497 Words About: Rain-Timefall in Death Stranding
As someone who only feels content when it’s raining, I’ve never appreciated the rhetorical use of rain as a symbol for emotional turbulence or danger. Then again the rain that falls in Texas doesn’t immediately age someone’s body with every drop.
That’s just the humidity.
Death Stranding has numerous atmospheric elements which build the rhetorical and visual tone of the game. The steel case packages, the muted navy of Sam’s jumpsuit, the bright orange-yellow of BB’s pod, and the dense grays of stones that jut up through the earth all create an organic and albeit somber visual tone.
And then, there’s the rain.
Within the game rain is referred to as Timefall. Since the event of the Death Stranding rainfall has become dangerous to living organisms because every drop ages the surface it makes contact with. In one early sequence the player observes this firsthand as a man in his 30s is exposed to rain and, in a matter of seconds, becomes aged to the point he appears to be in his 70s. Various narrative sequences and background lore provide further demonstration that rain is to be avoided at all cost. This comes to a full circle when the player is given the option to build “Timefall shelters.”
These structures are, figuratively, stationary umbrellas that resemble mushrooms and provide protection during rainstorms. Sam can even wait for the rain to let up while resting underneath them, though sometimes rain remains fixated in a location and can’t be waited out.
I’ve built several of these structures while playing Death Stranding, and if I come across any built by other players I have often purposefully abandoned whatever delivery assignment I was on just to upgrade them. I don’t know who is going to use this shelter once I’m gone, but I know that I’ve helped someone who, like me, is criss-crossing what’s left of the United States.
Just like the highways, and mushrooms, Timefall shelters create a visual aesthetic that builds into a perception that the world I’m playing in is tremendously larger than myself. I perceive that I’m rebuilding the networks that connected human beings before all this miserable tragedy began.
But, this is temporary.
At some point even this structure will start to decay under the endless onslaught of rain. Several times I’ve returned to Death Stranding, discovering the structures I worked so hard to build have become rusted shells that no longer work. No amount of building is going to change the weather, and there’s a realization that the work of rebuilding America is only the initial step. The rain is a sad reminder that everything eventually fades away in time.
Death Stranding uses rain as a measure of player conviction as well as environmental storytelling. Do I bother delivering packages, knowing the rain will eventually wash all this progress away, or do I remind myself that I fought fourteen mules to get The Collector his Gameboys?
The rain will fall, but, I keep keeping on.
Joshua Jammer Smith
2.24.2025
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