The only truly non-controversial statement anyone could make about Death Stranding is that the game has been controversial. As the first game from Kojima Productions following iconic developer Hideo Kojima's tense breakup from Konami, expectations for the game were sky-high. However, many reviews ultimately criticized the game's gameplay, even as they praised the game's larger ideas and its world.

In addition to all of those issues, another aspect of Death Stranding is potentially far more problematic in a much more harmful way.

Death Stranding takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where players try to restart and reconnect society by traveling across what's left of the United States of America. An interview found in-game entitled "An Asexual World" discusses the existence and prevalence of various sexual identities before the titular Death Stranding event plunged the game's world into its post-apocalyptic setting. In the interview, an unnamed author refers to a population with an "aversion to physical contact and intimacy" resulting in a dramatic drop in the birth rate.

RELATED: Death Stranding: Early Reviews Call It a Frustrating, Ambitious Success

Death Stranding Asexuality Interview

This description seems to implicate asexual individuals, people who do not experience sexual attraction for any of a number of reasons. As with any form of sexuality, every asexual individual practice their identity in their own way that may or may not include having romantic partners or children.

While the very acknowledgment of asexuality could be seen as progress for a traditionally underrepresented group, asexual individuals in media are often portrayed poorly or have their asexuality brushed aside. The interview also refers to demisexuals and panromantics, other sexual orientations that are often underrepresented in mainstream media.

However, Death Stranding only seems to acknowledge these sexual identities in an unflattering light.

Within the game, the author refers to asexuality as a "sexless lifestyle" and states that young people were "self-identifying" and "claiming to be incapable of feeling desire or attraction." This language brushes aside the complexity of sexual identity and implies that identifying as asexual or otherwise is as simple as picking out a label. Saying that asexuals are just "claiming" to feel the way they do delegitimizes the existence of people who are already overlooked or ignored.

The interview relates the prevalence of asexuality to the fear and uncertainty following the Stranding, which plays into another common misconception about asexuality. Asexuality has nothing to do with any reluctance to "form emotional bonds," and asexual people are no more or less capable of wanting or maintaining relationships with others than anyone else. The included references to demisexuals and panromantics in the article seem to suggest that various queer identities gained popularity as a result of trying times. Taken to its logical endpoint, this could imply that, under ideal circumstances, people would choose to not identify in this way.

Death Stranding feature

Death Stranding also has a problematic take on sexual assault. In the same interview, the author links this increase in asexuality to a decrease in sexual harassment and assault cases. In connecting the two phenomena, the game implies that such behavior is inevitable so long as people have sexual desires and tries to excuse those actions as somehow uncontrollable, effectively shifting blame away from the perpetrators of assaults.

In fairness to the unseen in-game author of the interview, they do clarify that they are working off of limited information, admitting, "I do not have any empirical data with which to support the following claim," before concluding that most of the population was asexual. Within the universe, this provides enough justification for any kind of misunderstanding, similar to how a modern scholar might come to an incorrect hypothesis about a long-fallen civilization.

RELATED: Why Everyone Loves Hideo Kojima. Explained

However, games and their universes do not exist in a vacuum, and Death Stranding exists in a world where people want to see asexual characters and want to see them portrayed accurately.

It should be noted that Kojima and the game's other developers could be referring to what is known as "celibacy syndrome" in Japan. For years, some in the media have reported that Japanese young adults are increasingly uninterested in sexual activity, romantic relationships and marriage. This has supposedly resulted in a decrease of the birth rate in Japan, a problem with social and economic implications for the country's future. While such claims have been widely criticized and refuted, the narrative remains to this day, and the circumstances laid out in Death Stranding seem to parallel this perception of reality.

Regardless of its potential real-world inspirations, Death Stranding stills tackles a complex, meaningful topic like asexuality with, at minimum, a galling lack of nuance that ultimately perpetuates misinformation about people who identify as asexual. Whether or not Death Stranding is interested in sparking a discussion about non-mainstream sexual identities, this game implies that asexuality is a selfish choice. The very notion of that is harmful and offensive, and the further implications about queerness and sexual assault do not help its cause.

While Death Stranding might be about connecting a world, its supremely tone-deaf clumsiness with these sensitive topics may only serve to further divide the real world.

KEEP READING: Hideo Kojima Says Death Stranding Is a Response to Trump, Brexit