my breaks from soothing my own child, I soothe Sam’s adopted foetus. I look at her floating face and think of my son. Sam Porter Bridges straps her to his chest again, and I, Ben, look down at my own chest. A baby lies there, too. My baby. He sleeps calmly, comfortably. A human hot water bottle, a physical and emotional weight pinning me to the sofa I sit on, the sofa on which he was born. I, Ben, feel blissful, content. I hope Sam can find the same peace.
A Singular Experience
I, Sam, carry oxytocin to a client. I, Ben, remember encouraging production of that very same hormone on this very same sofa in order to ease the birth of my son not a week before. It doesn’t come in a vial in real life, but I suppose you need all the help you’re able to get when you’re trying to find hope in the post-apocalypse.
Death Stranding means something different to everyone who plays it. Some willenter a volatile relationship with the American landscape. Some will cherish the moments of connection. Others will see the chthonic influences and dwell on the innate terror of the unknowable beyond. I, Ben, see it as a parenting simulator.
I, Ben, see parenthood as a singular, unique, life-changing experience. It’s not necessarily a positiveexperience, it’s not something that everybody needsto do, it doesn’t make you a better person. But it’s incomparable to any other life experience I’ve had. Until now.
Playing Death Stranding is the closest experience I’ve had to having children. It’s not just the crying and subsequent soothing, it’s not even the references to birth hormones. It’s not even juggling your daily responsibilities with the constant need to care for a tiny person. It’s the connection. Between Sam and Lou. Between me and my son. That constant, physical sensation of being close to your child 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
I, Sam Porter Bridges, carry a teetering tower of freight on my back, on my legs, on my arms. But my most important cargo is strapped to my chest. I, Ben, have the same cargo strapped to mine. Skin to skin, held in place by gravity and friction, his sweat mixing with mine. He is a part of me. Thanks to this singular experience of playing with a week-old child sleeping on my chest, Death Stranding will always be a part of me, too.
