WTF Is Death Stranding ?

  • Banned

    HELLO fellow allies. Let's be honest here. Do we really think this game would be getting all this buzz and traffic if KOJIMAS name wasn't on it ? I can't stand all this hush and secrecy and lack of showing what the game really is and lack of real game play. All I see is weirdly long cut scenes and long boring walking sim. I bet KOJIMA is the kind of person that likes to SMELL his own FARTS , and then he'll ask " If you Ricked it ? " maybe that was transfaring ? I'm the only feeling this ? Chime in fellow Allies ?
    To any mod, I feel and think this should be it's own thread, and not be added or closed. This thread is to show people's frustration with Kojima and the gaming worlds clut to him.

  • @acidtrip-69 said in WTF Is Death Stranding ?:


    Yes. Mads Mikkelsen’s name is also on it. That would generate buzz even if this was a dime-a-dozen 2D side scroller.

    @acidtrip-69 said in WTF Is Death Stranding ?:


    I love it. 10/10 marketing, never been more excited.

    @acidtrip-69 said in WTF Is Death Stranding ?:

    I bet KOJIMA is the kind of person that likes to SMELL his own FARTS , and then he'll ask " If you Ricked it ? " maybe that was transfaring ? I'm the only felling this ? Chime in fellow Allies ?

    You are probably the only person thinking of Kojima’s farts, yes. Thinly veiled racism aside, logically, why would he ask if somebody else liked it when he is the only one smelling...?

  • All I know is that this marketing campaign just makes me less and less willing to give it a chance. I went from "this is a bit pretentious but I'll buy it" to "gtfo".

    Not a fan of Kojima, he's great at some stuff but pretty mediocre at others.

  • Per Kojima himself -

    To echo what my friend @El-Shmiablo has said in the past: the word pretentious is pretty misunderstood and misused. Kojima is widely respected by his peers and is widely respected by gamers world wide. He has celebrities, directors, entire studios visit Kojima Productions. It's networking, its a photo op, its done in every industry including entertainment. It doesn't make him pretentious and it certainly doesn't make Death Stranding pretentious either.

    Per Death Stranding (also as El Shim has noted in the past) -

    A team having some (any) semblance of care for the story and creating a narrative tone within the game works does not equate to pretentiousness. Is it uncommon for a video game story to take itself seriously despite some things that seem ridiculous or absurd? Nope, not really... Halo does it, Mass Effect does it, Final Fantasy does it, Bioshock does it.

    Why do games like: Life Is Strange, The Last of Us, and God of War get labelled pretentious when these other ones don't? I think it is because they absolutely nail the narrative tone when other games do not. So they succeed in their attempt to care about the story, not be cheesy and all that, but they get dragged for it.

    Per the marketing -

    I get it... its gone on a long time now. But again, making your game mysterious and having nothing but extremely well made trailers isn't pretentious; it is just caring about your product. You can also do some ancillary research and see that a lot of info on the game is actually out there. Like actually about how it plays, the world, the online, how dying works. Just look it up.

  • Since there was already a topic about Death Stranding and a similar conversation started there too, I suggest merging the two topics, otherwise we'll all repeat the same thing in two different places.

  • Banned

    @axel I'm not looking to merge the topics. I do not want a lot of " fan boys " flaming. I feel this Topic is more about the frustration with the way KOJIMA runs his operation, and yes I know he's free to be able to run it how he want. It doesn't mean we can't criticize. The threads ARE different.
    Also I'm not a fan how people pray to the church of KOJIMA and how this kind of cult mindset is bad for the gaming community and industry in the long run. Why don't more people talk it ?

  • @acidtrip-69 It's not like this is a hidden topic. The people who respond here will be the same people who respond in the other Death Stranding thread.

  • I think you desperately want people to agree with you about this.
    As Dipset and others have already addressed, you are misrepresenting rather large topics regarding Kojima and his works either because you do not understand them or do not care to. Maybe you just want to be funny, to which I say please try harder.
    Kojima is not pretentious. His games are not pretentious. You are the only one who is smelling their own farts here.

  • If Kojima is your issue, you prob should have made that the title. As it stands, particularly considering the title, this is just more Death Stranding. +1 for merge.

    Personally, I've found the last two showings of this game to be far less frustrating. They've shown some gameplay, and not just walking. We've seen enough that I kind of have a feel for how it will play, which I appreciate. I also felt that yesterday was Kojima's best showing in regards to Death Stranding. He was not cryptic at all and actually almost explained too much, in my opinion.

    I was also pretty frustrated with the marketing and how it was celebrated when there was no gameplay shown. I still don't know if it will be a game for me but this is a weird time to call it out after we just finally got what I would consider the first major reveal of the actual game.

  • Youtube Video

    Boring as hell. I miss Kojima back when he still made relatively low budget games, before his ego had been stroked so much.

  • yeah gameplay video looks incredibly boring. almost looks like a baby care walking simulator.

  • @acidtrip-69 said:


    Coming from the perspective of someone who wishes their favorite franchises would market a little to alot less, to not give absolutely everything away before launch as they often do, I disagree with this sentiment and think you're just pushing developers / publishers more towards completely spoiling their games to "sell people on it" before launch. If you're not on board yet from all you've seen, you can just not buy it at launch Day 1 and wait for word of mouth, streams, and reviews to see more about it if that's what you need to pull the trigger yourself.

    From a Kojima standpoint, I also remember when Metal Gear Solid 5 came out people going "whoa, Kojima showed us ALOT in those trailers before launch, maybe too much!". It appeared really mysterious and sparse, but the trailers were actually loaded with tons of "spoilers" once you understood the context of what was being shown by playing. What we've seen is Death Stranding so far could likely be the same deal. He's shown probably over thirty minutes of Death Stranding stuff so far collectively, shown off a bunch of mechanics, introduced a ton of characters, etc. The product has been presented, and Kojima doesn't have to spoil the entire thing before he releases it if he doesn't want to, just as you don't have to buy this if what he's chosen to show hasn't appealed to you.

  • @mbun

    Pretty much what you said is what I think is true.

    MGS V had awesome marketing and the game seemed mysterious. We played it in context and realized we saw the entire game in spoiler trailers. Everybody was mad, so now Kojima does more vague trailers and everybody is still mad.

    Think about how many bad or bland trailers and marketing there is out there. I just watched some Gears 5 horde video and it was a generic multiplayer trailer that has the awkward angles that a free cam would have. Some popular UK hip hop song playing in the back. Generic large titles on-screen. Bland blah blah. It makes no sense to me why Death Stranding gets vilified for trying hard and having exciting, well made trailers. Because bad ones are dime-a-dozen.

    Plus we can wait until reviews. One review is out and it'll describe everything about how this game works. You don't have to pre-order it. People can wait.

  • Cult following and hating will always be a thing and there always will be game/console/feature/creator/streamer/etc which popularity will keep you puzzled. It's simply because different people have different life experiences and different perception of the world. You probably will never change their minds and they probably will never change yours, because one side’s arguments seems insignificant to another’s. That doesn’t mean that one side is right and another is wrong, they just look at the same thing from different angles.

    Sure, it’s a shame that Death Stranding marketing doesn’t cater to your taste. But I’m sure there are other games that do. Just focus your attention on something else and let fans praise this game outside. If you’ll hear something new that will make your interested – great; if not – that’s fine too.

    Personally, I don’t care about Death Stranding in the slightest, but if I’ll hear something of interest in EZA’s review, I’ll put it in the queue.

  • Banned

    Some people in this thread are saying that we do know more now. SURE, but remember it's been like a year and half or more and we still only get the tiniest bit of info. If info was food Kojima would have starved us to DEATH by now.

  • @acidtrip-69

    Dude GTA IV and GTA V didn’t even show gameplay until launch

  • Banned

    @dipset but we all ready have an idea what the gameplay might look like cuz there have been GTA games before. This DEATH Stranding game is being marketed as all new kind of game so we still didn't have a clue cuz there was nothing to compare it to.

  • @acidtrip-69 So it isn't that you haven't been given the information, just that you are choosing to be willfully ignorant of the information you have been given.
    Got it.

  • @acidtrip-69

    I mean... GTA IV was on new hardware and most information about the gameplay was sprinkled around in magazines while trailers were scarce, didn't show actual gameplay, and looked like a major departure from the past games.

    The info we got in the magazines was widely different from the game we actually got (i.e. you'd be able to make friends with anybody, you could recruit NPCs to do missions with you, you could commit crimes without consequence if unseen, and more). So in this specific example, we reeeeeeally could have used a gameplay demo to validate that.

    My whole point is that you get what you get in marketing. It doesn't make a developer pretentious to withhold info, but with that said, a good handful of info has been out there for months now.

  • @dipset

    To be fair that stuff for GTA4 might have been planned at one point (like the upstate new York extension of the map that was canceled pretty early on)

    That said like Shimbo says information is out there, op is choosing to ignore it, and the few things that haven't been fully explained yet (the weird WW2/Vietnam limbo stuff) is probably better kept a mystery for now.

    I mean using a different medium who here hates watching a trailer for some movie only to realize all the good bits or massive spoilers are right there in the middle (watch ther Terminator Salvation trailer for the biggest example)

  • Even Jeff, who played a bit of the game, says he has no clue.