The Death Stranding books made me realise how much gameplay can impact story

As you may have seen earlier this week, I spent much of my downtime this month reading the official novelisation of Hideo Kojima's courier hiking sim Death Stranding. It was quite a strange experience, if only because so much of what I loved about the game wasn't present in the novels at all. The landscape you spend so much time analysing and assessing in Death Stranding is barely mentioned over the course of the books, and even the deadly BTs get surprisingly little air time for how often they seem to get in your way. But the strangest thing of all was how it depicted Sam's relationship with his jar baby BB, and it made me realise that all the weird, extraneous mess in its overall design is actually pretty darn important when it comes to establishing some of its later story reveals. I love a good game story as much as the next person, but when it's not supported by gameplay, something definitely comes a cropper.