So How 'Bout It? Aren't You Getting Tired of the Grind? The Narrative Complexity of Kojima's Death Stranding

This analysis argues that existing scholarship on Hideo Kojima's Death Stranding has overlooked non-player characters, particularly antagonists, as organizing forces in narrative game design. Proposing a hybrid film-and-game analytical framework, it uses the character Higgs Monaghan as a central case study to examine how cinematic cutscenes, interactive gameplay, and character construction work together to produce narrative complexity. The approach situates the game within broader debates on auteurship versus collaborative production and on the convergence of cinematic and ludic storytelling.

The study's method is primarily interpretive and close-reading based, combining cutscene film analysis, gameplay analysis, and Eder's character model. Its findings suggest that Higgs's performative villainy, the gameplay encounters that treat escape as a legitimate form of victory, and symbolic associations with fragility, the Higgs boson metaphor, and the Midas myth converge to reveal the game's wider preoccupations with agency, consequence, and the instability of identity. Antagonist-centred analysis, on this account, offers a productive way to anchor understanding of how the game's narrative and mechanics interrelate.

The argument holds that interdisciplinary film-and-game analysis is necessary for works of this kind, with narration, gameplay, and character design integrated into a single framework and production context treated as a distinct dimension of inquiry. The game's self-reflexive engagement with genre conventions and gaming history, the authors contend, invites interpretation that extends beyond narrative and ludic functions. The framework is positioned as transferable to other narrative-driven titles, with the authors proposing future application to the Metal Gear Solid series and The Last of Us.