Things Going Wrong

I had a plan in Death Stranding 2. I cleared out a bandit camp then left my truck there while I ran a couple errands nearby. While on those errands I was informed that my truck had been stolen. This threw a wrench in my plans, but nothing insurmountable. So I finished up that errand (picking up some cargo) and headed back to the camp to liberate my truck — Grabby, so named for the pair of sticky cannons mounted on it that grab dropped cargo for me. I approached the camp, slowly knocking out the bandits that had so rudely taken my truck. Before I headed in too deep, though, I took off my backpack so as not to risk harming the fragile (and explosive) cargo I was carrying. It didn’t take too long and I got Grabby back — only to be informed that someone was running off with my backpack. Now I had to go and get that back. 

So much for that plan.

This is one of the (many) things I love about Death Stranding 2: That capacity for things to go wrong. Maybe I didn’t clock that one ghostly BT while sneaking around, maybe I’m one ladder short to climb that cliff, maybe the emu I’ve kidnapped rescued makes too much cargo to carry. Time and time again I find myself having to adapt on the fly as some new wrinkle throws whatever vague semblance of a plan I had out the window. There’s a lot of fun to be had in solving the new problems and figuring out what to do now that something I hadn’t planned for has occurred.

Vitally, in Death Stranding 2, things going wrong is most always my own fault. Maybe if I’d taken things slower I would have seen that BT, I probably should have packed an extra ladder or three, I don’t actually need to kidnap rescue every emu I see. It’s the consequences of my actions and now I gotta deal with them. That unpredictability is fun and goes a long way to keeping the game from being monotonous — something can (and will) go wrong, so get ready. After all, it wouldn’t be much fun if everything went according to plan and you were just playing mindlessly without nary a thought.

Things Going Wrong is also something I love about tabletop RPGs. A party’s plan can be excellent but one bad dice roll and now players have to think on their feet and find a new solution. A good Game Master in turn reacts to the changing plans and rewards ingenuity — while of course still leaving room for more things to go wrong and new plans to emerge. The textures and turns of the adventure arise organically. That’s the other part about a game like Death Stranding 2 that makes things going wrong fun: there are many ways to solve whatever problem you find yourself facing. You’re not stuck or in a fail state, you’re in for a new sort of adventure.

Around a year ago, I found myself spending six hours in Copenhagen due to travel complications. On the one hand, I was supposed to be in Milan that afternoon. On the other, I now got to traipse around Copenhagen for a while. It feels pseudo-philosophical and self-aggrandizing to apply a video game framework to inconveniences in real life, but I think there is value in being open to changing plans and having a flexible outlook. Things don’t always go right; the best laid schemes of mice and men go oft awry. Maybe games (video or tabletop) that let you practice adapting to unexpected challenges is good practice for doing the same in real life. Making the most of a situation gone sideways (rather than save-scumming / moping around the airport) is probably a healthy way to go about things. Things Going Wrong is a part of life and part of life, like a good video game, is figuring out the best response. And hey, sometimes that can be fun.