Death Stranding Coming to PC

Kojima is a good team leader, but awful writer with incredibly inflated ego. His games are thematically interesting..but it's all buried under a mountain of rubbish writing and cringe, over the top exposition.
"It's so weird and original!" Our genius, Kojima San!!!
Surprised some people are stilling fall for it.

Surprised players still expect vid products to deliver good quality stories. Except, of course, for TW3 or KC, best ever stories written in the history of the universe.
 
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Kojima is a good team leader, but awful writer with incredibly inflated ego. His games are thematically interesting..but it's all buried under a mountain of rubbish writing and cringe, over the top exposition.
That makes me think of the old Illuminati books: 10% good story, 85% junk, 5% precious gems that you will never find anywhere else. Metal Gear Solid 5 is definitely closer to that pole (OMG that jeep ride!) but it's nowhere near as bad. Hopefully Kojima will keep good folks around him instead of yes-men so he doesn't end up making games only he can understand while still retaining the interesting ideas.

You know this is how steam started right? Convincing publishers to use their crappy software and unable to be played without Steam?
Errr, started? No. At first it was The Way To Play Valve Games, but it was only Valve. They weren't paying themselves for exclusives. Then other companies started joining in but still also were selling retail. They joined in because the cut Steam was taking was a heck of a lot lower than paying for disks/boxes, shipping them, and getting a store to sell them. They also provided a far, far better way of delivering patches and updates. To my knowledge, they never once paid a publisher to sell exclusively on Steam. Heck, GOG would have died long ago if they had done that sort of thing!
 
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One of many reviews from playstation:
https://stevivor.com/reviews/death-stranding-review-dead-arrival/
Death Stranding is an irredeemable piece of garbage that should serve as a warning to publishers who give developers carte blanche to create ‘art’.
Games critic dared to say the word art? A deaf person explaining Bach's fugues.
At the same time:
If you’re not falling, you’ll be mashing the L2 and R2 buttons
WTF is this guy talking about?

If I haven't said before, this game is instabuy for me when appears on PC. Especially after that review. :)
 
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Okay lemme rephrase. What language was that. I used several dictionaries and no define whatever is L2.
 
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A game that's more or less entirely made up of elaborate fetch quests? Ehm, no thanks.
 
Few of us played this over the weekend. Gameplay, it's a hell of micromanagement. Really needed some feature "cut" , focus more on harder, more impactful decision making.
Like seeing a timefall storm approaching, ambiance/visual/audio build up, estimate: it's direction, movement speed, intensity, then make a choice in what direction to go ( to avoid it)..sort of "think on the fly" gameplay, requiring good terrain oversight/navigation. Along with smaller, better design maps, and hostile human encounters, this would create some interesting survival gameplay.
Instead it's constant tedium of avoiding to fell over a rock or dealing with annoying cargo cleptomaniacs.
The rest ( movie/story) is classic Kojima: awful pacing, Exposition dialed up to 111, non sensical plot points, few interesting themes ( though it's nothing really particularly original), overdrammatic, bizarre scenes ( that look like overindulgence in director's weird fetish/es), some great cinematic shots/direction at times.
Best described as mix between Prometheus and Mexican soap opera.
 
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The rest ( movie/story) is classic Kojima: awful pacing, Exposition dialed up to 111, non sensical plot points, few interesting themes ( though it's nothing really particularly original), overdrammatic, bizarre scenes ( that look like overindulgence in director's weird fetish/es), some great cinematic shots/direction at times.

Best described as mix between Prometheus and Mexican soap opera.
What you call nonsensical and bizzare is the cultural thing. Japanese.
Educate by spending a couple of hours with any example, here's one: Gozu.
Same goes for exaggerated emotions and extreme drama, a recent example for that: Saving Rock*.
Some people say jrpg is grind or don't bother. It's not - there are jrpgs with no grind required (recent thread on rpgwatch is about valkyria chronicles). jrpgs are supposed to be bizzare, nonsensical (to you ofc :p) and melodramatic more than Douglas Sirk movies. At least I expect them to be. Oh and add some tentacles hentai as sidequests, please! :evilgrin:

Mexican soap opera = stalling amateurism. I doubt Decima engine and DS are amateurish. Is the game stalling things, I don't know. Most of them do, but sometimes it's fun (minigames), sometimes it's boring (walking sim).
Prometheus you say? It alone means mustbuy to me. :)


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* - imdb mainstream audience has no idea about it: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10497536/
 
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Surprised players still expect vid products to deliver good quality stories. Except, of course, for TW3 or KC, best ever stories written in the history of the universe.

Have to agree, video games are the last place I look for good stories.

Books, movies even tv show do it better imo.

TW3 had great presentation, production values and second to none side quests but even its main quest was just another, gather some friends and fight the big evil at the end of the day. The overall flow reminded me a lot of DA:O.
 
DS is very full of lengthy cut scenes. Many hours of cut scenes overall. At least one cut scene is nearly an hour long. For that reason alone, I'm hesitant to play it, especially for $60.
 
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Can anyone explain what this game is actually about? Even after all the videos I've seen and articles I've read, I can't make heads or tails of what's going on.
 
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Can anyone explain what this game is actually about? Even after all the videos I've seen and articles I've read, I can't make heads or tails of what's going on.

Mechanically it's a delivery man simulator, with encumbrance/energy systems management and traversal systems. You basically travel the map from east to west connecting outposts to a central network, while encountering various paranormal phenomena or other human encounters. You do this either alone, or if you connect the game to the internet you experience an asynchronous multiplayer element, similar to Dark Souls/Bloodborne, where what other players do in their games (building resource nodes, bridges, ladders, etc) show up in your game. Thus is becomes a communal experience which is in theme with the main theme of the game.

Storywise, it's a mashup of philosophical themes in a post-apocalyptic sci-fi/fantasy setting. But from what I hear, it's not very subtle about how it tackles those themes. And all that in a setting that's sometimes feels like it's just trying to be weird just for weirdness sake. With various real-life celebrity cameos around the games world. And some product placement, like Monster Energy Drink.

And all of this from I got without playing the game, as I'm waiting for the PC version. But, honestly, it kind of sounds like a mess. I'm sure I'll not particularly enjoy the gameplay, as even the combat, which is not a central element of the game, seems clunky. And I don't particularly enjoy encumberance management or traversal. But I guess it has the potential to create some emergent gameplay situations, especially when connected with other players.

My biggest worry is the setting/story/world. It seems like a mishmash of so many insane things, that I'll probably be rolling my eyes constantly. It honestly feels like kitsch. But, I'll try to enjoy it as I love weird things in media. I hope I'll be able to suspend my disbelief, but I suspect it'll be quite a hard thing to do. Especially with celebrity cameos and product placement.
 
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It sounds "art" over gameplay.

The whole game or specially the marketing around it sounds "pretentious art".

One one hand, I am really happy a big company is doing a budget game and its something "new". I mean its not a sequel after all! But all the marketing a about how they are trying to convey message about the state of the world etc. They want to say something "deep" and meaningful about life etc. All that is fine but its the way they do it annoys me. It does not feel organic rather in your face stuff.

Also I think all of these "arty stuff" should be derived from the game play itself and not from huge dialog or cut scenes since books and movies can do that better. What makes game different from books and movies is the game play so the art should be derived from the game play itself.
 
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The concept sounds like something that's a lot better in theory than in practice.

Almost like it's forcing its message down the throat of the audience.

Kinda like the average Kubrick movie :)

But I don't actually know. I'm not likely to ever play this - as nothing about it sounds appealing to me, as a game.

I could well be wrong and miss out.
 
Also I think all of these "arty stuff" should be derived from the game play itself and not from huge dialog or cut scenes since books and movies can do that better.

Very few narrative cinematics in this game compared to its length. Actually, it makes players desire them due.
But from what I hear, it's not very subtle about how it tackles those themes.

Certainly not less subtle than the I do not bow to the emperor in an historically based Poland TW3.

This game reminds of Sunless Sea in the way design layers are intrincated, intertwined and work in agency. The storytelling is such because the art is such because the gameplay is such and so on.
There is a strong identity between elements that can not be dissociated. Nothing friendly to the modding out disliked features plebs.

Thematics are for sure far from TW3, a tale to empower, players are strong, they dominate, they prevail, they rule, they enforce their will, they do and undo NPCs's life.

It is all about burdens, everything is burdensome, the packback is burdensome, the storytelling is burdensome, the gameplay is burdensome.
Burdens that feel good to get rid of, burdens that are wished they could have been burdened a bit longer.

At the end of the game, an experience lived from within, with sticking memories.
 
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Release date: June 2nd. You may already preorder it on steam or epic (read somewhere GMG is offering it with 20% discount).
Requirements are currently unknown.
The game uses Denuvo and initially steam said 1 machine activation limit - this was an error, the game's installations are not restricted.

 
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