I love MGS, but apparently death stranding doesn't seem to be as good as people say it is.
He is indeed an exceptional writer. I'm still curious if he would be able to make a movie or a TV show.
He is indeed an exceptional writer. I'm still curious if he would be able to make a movie or a TV show.
After a couple of hours it becomes really clear that Kojima spent ALL of his time on the plot and directing the cutscenes, and it's almost like the actual gameplay was left to be done by a pack of interns who weren't even given guidance.
The terrain physics are awful. The combat is extremely repetitive and not at all engaging. Almost every mission is 'go from point A to point B'. The plot (or rather the series of cutscenes that convey the plot) have absolutely nothing to do with the gameplay. They might as well have the player do rounds of tetris between cutscenes and the overall experience would remain largely unchanged.
When you get roughly through 3/4 of the game, you hit the level that's shown in the early trailers. That level is great fun. And despite being late into the game, it starts showing you tutorial tips and coaching you on mechanics you already know. You realize that this was meant to be the opening level of the game. They clearly intended to create a much better game but at some stage said fuck it, we'll make a bland open world exploration sandbox and throw in some cutscenes.
It's sad. I would have happily waited another few years to get a full game that plays and feels like what was in the trailer level. No more preorders even for Kojima.
The script was horrible despite the cast of talented actors.
I'm not talking about the plot itself but the delivery, the exposition dumps, the stupid dialogues, it's a catastrophe, even by videogame standards, which makes me ask myself whether Kojima was always like that but he had other people keeping him in check or something…
And unfortunately the gameplay couldn't redeem anything, the gameplay was tedious and unfun. MGS is fun, you infiltrate places by various means, you have a lot of cool gadgets, there is tension. The story was silly but it had memorable characters.
in DS, everything sucks except the concept, the idea, the concept is interesting, the execution is bad.
Yes, Kojima tried to be innovative, but it just doesn't work because it fails at the most basic things regarding gameplay and story telling.
The game is beautiful though.
> He is indeed an exceptional writer.
He is an "idea guy". Like George Lucas and many many other. He needs somebody else to makes sense of his ideas.
I almost choked on that one. He is exceptional good at coming up with ideas but writing wise he is absolutely terrible and gets worse over time. Way too verbose where it does not have to be.
I also think tone matters a lot in games. MGS1 lives in this kind of comic book, science fiction tone and is perfect in that regard. But something like mgs5 feels like a caricature in every way as it tries to be like a comics and realistic at the same time. It just does not work.
Kojima interrupts the entire game with a character monologue about some tragic past or some modern geopolitical issue. Makes sense for every single boss to launch into 30 minutes talking about all this stuff right before a gun fight.
and then you had the extremely awkward scene in MGS5 in the back of a truck with Skullface where nobody talks for 20 minutes and you can't skip it, because they "forgot" to record a long monologue. So bad.
Also, it basically has a feature length ending, with cutscenes interspersed with repetitive gameplay where you just have to trigger more cutscenes. If you want to complete the ending in one sitting, make sure you have a couple of hours.
Edit: One thing I remembered that frustrated me about it. The game is essentially a stealth-action, and it gives you a lot of freedom to choose how you approach the problems it gives you. But it doesn't always reward your choices the way you would expect. Did you choose to clear out an entire area of baddies so that you could freely loot it? Well in some specific cases, they'll respawn before you're done.
Unlike the MGS games, the story has so many opportunities to take a nuanced stance on issues of the internet (aghem, Chiral Net), data collection and the obvious metaphor of Amazon.com. It wastes every opportunity to tell a story about how the internet is inherently good even if it's controlled by Bridges. The game is spent building bridges without any question of whether those bridges actually make us more connected or more distant.
Furthermore, the "extinction event" i.e. the death stranding is presented as something which is inevitable to all species rather than something which is explicitly caused by and solved by humans.
It's just really strange seeing all this low hanging fruit go to waste. There are plenty of other problems such as character names and plotlines being overly literal. The exposition dumps are way too much, even compared to MGS which is famous for them.
Overall though it just comes down to the game having an utterly bizarre viewpoint on the world's problems. I had thought that to overarching theme of "rebuilding America by connecting everyone again" would at least touch on the current state of US politics where people are more divided than ever. Unfortunately, the game chalks that problem up to an inevitable event of nature rather than something humans could actually prevent.
Going into the game as a huge Kojima fanboy I basically gave the story way too many chances to redeem itself and it just gets worse.
So bad, unfortunately, that I'm forced to reassess his other games. Surely they have their faults which "come with the territory" of crazy anime style plotlines. But are the good parts even attributable to Kojima? Did somebody special from his Konami team not make it over to Kojima Productions?
Anyway, having said all that, the gameplay was pretty cool, the world itself was beautiful and I do suggest you at least check it out if it goes on sale or something. Meanwhile I'll be waiting for Kojima to hopefully tell better stories in the horror genre as he's suggested he may do.
It also had to do with my expectations being set by the Metal Gear games. While they certainly all had a touch of absurdity in them, there are messages in those games that I largely agree with such as the notion that war begets revenge which begets war (MGS V) or massive data collection resulting in population control (MGS IV).
But it's all subjective and I can totally understand other people enjoying this games story. I just personally didn't.
I've learnt to not have any expectations about what I'm going to get from a Kojima game, and instead just follow along whatever journey it is he wants to take me on.
I will say that I was pretty disappointed by the massive amounts of reviews claiming it was a walking simulator when they clearly put a lot of work into making the balance system a pretty innovative mechanic. Furthermore, games like Red Dead Redemption 2 (which I absolutely love, btw) consist of large portions of traveling and get little criticism for it.
I think one time that could have been better is the occurrence of encountering "random side quests" as was done in rdr2 often was extremely successful in making the world feel alive as you traverse it. But that mechanic doesn't really belong in the mostly empty world of Death Stranding.
That was one of the things I really liked about it. The side quests are really rewarding (in terms of powerful upgrades), and you can happily complete the entire game without touching most of them. So you end up getting rewarded for exploring and taking on non-central-story deliveries. The materials rewarded for a lot of those quests is also very, very useful. I felt as though I was engaged in the side quests a lot more than I typically am in games like say, Assassins Creed, where end up only picking them up if I was low on money. RDR2 was also incredibly successful in achieving this, but I'd just say via a different approach.
If you want to play a deep game with an immersive and engrossing story play planescape torment.
Planescape: Torment is on a very short list of games where some of the story or setting just randomly pops in my head again. Really one of the best.
The gameplay was pretty awful though, and I never really got into the incredibly cluttered Infinity Engine graphics. Would love a proper 3D remake that either improves the gameplay or makes it even less relevant.
Kojima makes unique games, and his best work has come from him forging ahead with his own ideas of how to do things. You risk mass appeal by doing things that way, but if you want a mass appeal product, there’s really no shortage of them.
Personally, I liked the handcuffs. Long-winded and contrived exposition is part of Kojima’s style, so I knew what I was getting in to. I liked the game in general. I even thought the product placement was hilarious. I liked God of War too, and the latest AAA FPS Game™. I’m happy they all exist.
The character names seemed cheesy at first but I get the impression many of them were selected for their mnemonic worth. You don't need to look up where Alex Weatherstone is or where to find Jake Wind-- their names suggest they're at the weather station and wind farm. The Southlake guy is at South Lake City. Heartman is at the heart-shaped lake. Etc.
It's not even unrealistic either. Ever met anybody surnamed Smith? Shumacher? Ericsson? Literal surnames used to be used to identify peoples' roles in the community.