Death Stranding’s Cliff Symbolizes Metal Gear Passing The Torch
When Hideo Kojima created Death Stranding the auteur game director stepped out of the shadow of the Metal Gear Solid franchise, and the character of Clifford Unger symbolized Solid Snake passing the torch to Sam Porter Bridges. Death Stranding is a game that is rife with themes and symbolism that are hard to miss. As Sam travels across the post-apocalyptic wasteland of America he is repeatedly told to reconnect the nation through the spread of the chiral network, an obvious metaphor for battling the polarization that separates many people in the USA, and elsewhere. With Cliff Unger, Kojima presents a metaphor that is less about societal issues and more personal, reflective of his own transition in his works and his career. Unger, a character described as the “Combat Veteran” during boss encounters, fits the same archetype as the various incarnations of Solid Snake and Big Boss.
[Warning: This article contains spoilers for Death Stranding.]
Though the meaning behind Death Stranding altered since its release to reflect changes in world politics, the role of the Combat Veteran, played by Mads Mikkelsen, seems like it was always meant to be an homage to Kojima’s prior work. The Combat Veteran is a recurring boss who pulls Sam from the real world into a series of surreal battlefields. Death Stranding’s story involves the titular event breaking down the barriers between the world of the living and the dead. Most individuals have a “beach” they travel to when they die, in the game’s lore, but Unger controls a collective beach formed from the emotional attachments of soldiers who died in combat. Unger was a U.S. Special Forces Captain prior to his death, and commands squadrons of skeletal soldiers.
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