Wasn't that one of the main objectives for Breath of the Wild?
I think it was Aonuma who said that the puzzles would be less about dungeons and more about how the player gets to an objective, thus making the traversal itself a puzzle.
It is different from the BotW you can go anywhere.
In Death Stranding you can't go anywhere without work enough to cross that path you choose... the delivery packages makes the game exploration genial... you need to care about it, you need to have equipment that affect the paths you can choose, you need help from online be players depending the path you are doing.
If you faced a path you don't have hability, equipment or help from online enough to cross it you will need to go back and find another path.
And when I say path is not something big... it like 5 meters path you need to cross.l just like real life.
When you face a river in real life what you do?
When you face a mountain?
When you face a waterfall?
Add to that that you carrying a lot of weight on your back and that affects the gameplay.
It is done different of each free open world game we have see for years already including BotW.
You are not free... you need to play a lot to cross obstacles.
The open world is your enemy just like in real life.
It is really revolutionary even for Open World games.