Death Stranding - Hideous Kojumbo does it again

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Raiken said:
You guys are big meanies and i'm going to tell papa kojima on you guys.

I liked death stranding.
Granted, the world is mostly empty, and outside a few settlements and visuals it does not have enough to be so big in scale, you will find one path/make a road and use that all the time.
I would like kojima to make a game smaller in scale not filled with his dick suckers and b list actors.
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After a while the emptiness of the world just gets depressing. You feel utterly alone, talking to spectres instead of humans. It got to me eventually.
 
Begemot said:
After a while the emptiness of the world just gets depressing. You feel utterly alone, talking to spectres instead of humans. It got to me eventually.
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I think this was fully intentional that you would feel lonely.
People live in bunkers in isolation just to avoid having a random person die in a city without anyone noticing and causing a void-out, and you hardly see anyone outside because of the time fall.
I get that in context everyone shoud start to trust in eachother again and rebuild, but the outside conditions make this very hard.
Narative this works well, but in game play it kills any reason to explore.
I for one started to roam the beach in looking for cool shit on the far north of the map, but outside some nice outside locations and jellyfish BTs, there was no reason to be there or anything to find.
 
Raiken said:
I think this was fully intentional that you would feel lonely.
People live in bunkers in isolation just to avoid having a random person die in a city without anyone noticing and causing a void-out, and you hardly see anyone outside because of the time fall.
I get that in context everyone shoud start to trust in eachother again and rebuild, but the outside conditions make this very hard.
Narative this works well, but in game play it kills any reason to explore.
I for one started to roam the beach in looking for cool shit on the far north of the map, but outside some nice outside locations and jellyfish BTs, there was no reason to be there or anything to find.
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I understand that might be the case. I've never felt more desolate, though, frankly, than playing this game. I've left it off to play TLOU2, Lol. The mules are killing me in the current area I'm in.
 
I really enjoyed Death Stranding apart from the fucking boss fights because they were mostly just bullet sponges that provided basically no threat other than expending your resources (which could be replenished by the ghosts that will throw you stuff).
The final Higgs fight on the beach was an exception, sneaking about & eventually beating the shit out of him was really fucking fun & cathartic after all his shit.The mules/terrorists & BT's are fun enemies before you have reliable ways of taking them out but they stop being a threat pretty quickly.

I also enjoyed the story but I read all the emails, interviews & stuff. I can see understand how people wouldn't wanna read through all that shit just for some obscure lore.

Aside from Norman Reedus, the celebrity characters are unnecessary & add nothing that couldn't have been achieved using other voice actors imo. Pointless addition. In fact even he wasn't necessary, I just think he did a good job.

Most of my enjoyment actually comes from it being a "walking simulator", was very comfy navigating the terrain & trying to deliver my packages in the safest and most efficient way and I still really enjoy the atmosphere.
 
I think I'm around 2/3 of the way into the game. It's pretty fun going from point A to B trying to not stumble like an idiot, though once you unlock an area the amount of faculties other players built makes a lot of the challenge vanish.
It might be subverted later, but I think Kojima really misses the reason why people don't want to join a collective, due to him living in a privilaged lawful society. It's not some hedgehog dillema, but the problem that once you join the collective you are forced to obey its laws and decisions (if you even have a choice of joining rather than being born into it). With the alternative being either outright attacked or bullied into joining.
By making the threat of violence immaterial and the Bridges organization relatively benevolent, the whole allegory of Brexit and Trump means absolutely nothing because it just strawmanning very real issues.
 
Came by to point out that Death Stranding is a masterpiece compared to the shitshow that is Cyberpunk 2077.
 
wtfNeedSignUp said:
I think I'm around 2/3 of the way into the game. It's pretty fun going from point A to B trying to not stumble like an idiot, though once you unlock an area the amount of faculties other players built makes a lot of the challenge vanish.
It might be subverted later, but I think Kojima really misses the reason why people don't want to join a collective, due to him living in a privilaged lawful society. It's not some hedgehog dillema, but the problem that once you join the collective you are forced to obey its laws and decisions (if you even have a choice of joining rather than being born into it). With the alternative being either outright attacked or bullied into joining.
By making the threat of violence immaterial and the Bridges organization relatively benevolent, the whole allegory of Brexit and Trump means absolutely nothing because it just strawmanning very real issues.
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It's kind of subverted? Though it doesn't really say much about why you wouldn't want to be part of a collective if that's what he's going for. It's feels like just a way to tie together the chiral network and stranding storylines.
Kojimbo's worldview came across as extremely sheltered and naïve in this game. I either missed the plotpoint where America became a hereditary monarchy, or he actually thinks that the President is decided through hereditary succession.
 
Jewthulhu said:
It's kind of subverted? Though it doesn't really say much about why you wouldn't want to be part of a collective if that's what he's going for. It's feels like just a way to tie together the chiral network and stranding storylines.
Kojimbo's worldview came across as extremely sheltered and naïve in this game. I either missed the plotpoint where America became a hereditary monarchy, or he actually thinks that the President is decided through hereditary succession.
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it's mostly due to the fact that he was trying to compare the Japanese hereditary to the American presidency with varying results, this is from the writer who browsers Wikipedia pages to find his creative spark that how the whole homo demons came from.
 
Jewthulhu said:
It's kind of subverted? Though it doesn't really say much about why you wouldn't want to be part of a collective if that's what he's going for. It's feels like just a way to tie together the chiral network and stranding storylines.
Kojimbo's worldview came across as extremely sheltered and naïve in this game. I either missed the plotpoint where America became a hereditary monarchy, or he actually thinks that the President is decided through hereditary succession.
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Oh yeah, making the president an hereditary position might as well be the very thing America was built against.

In general the game has a lot of elements that are routinely mocked as the goals of the globohomo: Deep state using the image of a dead person as if she was alive, eating bugs, living in pods, being forced to a single location with no real ability to travel, harvesting human fetus.
 
Aquinas said:
what the fuck are you talking about, Death Stranding has notthing to do with, imagry wise, to brexit
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Kojima outright brought up Brexit, and Trump's wall, in the pre-release interviews of the game, talking about how mankind seemed to be pulling apart and separating into its own small little groups instead of coming together in peace and harmony, and how that influenced his view on the game.
 
The Demon Pimp of Razgriz said:
Kojima outright brought up Brexit, and Trump's wall, in the pre-release interviews of the game, talking about how mankind seemed to be pulling apart and separating into its own small little groups instead of coming together in peace and harmony, and how that influenced his view on the game.
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I even think it was mentioned in one of the in game emails about how one of the presidents is building a wall.
 
heyitsmike said:
Nothing annoys me more than grown ass adults who still have the naivete of a child.

It doesn't escape me that many of the biggest opponents of building a wall frequently live in island countries.
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And Kojima doesn't come from just any island country either, but one of the most insular countries in the world, that literally banned anyone from leaving or coming to the island for hundreds of years, and which currently has some of the strictest immigration laws in the world. Kojima has literally benefited from living in one of the most inward looking, homogenous countries on the planet, and he's sitting here talking about things like Brexit, like he understands all the political nuances of it, and had an entire email in game castigating Trump's wall. Ironically, the number of obvious non-Americans in his vision of a post-Apocalyptic America is utterly implausible.
 
Okay I finished the game, jesus christ that ending. I thought I was at the endgame only to have 5 hours left and it moves at a glacial pace. Overall the game is alright but there are massive flaws in it:
Gameplay wise, there is fun in trekking the wide expanses and setting up a delievery route via ziplines. However, there is no real reward that made me want to grind the extra orders once the game stopped giving interesting upgrades as rewards. So I can't think of a lot of replay value (though the game is pretty long as it is). But even then, the gameplay is very stale and the devs can't really do interesting variations on the idea of being a USPS worker.
The action moments are shit, they are universally too long and feel alien to the other 99% of the gameplay time.

Graphically the game looks stunning, but the facial animation, especially for the female actresses looks aweful. It's like the animators tries to exaggerate their expressions, leading to uncanny valley ridiculous faces at dramatic moments. At least most of the female models looks actually bangable (when they don't move their mouths).

The plot is meh, it is overly convoluted and doesn't really explain shit to the player unless he is willing to sit through boring emails. Why the fuck aren't those audio logs? Considering the amount of time the player will just walk from point A to B it would have been a good way to pass the time. The characters themselves also don't talk about anything that isn't plot related, meaning that even after those 30 gameplay hours I don't feel like I know anyone in the game world besides their wikipedia entry.
I think the best example of how the plot is handled badly is an event the player would see in a flashback. Now the event was obviously a good chunk of time ago, but no one remarks on that obvious fact until far later where you are told that. So when the main characters don't seem to care about the plot to remark an obvious error, why should the player care?

The game itself tries to pass the idea of the player going around and creating a massive changes for the various characters, but it doesn't pull the message off. Only once in the entire game you actually interact with the characters and improve your life, other times you just deliever them shit once or twice and ignore their emails like you would ignore that random dude on Facebook that the algorithm decides you really enjoy the latest vacation he went to.

I already said how the game fails politically. Kojima likes the romanticised idea of the USA as a melting pot, but ignores absolutely everything else about the country, and decry the country out of his ivory tower, surrounded by his actor friends for hire.

I usually try to avoid writing how a game should have been, but in this case I would have made the game like an adaption of the anime Kino's Journey. It should be more linear, where each chapter you reach a new hub area with couple of outposts and its own culture and customs, and you actually do multiple quests there for the people and get to know them. You can also use this way add a gameplay twist to make the areas memorable and unique.

Edit: Forgot to mention that the metaphor of "weak strands together become a strong rope" is quite literally the namesake of fascists, who are supposedly represented by the isolasionalists.
 
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Sorry for the double post, but I thought about the ending the game should have had that would have made it far far better. Spoilers for obvious reason:

The characters in the game strong arms the protagonist into creating the chiral network - a glorified internet that gives the government a monopoly on knowledge and the ability to synthesize pretty much everything, including drugs to keep the citizenry docile. On the road on creating the network, the government does illegal experiments, murders people and commits further atrocities. The game ends with the government winning with zero punishment for their actions and becoming a dictatorship (despite logically the Chiral network could be used to hold democratic elections).

So what if the final scene of the game was the protagonist saying "fuck this shit" and shuts the network down permenantly? The government loses its power, and people are forced to go outside rather than getting high and leaving the dirty work to porters. It will be a more powerful actual message of how you cannot shut yourself away forever, leave others to work instead of you and reward government for their shady deeds because they supposedly have good intentions. It will also be a great reference to one of the film Escape from L.A. that had a very similar ending and its main character was the inspiration for Solid Snake.
 
I consider myself a metal gear fan, not a Kojima fan. Which, a lot of people think metal gear fan = Kojima fan.

Fuck no, and I’m not touching death stranding.
 
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