How did Death Stranding become so hype? Geoff Keighley and others in the video game industry have put Kojima on this pedestal where he’s supposedly this artistic genius when honestly I feel Kojima peaked with Metal Gear Solid 1 & 2 and Snake Eater. And before I get crucified by his cult following for my opinion I have played every single game Metal Gear game in the franchise with the exception of number four and Acid on the PSP. And my reasoning behind it? He had a bunch of random somewhat incoherent ideas and injected that into his stories and ran with it. And this made every game after Snake Eater in even more outlandish than the last, and we ended up with him writing himself into many corners during the last few games in the Metal Gear Solid franchise.
Then adding unnecessary and lengthy plot twists in every installment of his games to dodge the very same plot holes he created in the first place. The problem is compounded by the fact that Kojima has no reason to improve on his work, with heaped praise from the industry and being lauded as a genius. So he has no real reason to change it up, so I expected Death Stranding to be more of the same. And now he has his own production company “Kojima Productions” funded with the millions from Sony, so we can only assume that without a guiding hand or someone to look over his shoulder to reign in his more outlandish “silliness” we can expect even more of the same. None of the programmers. Not the directors. Not the actors.
Nobody but Kojima really understands what is going on. Hell, I doubt even he understands what is going on. That alone should give you pause and cause for concern. And I think he has become a victim of his own infamy in the industry, the media storm that surrounded him when he left Konami absolutely blew up and everyone expected him to do something absolutely amazing. So he is making it up as he goes along, not to mention that Kojima has a long history of projects that go wildly over budgets that aren’t always justified by the sales numbers that his creations bring in. Death Stranding is going to reveal how much of the shit storms surrounding his past projects especial Metal Gear Solid 5 was tied to Konami’s influence. And how much of it was Kojima and his ego.
And having said all of that haven’t we learned anything from No Man’s Sky? What do we know about the game so far? Absolutely nothing other than an absolutely incoherent 9-minute trailer with lavish CG, confusing, incomprehensible mess of a story and with zero gameplay that people will gladly lap up just because of Kojima’s name being attached to the project. Let that sink in for a moment. He had almost 10 minutes to build us a story introduce characters and showcase us some gameplay. Sooner or later this game has to make at least an ounce of sense, how many contextless trailers do we need before we reach a point where we have something resembling a story? Or is it fine because Kojima gets a pass since most of the industry and his fans few him as a “visionary” developer?
Ever heard the term esoteric or auteur?
If you want gameplay try some other game. You are asking David Lynch to become Christopher Nolan. People are fan of Kojima not regardless of the things you described but exactly because of those reasons.
In fact I'm one of the people who though gameplay was dragging down the experience and went to YouTube for the codec conversations and hours worth cutscenes.
Not everything needs to fit your neat little packaged product. I recommend you play https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beginner's_Guide
Which is a perfect 10 game for me. It's a 90min walking simulator about a person narrating and guiding the player through esoterically designed video game levels. It's from the guy behind The Stanley Parable.
All your Memes and and referenced articles made me love and get hyped about Death Stranding even more. Your post is practically promotional material in my eyes.
By skipping the gameplay (by your own admission) then you are admitting that his games weren't that groundbreaking to begin with.
I'm personally not into stealth. That doesn't mean Kojima wasn't groundbreaking. The guy invented both stealth and cutscene heavy serious storytelling in video games. Inventing a genre sounds groundbreaking to me.
He did not invent the stealth genre unfortunately, that was Manbiki Shounen (Shoplifting Boy). Other games also improved the genre including Castle Wolfenstein, Infiltrator and the grand father of all of them Tenchu: Stealth Assassins. Those pre-date his games by years and months.
Wolfenstein 3D has been called the "grandfather of 3D shooters" but it was the 3rd FPS from id Software. I guess people only remember things starting from the first killer app. There have been digital currencies before Bitcoin, but none really took off.
The Stanley Parable is a game changer 🤓😎. Pun intended...?
As a great fan of (most of) the Metal Gear games, I'm very skeptical about Death Stranding. I do have the idea that Kojima has no idea what his game is gonna be about.
That said, I'm completely fine with that. You sound like Kojima owes you (and the public at large) some kind of explanation or justification for his 'art'.
It is kinda silly to see everyone so hyped about pretty much nothing. But hey, that's not my problem.
No one wants or demands that he owes us anything, the problem is he gets a free pass because of his name if it was any other developer people would have started asking questions.
People do tend to cut him some more slack than others, I agree. But in my opinion he's earned it.