Hideo Kojima Official Thread
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When Steep (essentially a physics-based skier/snowsurfer Tony Hawk game) got on PS+ free games in January I played it, loved what it did but wondered if it wouldn't be amazing if they added a feature or made a game where you could actually climb Everest, the Alps, Denali and the rest manually, slowly, one climber pick at a time. I imagined it'd be a kind of spiritual experience, even if without story, to just climb to the top and then look down, contemplate existence for a moment before pulling out my surfboard and sliding down to the bottom again. Obviously I never expected Death Stranding to be that game, let alone that all of the above would be designed into it with the same idea in mind as the Snake Eater staircase sequence, with Snake Eater also being the game Death Stranding pretty much re-makes. This is what really helps me make sense of this game and actually feel it click when its at its best, which I thought was split between two states - the immersion into delivery/physics/building minutia and the opera of its 3 hour long ending. "Epic Theater" is taken to very literal levels in this one and as Brendan said it works less elegantly than in the previous games, yet it also points to and builds on the staples of a kind of experience in them for which I think the only right word is "religious". Maybe my recent second viewing of The Leftovers is affecting this but at certain parts in Death Stranding (especially the mountain climbing sections) I felt like what I was doing would go very well with Max Richter's soundtrack for the show (although what doesn't, right) ... And then I thought back to some early preview descriptions of the game that said that you're essentially on some kind of pilgrimage the entire time in it. There's this whole talk about Interstellar and Nolan but I just saw that even The Guardian compared this game to The Leftovers in their review, and I'd go even further with saying that that's always what he's been doing. Whether it's the UCA or USA or Outer Heaven or "war" in general or "connection through capitalism... delivarism?...", Kojima's games always force you into an indeterminate relationship between faith and doubt in a cause/plan/design/institution/project, that is a totally worth it solution to a problem and at the same time always a huge risk, a conspiracy, a lie.
It's always funny to me just how much his bad writing is actually contributing to this desired effect, but in any case the result is that you're usually being told completely opposite "truths" in the most revelatory scenes of his games. Every reveal contradicts the one before in a whole chain of reveals that ultimately tells you they're all true and they're all lies at the same time. On the background of this everyone involved, often and especially the villains, each have their individual origin sob stories and are frauds and saints/martyrs at the same time. The "villains" specifically always want to defeat you but what they really really want is you to defeat them, and of course they're always somehow related to you in a meaningful way. This is all obvious to most of you of course, but my point is that DS, like the MGS games, is doing things The Leftovers is, perhaps not so cleanly but ultimately like it DS exists purely as "nothing but a test", an indulgent and excessive series of confusing events and questions followed by inconclusive answers and forced conflicts, a journey that may after all mean little outside of its capacity to remove you far away from your original state of normality before letting you return you with a profound sense of finally knowing that the most important things have always been deceptively simple and obvious - a hard earned catharsis that wouldn't work without the absurdness that builds up to it.
In that sense, and especially in terms of how much more human Sam and others (Clifford Unger mostly) are compared to other characters in Kojimaverse, Death Stranding is pretty brilliant.
Nah, he should watch MGS1 on youtube then play 2 then on. I mean, if he'll be able to play 3 then that means he has a PS3 and he'll be able to play 2 anyway. These are essential, even though most likely it'll be 3 where MGS clicks for him. It's where it did for me.
PS: Forgot to say that if so far MGS games have mostly did meta-trickery in addressing the player as a player in order to address the game as such too and to complicate ideas of what is real or not, even though DS does that too it's kind of a step ahead in the sense that it recognizes that perhaps a question much newer and more relevant to our times is whether there's a difference between "work" and "play". This is already something that bothers academia about games in recent years more than the other thing btw.
It's always funny to me just how much his bad writing is actually contributing to this desired effect, but in any case the result is that you're usually being told completely opposite "truths" in the most revelatory scenes of his games. Every reveal contradicts the one before in a whole chain of reveals that ultimately tells you they're all true and they're all lies at the same time. On the background of this everyone involved, often and especially the villains, each have their individual origin sob stories and are frauds and saints/martyrs at the same time. The "villains" specifically always want to defeat you but what they really really want is you to defeat them, and of course they're always somehow related to you in a meaningful way. This is all obvious to most of you of course, but my point is that DS, like the MGS games, is doing things The Leftovers is, perhaps not so cleanly but ultimately like it DS exists purely as "nothing but a test", an indulgent and excessive series of confusing events and questions followed by inconclusive answers and forced conflicts, a journey that may after all mean little outside of its capacity to remove you far away from your original state of normality before letting you return you with a profound sense of finally knowing that the most important things have always been deceptively simple and obvious - a hard earned catharsis that wouldn't work without the absurdness that builds up to it.
In that sense, and especially in terms of how much more human Sam and others (Clifford Unger mostly) are compared to other characters in Kojimaverse, Death Stranding is pretty brilliant.
ThePhantomTerror wrote: ↑December 1st, 2019, 12:07 amMGS3. It's actually the first in the story timeline.
Nah, he should watch MGS1 on youtube then play 2 then on. I mean, if he'll be able to play 3 then that means he has a PS3 and he'll be able to play 2 anyway. These are essential, even though most likely it'll be 3 where MGS clicks for him. It's where it did for me.
PS: Forgot to say that if so far MGS games have mostly did meta-trickery in addressing the player as a player in order to address the game as such too and to complicate ideas of what is real or not, even though DS does that too it's kind of a step ahead in the sense that it recognizes that perhaps a question much newer and more relevant to our times is whether there's a difference between "work" and "play". This is already something that bothers academia about games in recent years more than the other thing btw.
MGS3 is enhanced by MGS1 and MGS2. It being first in the story timeline doesn't really matter.ThePhantomTerror wrote: ↑December 1st, 2019, 12:07 amMGS3. It's actually the first in the story timeline.
That being said, MGS3 is the best game and Kojima's best storyline bar none.
So yeah...Kojima predicted literally like everything going on. People who didn't play this because of it being a "walking simulator" missed out. (Vid contains story spoilers for DS. Highly recommend you check it out, especially right now.)
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Incredible forward thinking achievement in gaming with some of the sweetest and most memorable moments this generation, but lately I can't but keep thinking how...
Find that sweet spot by cutting and expanding properly and where necessary, Jesus. And I'm a known MGS4 apologist.
That and the fact boss fights, from a renowned creator of boss fights, were plain and simple - a nuissance. I cannot put this in my TOP 5 this gen, perhaps TOP 10. Need to think about it and perhaps play once more.
That and the fact boss fights, from a renowned creator of boss fights, were plain and simple - a nuissance. I cannot put this in my TOP 5 this gen, perhaps TOP 10. Need to think about it and perhaps play once more.
This game in gameplay, story/pacing, and mechanics, is miles ahead of MGS4, quality-wise. After replaying them all prior to Death Stranding's release, MGS4 is his weakest directed game by far and felt very much like Kojima making something he didn't want to make. This connects thematically to Old Snake, so it works, but the fact of the matter is still present.
Death Stranding feels different.
Death Stranding feels different.
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Also, I cannot be that dissmisive when it comes to MGS4. Gameplay was ace, when you had control (see, it keeps repeating with Kojima). And boss fights were memorable and miles ahead of Death Stranding. I know it's popular to defend it as 'creator intended', but come on... All those lovely crafted loveraftian creatures rendered in decima engine, just to drag your ass through the mud, pick up fallen stuff and have ilussion of danger (there's no real danger, ever). In MGSV he had a different problem: superb gameplay (and I mean TOP 3 in the 3rd person shooter genre), little story to back it up (infamous chapter 3 missing etc.).
I really wish he finds a ballance in his next game, whatever it turns out to be.
DS's point isn't the combat or the encounters with the BT's. They're there as a means to an end, which is why their encounters are less fleshed out and sporadic.
other than MGS1/MGS3, has there been a major Kojima game that hasn't been wildly messy and underwhelming in weird ways but enlightening and beautiful and wonderful in others?
where we all fall is how much those two extremes subjectively collide.
the thing that lets me appreciate all his stuff is to treat them less like video games and more like what they probably are closer to, which is interactive art intallations.
anyway, death stranding is his interstellar.
-Vader
where we all fall is how much those two extremes subjectively collide.
the thing that lets me appreciate all his stuff is to treat them less like video games and more like what they probably are closer to, which is interactive art intallations.
anyway, death stranding is his interstellar.
-Vader
