Equipment and cloth rendering is also first class, with a consistent level of detail right down to every buckle, strap and piece of fabric. So much work has been poured into every inch of every model and it's almost unbelievable to see this much detail - even in an era where most games already feature highly detailed characters. Put simply, the bar has been raised. Death Stranding also features a layering system for dirt, grime and rust: Sam becomes increasingly dirty during gameplay and the real-time nature of the cutscenes ensures that this muck remains visible until you hop in the shower for the inevitable Norman Reedus shower sequence. Yes, there's a lot of walking in Death Stranding, but even this has been approached in a unique fashion with a complex animation system designed to simulate weight and movement across a rocky surface. As you run, Sam plants his feet according to the terrain type and incline. When hiking up or down a steep hill, he shifts his weight into the slope realistically.
And this bring us to the execution of traversal in general, which I feel is handled in an interesting way. In most open world games, you spend a lot of time moving from point A to point B, but doing so requires little effort from the player - it's usually a matter of just holding forward towards a waypoint. In Death Stranding, negotiating the terrain itself is a key challenge and carrying extra cargo increases that challenge still further. There's actual momentum to the movement - when you're weighed down, you can't just stop on a dime, especially on a steep hill. It's all about the management of speed, balance and positioning: this makes the act of hiking through the world more complex and engaging and the quality of the animation really helps sell this.
