Kojima is the JJ Abrams equivalent in the game industry. Great visual execution, but absolutely horrendous story-telling that will make you wish were dumb as a piece of loaf so as to not notice it.
When Kojima made a comment that he didn’t fully understand the story himself… It sort of all made sense. It’s just connotations mashed together, beach, strand, hair, cord… A big pile of nothing to create intrigue with no payout, no mystery to reveal, just more layers of confusion. Sort of like Lost. I’m sure JJ and Kojima would get along great.
But oh boy are some of those moment exceptionally beautiful and spectacular in all its illogical absurdity. Mads Mikkelsen’s acting. Got goosebumps. But then it falls apart by revealing flaws through the fourth wall. Like did… part of this mystery hinge on the double meaning of words? Whatever the fuck was going on, it’s a little bit silly for synonyms to play an important part.
Kojima has a lot of other great tastes. Using music to create moments of excellent cinematography. Motion capture and character designs have always been fantastic. There are moments in Death Stranding that made me have to put down the controller and just. Enjoy. The same goes with Metal Gear games I grew up with. The flower field in MGS3, and forcing you to pull the trigger… The attention to detail on so many gameplay mechanics. It’s just brilliant. But, the illogical and meaningless complexity for the story and world building? That part has always been the weakest part and left a bad taste. In MGS it was confusing enough, but it had a certain charm. In DS, puuh, it’s rough.
JJ and Kojima should have nothing to do with writing storylines and plots. Imagine how much brilliant stuff we would be left with? And I never understood why. In JJs case, I suspect it’s simply decent return on investment for those who fund the movies. But from a craftsmanship perspective, it’s weird. The culmantion of work from hundreds of artists, all masters in their respective fields, and it shows, yet, it comes together to tell a story, surrounding a plot that a 14-year old might put together.
Abrams writes mystery box stories where everything hinges on resolving the box and ends up with an ultimately lackluster resolution.
Kojima stories are confusing webs within webs throughout. They exist on theme and vibe, while being simultaneously incredibly well researched, intentionally absurd, and with ill advised choices that surely mean something when they were made.
I have ~140 hours on the first game, but I’m not particularly interested in most of the content shown in this trailer. I find Kojima’s writing to be eye-rolling horrendous and cringe-worthy (I still remember this quote from the first game: “I’m fragile but not that fragile” HUH). That being said, I’m looking forward to this sequel because of the possibility of new gameplay mechanics (like that flood that wrecked the ramp). I’m excited about new weapons, vehicles, enemies and mechs! I wish the trailer has more of that instead.
Not really sure how you can roll your eyes at the dialogue from the trailer, but not from Death Stranding 1 or the Metal Gear games. This isn’t any more ridiculous than any other game he’s made.
Edit: for the record, I very much enjoy kojima games. I liked MGS games and Death Stranding 1. But there is no denying that his games are all weird as absolute fuck.
This will actually be the first ARPG that I play. I bought it and played 10 hours of the early access earlier this year and have decided to wait for full release.
You can still play the game offline and single player just fine. Multiplayer has never been a core feature for my playthroughs. I don’t think it ever worked particularly well.
It’s one of my favorite games, and now is a good time to play it! It gives me a similar feeling to Halo where humanity itself is on the backfoot and nearly extinct the whole time, yet enduring as best it can. The difference being that you’re controlling a city fighting the snowpocalypse rather than a cyber-soldier fighting aliens.
You should probably read up in the redemption of Hello Games / NMS. They have released update after update, dlc after dlc, all for free. The game is truly completely different from what it was. Not many games has gotten this good of a follow up after it’s rough launch.
I bet GTA VI will feel like all the others and not be too innovative because why? Their player base is just degenerates. The game design is to fuck each other and the NPCs up while giving you the feeling that you can do anything without taking responsibility.
I’m not that gamer though. I like complicated thinking while smashing and grabbing. GTA doesn’t have that so I made up my own scenarios (RP before it was a thing with my friends in person typically while drinking) and played my own game when San Andreas was out. IV and V were just nice updates to the same game SA was.
The stories were bland at best. The missions are bland too. Makes sense how RP got popular because the game itself is just tropes and cliches and stuff we already see IRL. They just capitalized on it. Rockstar isn’t some amazing company they just show you what you already see but in a video game. It’s not creative, it’s just observant and opining.
RDR2 was a great story but that’s where that game ends. It’s another sandboxed GTA in old west times. Nothing special.
You can’t choose your destiny. You just sit in a sandbox trapped and stimulated by simple dopamine triggers without puzzles to work the mind and skill. Kind of like real life.
Overall it’s not a bad series. For what it is it is fun. To act out and be irresponsible in a vidya game is for sure fun. Maybe it’s even a work of art? I would agree. But it’s not something that is really innovative at this juncture. It’s not profitable.
I can tell from these 6 words the only game with a semblance of sandbox elements you can think of is Minecraft.
Since GTA 3.
GTA is both a narrative series and a sandbox game series but is primarily a sandbox series. In every GTA game you can just do whatever you want once you get past the first 1 or 2 boxed-in missions. I think GTA V is the one that takes the longest to get you going.
since Grand Theft Auto. The story missions were always designed to tutorialize the sandbox. They just started getting a lot of attention for being better stories than you usually get from AAA action games, especially in the ‘00s.
It’s the same “innovativeness” as Starfield; it’s not pushing the boundaries of game design or anything but it’s a tried and tested strategy that clearly lots of people enjoy and it makes them a lot of money.
It’s not profitable? How? Rockstar is estimated to earn $8 billion from GTA VI… that seems lucrative to me?
Echoing bermuda@beehaw.org. “Degenerates”? You mean a games series that pushed the boundaries when it was new, truly pushed what open world meant, and that it could be done with large, crowded cities technically as well. Sure if you play them nowadays the might not brush any strokes and feel flat but the GTA series has been defining a game for generations where “everybody” in that generation had played and been fond of. 1-2-3, San Andreas, and vice city and the ilks. There wasnt really any competitors to that when they were released.
I’m going to guess you are right that it won’t be too innovative. Story wise they have never been innovative, nor pretended to be. They have pushed the boundaries of open world in both engineering and social commentary/satire.
But calling several generations of gamers who grew up with this “degenerates”. Hard to take you seriously and your attitude can eff right off
Agreed. 3, SA, and VC were so successful that when similar original games came out, most people just called them “GTA clones.” Just like with Doom back in the 90s, where any FPS was a Doom clone.
Also are we just going to ignore the whole thing with GTAV where you had three characters with intertwined stories that you could switch between (mostly) at will? Multiple protagonists has been done, but not really like that, not in such a living breathing manner that they managed to pull off. Rockstar also manages to fill the world with many interesting characters for the story to play with, they manage to take really simple gameplay and make it engaging all the way through.
They also added the heists which were a pretty good way of adding more meaning to the old school mission structure they continue to use and while ultimately I don’t think it had they impact they wanted it did add some flavor and interest to the gameplay. I’m an absolute fiend for heist films and that was a lot of fun for me.
These games are characterized by superficial simplicity underlaid with surprising complexity to craft a smooth experience. LA Noire is a prime example of that kind of design where it becomes very obvious how much the game has to run like well oiled gearworks to function at all and have the cases work as narrative. (developed by Team Bondi, but with the help of a lot of the R* studios including North)
Also they manage to do all this without a second of it feeling like a cynical product, it’s clear the people doing this love the topic of pop culture crime, films, stories, legends and want to take the player along for a fun ride. I don’t know at this point, with everything that happened with GTAO, which mostly feels like a cynical product, if that’s the R* making GTAVI, I sure hope it is though.
I tend to agree with what you’re saying about the shallowness of the story and missions. GTA5 is beautiful in terms of landscape and visual design, but there’s not much substance there. I like to play once in a while just to kind of wander around and enjoy the scenery, but it isn’t very engaging to me beyond that. To each their own I suppose.
I think the story of San Andreas was pretty nice. It’s very much scarface (in fact all the GTA’s were like this).
The online missions of GTA V were terrible IMO. They’re pretty degenerate yes. But the Singleplayer was nice. I also love the social commentary on US society. I really miss the roleplaying that people used to do in GTA:SA MP (third-party multiplayer mod) but of course rockstar had to go and kill it so they could sell their shark cards.
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