What are trails

What are trails but the paths others have walked upon.

Like most games, there are two ways to play Death Stranding:
1. Online
2. Offline

How it differs from other games is that, even in the offline mode you do not see other players in your game. You do not interact with other players. What you interact with is the things they leave behind.

As an example, if you build a bridge in your game, it might show up in another player's game. Any time they use that bridge, they leave a like. And so it goes.

Death Stranding is about connecting the world, one road at a time, one bridge at a time. And it is something you must do alone, through punishing terrain. And after you connect a region, all these things get populated in the world.

And the first time I came across this game mechanic, this idea, it felt so hopeful. A world worth living in. A kinder world.

During my walk today, as the nature trail ends, and I get to the paved roads of the city, I saw these trails. Different, mind you, from the main trail, which I guess the city maintains. It criss-crossed and went above the ridge. Nobody had put it there. Unlike the main trail, this trail was formed as people walked on it.

In Death Stranding, as you walk a path, it changes the scenery a little. As more and more players walk that path in their games, it turns into a trail. The first time I saw trails, I did not think much of it. It was part of the scenery. It was only later that I came to know that the trails were dynamically generated.

And today, as I saw that trail, I could not help but think about this. About trails. And how they are formed. In nature. In life. And in this one eccentric game.