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Comment by dsfnajlsdfnafn | Hacker News Reader

> acrimoniously splitting from the traditional studio system.

Yeah, he split from the traditional studio system to create... his own traditional studio system.

Kojima is precisely what happens when you stop thinking of games as actual an interactive entertainment format and start thinking of it as a "cinematic experience" instead.

Death Stranding is only a game by the narrowest of margins. What it is is a movie with Kojima's Spotify 'favourites' list as the soundtrack that so happens to have one interactive element or two thrown in there for good measure.

It's pretty telling that all he's done after splitting away from Konami and surrounding himself with his own sycophantic group of developers is Death Stranding. Kojima is the direct result and pretty much the face of a lot that is wrong with the games industry right now.

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> Death Stranding is only a game by the narrowest of margins

I strongly disagree. I'd say that Death Stranding has an incredible open world "sandbox", rivaling the ones of GTA. I can spend dozens of hours there without worrying about the campaign - it's not a Hollywood movie.

I'm not sure if you've played these games but that's not at all what they are like. They have great gaming mechanics, combat and complex world setups.

Perhaps you are mistaking them with Ubisoft's open world games? or describing another installment of Life is Strange?

> Death Stranding is only a game by the narrowest of margins.

I can't even entertain this notion, never mind agree with it. Death Stranding and its sequel are among the best games I've ever played, and I've played several hundred, maybe thousands of games spanning every decade and genre.

I could not disagree harder with this sentiment. DS and DS2 are beautiful games with deep, meaty narratives that are satisfying and rewarding, which is why players spend hours walking around digital wastelands delivering mail. Only Kojima could make “post-apocalyptic UPS guy, the video game” and have it work.

> Kojima is precisely what happens when you stop thinking of games as actual an interactive entertainment format and start thinking of it as a "cinematic experience" instead.

And for Western devs, we have Rockstar doing that. RDR2 is a wonderful movie, but a pretty poor game. Unfortunately, they forgot what medium they were working with.

> RDR2 is a wonderful movie...

It's a decent movie, yeah.

> ... but a pretty poor game.

I disagree.

> Unfortunately, they forgot what medium they were working with.

I strongly disagree.

You didn't like what RDR2 was doing, and that's fine. I had a blast with it, but I'm the kind of psycho that loves games whose big thing is traversing gorgeous terrain. Similarly, there are games that people absolutely adore that I absolutely cannot see the point of.

Agreed, I was shocked to see a second person saying that RDR2 is movie not a game and the gameplays the weakest part, which was confusing to me as someone who spent a LOT more time enjoying the game than touching the main story and cinematics, and know people personally in the same boat, but then I realized I was about to just reply to the same guy with the same take under another post about gaming and not a super common reoccuring opinion haha

death stranding made just moving through the game world engaging and challenging. and on top of that it has very satisfying combat mechanics and async multiplayer gameplay elements. yeah the game has long cinematic cutscenes, but i do not see how that detracts from the actual gameplay

> ...on top of that it has very satisfying combat mechanics...

Man, the sequel made the combat totally trivial. I'm at the sequel's "Episode 10", and I've the opinion that DS2 took nearly everything that anyone ever complained about in Death Stranding and made it effectively optional. I don't like the decision, but I'm still enjoying the game.

> yeah the game has long cinematic cutscenes...

It really wouldn't be a Kojima game without them!

i absolutely agree! my biggest issue is probably that they didnt expand at all on the walking mechanics and gave you vehicles so quickly while also make the terrain so much easier to drive on, that i almost never walked! in my walking simulator!!

that said especially the ending is such a unique experience i cant say i didnt have a great time anyways

I got to the end of the story. I can see how some folks would really, really dislike that ending, but I enjoyed it.

In regards to vehicles: there was exactly one location that I couldn't drive the truck to... but I pretty quickly got the upgrade to the truck that let me drive it there. :/

In DS1, I regretted building the roads because of how they mostly eliminated the need to walk around. Going into DS2, I'd assumed that refusing to build the roads would have made me spend way more time on foot, but, nope! Should they ever make a third, I do hope that they put the walking back into the game.

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