Kojima Productions - Death Stranding feat. Norman Reedus

[Recon]

They claim it's a "new experience" type genre, but it really just looks like a mix of different ones (mostly survival). I need more gameplay.

 

[Magnus]

This might be the most realistic looking game I've ever seen. I feel like if someone didn't know it was a game and watched the trailer they could mistake it for a film.

I trust Kojima with all my heart. I know this game will be phenomenal.

I think Ghost of Tsushima looks better. And also The Last of Us 2. Death Stranding has that uncanny valley look.

 

[Ballad of Caius]

In this very recent interview, Kojima speaks some truths towards society and video gaming marketing:

Hideo Kojima Explains The Secrecy Around Death Stranding

“We live in a time of social networks,” said Kojima while speaking to Variety. “In this time, people just want immediate answers, but not only answers, they also want to know what they feel. This is good, this is bad. This is a game I should like. This is a game I shouldn’t like. They want answers for what they should think.” - Hideo Kojima

Nowadays, people are too bandwagon-ish and feel of an urge to either push something in favor or against it because "it's the popular thing to do", and not because they outright guine feel like it.

Kojima continues by noting that the modern day marketing of games is a missed opportunity, with publishers and developers deciding to reveal far too much before release, which in turn destroys the most integral part of what makes a video game a video game: the interactive journey.

This. It is of my personal opinion that video game projects shouldn't be revealed so soon. Only do so when they're a year from being done.

 

[Max]

I love Hideo Kojima. Not only do I love his work, but he just seems to be such an intelligent and genuine dude.

 

[Ballad of Caius]

I love Hideo Kojima. Not only do I love his work, but he just seems to be such an intelligent and genuine dude.

Yes. He's a very artsy person. He's always striving for art and pushing the limits of the industry. The very first MGS game was of the first games to feature voice acting, and the one more closer to realism.

 

[TruestSyn]

Death Stranding's new trailer really had me disappointed and I really felt like I don't want to play it at this point. Nothing about the new trailer appealed to me at all, not even the fact that the monsters fast forward time on contact, which should otherwise be a pretty cool idea (even though it's been done before)

 

[Ballad of Caius]

Death Stranding's new trailer really had me disappointed and I really felt like I don't want to play it at this point. Nothing about the new trailer appealed to me at all, not even the fact that the monsters fast forward time on contact, which should otherwise be a pretty cool idea (even though it's been done before)

The trailer is meant to be like that. It's the way Kojima presents his ideas. He doesn't spoil his work. Expecting a more thrilling trailer as we get closer to the game's intense marketing campaign.

 

[TruestSyn]

The trailer is meant to be like that. It's the way Kojima presents his ideas. He doesn't spoil his work. Expecting a more thrilling trailer as we get closer to the game's intense marketing campaign.

Eh, I hope so. I remember being pretty hype for Silent Hills with very little info and most MGS games though. Even from the beginning.

 

[Max]

Eh, I hope so. I remember being pretty hype for Silent Hills with very little info and most MGS games though. Even from the beginning.

I think the thing that's different here is that Metal Gear already had a fantastic track record with each main entry before 5 almost always having mostly universal praise, and Silent Hills had a playable teaser that was considered genuinely very scary to most with a trifecta of big names working on it and an atmosphere that harkened back to Silent Hill's glory days.

With Death Stranding, it's literally a brand new IP with nothing to go on but trailers, coming from a man who wants to reveal as little of his work as possible until the game is ready. I mean, do you remember MGS2? You play as Snake in that game for, what, 2 hours? Raiden was a HUGE secret, everybody thought it was going to be a whole new Snake game and didn't know otherwise until the game dropped, it was insane. Kojima will show us only what he wants to show us until we can experience it for ourselves.

 

[Ballad of Caius]

Oh, God. Yes! I remember the Raiden "fiasco", haha. I think part of the reason people hate him is because of that "Snaketease". Hell, I even think there were segments where they used Snake in the demo in parts that were Raiden's.

I also imagine that may have had to do with the rewrite Sons of Liberty got. MGS4's intro was originally the plot MGS2 was going to revolve around: Liquid Snake was sighted in the Middle East. But with Kojima wanting to expand the MGS universe, he went with the Patriots in order to do that.

 

[Magnus]

MGS2 was always going to be about Raiden. There's not only a lot of subtext, but a lot of meta narrative to it as well. It was supposed to be Kojima's last MGS game. Snake was passing the torch to Raiden, as Kojima was passing the torch to his team. The entire way the game is set up with the Tanker visually representing everything people expected from a traditional sequel featuring Snake, and then the Plant being completely different on a surface level but literally going through a checklist of the events of the previous game using it as blueprint for the successor which is also woven into the story. The message that anyone can do what Snake/Kojima did with the right training and under the right circumstances, including how the player is Snake regardless because you, much like Raiden who is also your new avatar, beat Shadow Moses in VR (just like you did). I'm just scratching the surface here, but you get the point.

Kojima kept everything about Raiden hidden from the public. He wasn't shown in any trailer or demo. Kojima also specifically instructed the gaming media to not mention him, and they obliged. He's not on the box art either. It'd be hard to pull off something like this today.

 

[Max]

I can't imagine anything like that being pulled off in our day and age, it's truly amazing. I went through the other day after we talked about all of this and read through old reviews of the game and for real, everyone was very vague about the story and even urged people to stay away from any game spoilers and anything about the story before they got to experience it for themselves.

I still remember my first experience with MGS2. My friend and I loved the first game and had three playthroughs on it that we played through together alone (so not counting solo playthroughs). I asked my grandma if we could get him MGS2 for Christmas since it had just come out, and she actually said yes. I stayed the night with him on New Years Eve and we exchanged gifts and popped that bad boy in, we contoller passed the shit out of that game, and then it happened. We beat the tanker, started the plant, and we were Raiden. He looked just as puzzled as I felt, and we didn't play for all of 5 minutes before he goes "who is this guy and why are we playing as him?" We were both definitely taken off guard and just wanting Snake back.

Needless to say MGS2 is a masterpiece and I love the game and Raiden, but I'll never deny being one of those thunderstruck fans who was just WAITING to play as Snake again, especially getting my hopes up when he was quickly reintroduced into the plot as Pliskin.

 

[Magnus]

That was Kojima's way of questioning video game conventions. The Tanker was expected, whereas the Plant was unexpected. But he made sure to drive home the point that at the end of the day Snake was not all that special and that it wasn't about him, if you truly cared about the games beyond surface level. It's a totally normal reaction to expect old favourites to return, and to question new blood (until it's no longer new, and it'll gradually get higher approval with age).

MGS2 is easily my favourite MGS, and favourite Kojima game. There are just so many layers to it. I hope DS is closer to that, than to the trainwreck that was TPP.

 

[Max]

I don't blame Kojima for the Phantom Pain, unless you want to blame hin for his ambition exceeding funds. I really do blame Konami for forcing him to shove out his incomplete work, he clearly had so much more he wanted to do with it and honestly it probably leaves a sick feeling in his stomach knowing he released an incomplete game like that. I loved the Phantom Pain, at least I love what we got of it. It's infortunate taht as a whole, it isn't whole though. I think Death Stranding will be different.

And I have a super hard time choosing my favorite Metal Gear, and it usually comes down to which one did I play last? MGS1, 2, and 3 are all phenomenel in their own ways and for different reasons, and 4 was just the perfect conclusion to tie them all together. I'm also a big Peace Walker fan, honestly it's just a fantastic series.

 

[Ballad of Caius]

My favorite MGS are those under the writing of Tomokazu Fukushima. After that, the series' writing went to shit. The only decent MGS that was written after MGS3 was Peace Walker. I suspect that MGSV was going to be a trilogy, with TPP being a two-in-one game, and it's a shame that MGSV ended as it did, because I thought it looked like a return to good writing. And I was eager for Kojima to finish the MGSV project, because they were open to reimagining and remaking the very first MGS.

 

[Magnus]

I blame both Konami and Kojima for The Phantom Pain. Konami shackled Kojima to this series for too long. Of course the way they treated him during its development was not fine, but then I also feel like we need to call a spade a spade. Kojima definitely phoned it in with this game. The plot had more holes in it than a Swiss cheese. It managed to make Ocelot, of all characters, boring! That's quite an accomplishment. The only somewhat memorable character was Huey, but only because of the connection with Peace Walker. They threw all those other great characters from that out the window in Ground Zeros, and replaced them with a bunch of bland characters and Dr. Evil... eh, I mean Skullface. Yes, the gameplay was great but also very repetitive. I was expecting Kojima to pull a MGS4 for the Big Boss story arc - a game that was a bit bloated with exposition but really answered every single question once and for all, closing the door for any further sequels. Instead we got a game that explained a plot hole in a MSX game and really nothing else about the whole MGS universe. It's not a good MGS without any memorable characters or lots of cutscenes and exposition. Yeah, no... those tapes don't make up for the lack of proper cutscenes. And then stupid stuff like the cutscene with the awkward silence between Venom Snake and Skullface that tried to pull a repeat of the infamous "ladder". No. Just no. What a mess of a game.

I really hope not being forced to work on MGS means he gets to be creative again.

 

[Ballad of Caius]

It's not "new" anymore, since it was put online weeks ago, but Death Stranding got a pretty interesting trailer. So, here:

Death Stranding - TGS 2018 The Man in the Golden Mask Trailer [HD 1080P]

It's called "The Man in the Golden Mask, Troy Baker". Pretty straightforward introduction of a character, that's voiced but a pretty well-known voice-actor that has voice-acted... pretty much every single game? lol kidding, but you get the point, haha.

Also, the trailer's title reminds me of the movie "The Man in the Iron Mask", which was one of Leonardo DiCaprio's first movies. A pretty interesting film, and I wouldn't put it past Kojima to have done it in a sort of similine to the movie, seeing as how Hideo is a sort of movie/cinema kind of guy.

...or I'm just looking too much at it, haha.

Nothing, I saw the trailer and really liked. I'm not "hyped" for this game, since I feel it's a looong ways from release, but eh, still enjoying the bits of updates we're getting, like... once or twice a year? Haha. Better than getting spoiled by other devs... *glares at SE*

 

[Recon]

That trailer definitely raised my interest more. But like the general public, and me, were all so confused on what this game actually is. We have ideas, but nothing is really concrete.

 

[Ballad of Caius]

That trailer definitely raised my interest more. But like the general public, and me, were all so confused on what this game actually is. We have ideas, but nothing is really concrete.

Up until now, the haters are calling it a "walking simulator".

 

[Ballad of Caius]

Sooo... this game is closer to release than we thought?

Hideo Kojima Reveals Japanese Death Stranding Voice Acting Recording Begins - Siliconera