It's really easy to make fun of Kojima labeling this game as a new genre, a "strand-type game", but in a way I see what he's trying to get at. It's weird to me that around the time of this game's release so much of the talk around it was "What is this about!?" and the plethora of explainers and overly long videos online. This game hammers you on the head over and over with what it's about: connection. This, I believe, is the core of what makes something a "strand-type game." It's not the long cinematic cutscenes, it's not the even longer stretches of traversing the world, it's connection.

While many of the complaints around this game center around how its gameplay consists primarily of traversing a largely empty landscape, it is this design choice which I think binds the game together with its narrative themes so well. The inhabitants of this world have chosen to isolate themselves from society. Your protagonist, a delivery contractor named Sam Porter-Bridges, likewise lives his life mostly in solitude. It's not an easy life for him, but it's one he's become comfortable in. As much as people say that this game's world is barren, it is not void of obstacles. This is a "walking sim" in a truer sense than most, as the challenge of the game is figuring out how to get from place to place while trying to have the least amount of environmental hinderances in your path. Choosing what gear to bring along with you, and how heavy a load to carry, using what knowledge you have about the path to your destination to inform your decisions.

It is not long into the game however, that the narrative forces Sam to begrudgingly enter into a contract to try to reconnect America. You do so by delivering packages to various locations, some larger key delivery points, but also smaller, single occupancy residential units. By delivering repeatedly to these places, you build interpersonal connections with their residents, as well as convincing them to join the chiral network. Joining the chiral network is a larger form of connection, essentially an internet which allows communication across long distances, but it is also how the game allows you to build structures in those areas, most importantly bridges and highways.

It is not only through these narrative beats however, that the gameplay options open up and reinforce these themes of connection. It is also in the way the game uses its online functionality, to connect you with real world players. Building a highway across America is understandably both the most useful and the most difficult thing in the game, as it's a task which requires vast amounts of resources to achieve. At one point in the game I hadn't realized that it was only in the areas connected to the chiral network which other players could contribute to my structures. This made a couple segments of road incredibly arduous to build, requiring me to make a much larger amount of deliveries and searching harder for the specific resources I needed to build that road. Once I realized my mistake, it obviously became priority to establish connections across the various areas, so that I could receive help from the other players, and we could all contribute our various parts to create a much larger whole, and make this environment which was once harsh to traverse, into a vast connection of structures and characters. One of the most interesting elements of this game's online functionality, and one which I believe is core to the "strand-type game" is the fact that you never actually see any of these players who help you and likewise, they never see you. You can see the name of a person who built a structure, and you can go into the menu and see their profile, and establish connections with specific players if you've noticed them being particularly helpful; but you never see them running around in the world itself, you see merely what they've left behind. It's a design choice that at once prevents the typical hazards of introducing online play into a game: the other players cannot grief you or try to ruin your immersion. But it also instills a sense that none of this mutual aid is being done purely for selfish gain. When you leave a rope behind that you may never use again, you do so with the belief but not necessarily the knowledge that maybe at some time, it may help another player along the same path. When you establish the chiral connection you do so in the knowledge that you'll receive a benefit from it, but also that you will be benefitting others along their way. The connections we build form a vast web that branches out into many directions and go further than we'll ever be able to see, but we know they have an effect nevertheless.

The game does stumble in places though. My biggest critique would be that, either due to lack of imagination, or wide appeal as a AAA game, the game can't have any biting commentary on what connections would be helpful. It's all this vague idea that "uniting America" and "bringing people together again" is the most important thing. But that could be interpreted as some really milquetoast liberal rhetorical speech like Die Hardman gives, or it could be interpreted as restructuring society, but I think you have to bring your own beliefs to the latter, the game won't put them there. In its apprehension to make a more radical statement, it loses a potentially stronger message. Also, Kojima's obsessions with brands and celebrity are very present in this game which, coupled with the the fetishistic way this game talks about America, cast doubt on a more potentially radical message that this game could have.

There are people in bunkers in the game who actually give critiques of past-America but then they join the UCA because "maybe this time we'll be more connected and better off." But it's never stated how exactly things will fundamentally change. It strikes me in the same way as when liberals talk about how "Trump has divided us." But like, no dude, there were many systems in place already dividing us, and I'm not sure this game knows that. It just gestures at a vague "help each other" which every player can neatly fit into their own worldview.

Overall I liked the game, but I'd like to see the same ideas tackled by someone willing to be more radical with it. As pretentious as labeling your own game as a new genre that is named after said game is, I'd like to see more games that use this core idea of exploring connection through mechanics come about. In a medium filled with ample depictions of competition and struggle, this game's clever design choices bring refreshing new options to the medium.

Side note: I think Kojima might hate women a little bit. And wtf was that part where you rescue Amelie and Fragile is like "Oh I see u don't need me anymore!" Like was there supposed to be an implied romance all of a sudden!?