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Comment by ShamelessC | Hacker News Reader

That's certainly true and you're right, other people may find his ideas agreeable and engaging. I personally don't. I suspect that HN's technically savvy userbase won't either but I don't really know.

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.

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Yeah, I can appreciate your perspective. Given the obvious technology-orientation of the story, if you're expecting it to be about some of the more topical technology-oriented issues, you're probably going to be disappointed. That said, if you're expecting the story itself to make perfect sense, then you're also going to be a bit disappointed.

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.

Thanks for saying that! I always feel bad when I give honest reviews about any form of entertainment really because ultimately it's incredibly subjective and someone definitely will have enjoyed it. I hate that people might perceive that as a personal attack although I totally understand because some of these stories are just super personal to each of us.

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.

> 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.

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.

Kojima's games are not known for good story telling. All of them are down right bad. People who like it tend to not mind cringey and over the top melodramatic dialogue...

If you want to play a deep game with an immersive and engrossing story play planescape torment.

I mind the cringy, boring and melodramatic stuff, but I find that the stuff that does work in his games incredible enough to slog through it.

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.

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