Cyberpunk 2077 and Death Stranding are two sides of the same coin

After having sunk hundreds of hours combined in them, I have come to the conclusion that Cyberpunk 2077 and Death Stranding (I refer to both 1 and 2 in this article) are two sides of the same coin. While everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and this one might be a contentious or even confounding one, the more I play/replay these wonderful (and at times bizarre) titles, the more I am sure of this stance.

The aforementioned coin is that of the evolution of human society, of course, from where we stand right now to some time in the future. Through both games, their respective developers have painstakingly, in abundant detail, painted not just what the world might look like but also how we as humans would fit and hopefully react in that space.

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Death Stranding and Cyberpunk 2077 tell tall tales of the future of mankind, each in their own tune

We live in a world where, on the one hand, we have the ever-increasing development of AIs driven superficially by somewhat of a technoutopic hope/vision for the near future. How near that future isn't quite sure yet, but the ramifications, both good and bad, of such a push can be felt across different parts of life.

On the other hand, we have the ever-hanging Damocles' Sword of possible ecological disasters stemming from climate change, borne out of mankind's actions. There's plenty of debate from either side regarding how far-reaching such natural consequences will turn out to be, if at all (as some claim). Nevertheless, aberrant climate patterns do seem to be appearing here and there all over the world.

Take that journey through it all - Death Stranding (Image via Sportskeeda Gaming || Kojima Productions)

Detailed discussions on either aren't within the scope of this article. Both have been fertile grounds for works of art to imagine a bleak, dystopic future of humanity, video games being no exception. And, it is this cynosure, the future of mankind, which I posit as the coin of my title.

Death Stranding focuses on the ecological disaster, the phenomenon also known as Death Stranding, and its eventual fallouts on humanity. Be it through Beached Things (a supernatural entity that can cause voidouts when it consumes a living person) or Timefall (a rainfall that quickens the aging of anything it touches), DS's natural world isn't welcoming or accommodating of humans, at large.

In the case of Cyberpunk 2077, we are taken to a future where technology and corporations control almost all aspects of life. The evolution of technology has gotten so far that we are stuck in a hyperreal world where it is increasingly getting impossible to decipher the real and the fiction. Add to that the existence of rogue AIs that are constantly threatening humanity.

Video games set in a dystopic future are nothing new. One can probably even say they come a dime a dozen. With Cyberpunk 2077 and Death Stranding, we have two distinct takes on where humanity may end up in the near future based on how we are faring currently. And neither game tackles their chosen lens of looking at this future with a form of tokenism or superficiality. Rather, the themes are well-embedded, one might say braided, into the fabric of the games' narrative and world.

The people of Night City and Dogtown in Cyberpunk 2077 (Image via Sportskeeda Gaming || CDPR)

If my central argument seems solid now that Cyberpunk 2077 and Death Stranding are two sides of the same coin, I would ask you to engage with both games, not with the mindset of their primary intended goals, but through the lens of how each shows the way humanity fares in the future.

Instead of just focusing on V's struggle against Arasaka and continuing the main story in Cyberpunk 2077, go out and explore the mise en scène. Check out the world-building on the fringes of the gameworld, the dialogue between random NPCs, the side quests that fill you in about the different kinds of people that live in Night City and beyond. Go beyond the video game if you can and read the paratexts comprising Night City's backstory and lore.

The connections you make - Death Stranding (Image via Sportskeeda Gaming || Kojima Productions)

With Death Stranding and its sequel, I would suggest reading the correspondences and pondering the implications of the various ecological anomalies that abound in the gameworld. Think about the human actions in response to such and the metaphors that Hideo Kojima is, or might be, playing with. Cliche as it may sound, think about the long arduous journey you take, why you are taking it (especially during the quirky side quests), and the destinations and the people that await.

In both Cyberpunk 2077 and Death Stranding, you may then find themes that you can delineate and connect to where we stand now in 2025. Then the games are not aberrant, fanciful concepts borne simply out of human imagination, but works of art that carefully looked at the human condition right now and chose the nodes of possibilities they wanted to rupture and ran with it.

The future is nigh? Cyberpunk 2077 (Image via Sportskeeda Gaming || CDPR)

As we all know and can agree, not all video games are merely about goals and narratives. Given that they are cultural products born out of their zeitgeist, it would be limiting oneself if one does not try to see in them more than what the surface offers: heroes, missions, and end goals. I do not ask you to entertain whether either of Cyberpunk 2077's or Death Stranding's reality will come to fruition, but only to exhaustively explore and marvel at their beauty, immersion, and the sense of what-if.