I finally gave Death Stranding a chance this week, and as a die hard Metal Gear fan since 1998, I can say that the writing is complete and utter shit. I had already been disappointed by the lack of dialogue in MGS5, but DS really took it down a notch further. I can't begin to describe how bad it really is, from an inconsquential and random meeting with another courier within the first minute of the game and immediate introduction to the underwhelming horror elements of the game, to boring exposition delivered by a short-lived corpse disposal worker, and another boring meeting with your mother, the president, whom you the player have ZERO emotional attachment to. The game is so poorly written that I honestly believe the rumours that the earlier MGS games were written by someone else. The game is boring, and it isn't because you play a delivery boy delivering packages, the gameplay is kind of fine, it's because the writing is totally incompetent, which is a shame because the world and some of the ideas are very interesting. Total waste of a good cast.
Death Stranding would work better if the story was told like Dark Souls. There's some kind of apocalypse there, you don't see much of what happened, but you can see bits and pieces, and you can try to put them together in your head.
Didn't Kojima have a long-time writing partner (who I believe was mostly behind the CODEC conversations, at least in MGS1 which makes a lot of sense given how much of the backstory of, say, Revolver Ocelot given in them doesn't really gel with the stuff introduced in later games) who split between MGS3 and 4?
I think Peace Walker was a vast improvement over 4 and closer to the tone and feel of MGS3, which is not to say that it was mindblowingly amazing storytelling. It was very silly and anime, even by the series' standards, it just happened to be silly in a really likeable way.
I got the feeling from MGSV that Hideo Kojima was self-conscious about the the series' overall campy reputation as well as the insane, over-the-top verbosity of MGS4 and tried to prove he could make a serious game that wasn't just a goofy meme, and Death Stranding looks to me like him going further in that direction, unaware that no matter what he does he'll always be a hack.
My own pet theory is that PW, being a smaller PSP title maybe wasn't as tightly overseen by Kojima and that the story might've been written by others who tried to emulate the series from back when it used to be good.
What I was mostly getting at with Peace Walker is that it's goofy as shit. Also problematic I guess since Snake can go on a date with an underage schoolgirl and have sex in a cardboard box
I finally gave Death Stranding a chance this week, and as a die hard Metal Gear fan since 1998, I can say that the writing is complete and utter shit. I had already been disappointed by the lack of dialogue in MGS5, but DS really took it down a notch further. I can't begin to describe how bad it really is, from an inconsquential and random meeting with another courier within the first minute of the game and immediate introduction to the underwhelming horror elements of the game, to boring exposition delivered by a short-lived corpse disposal worker, and another boring meeting with your mother, the president, whom you the player have ZERO emotional attachment to. The game is so poorly written that I honestly believe the rumours that the earlier MGS games were written by someone else. The game is boring, and it isn't because you play a delivery boy delivering packages, the gameplay is kind of fine, it's because the writing is totally incompetent, which is a shame because the world and some of the ideas are very interesting. Total waste of a good cast.
Death Stranding would work better if the story was told like Dark Souls. There's some kind of apocalypse there, you don't see much of what happened, but you can see bits and pieces, and you can try to put them together in your head.
I disagree with everything you said in the strongest possible terms.
Didn't Kojima have a long-time writing partner (who I believe was mostly behind the CODEC conversations, at least in MGS1 which makes a lot of sense given how much of the backstory of, say, Revolver Ocelot given in them doesn't really gel with the stuff introduced in later games) who split between MGS3 and 4?
I think Peace Walker was a vast improvement over 4 and closer to the tone and feel of MGS3, which is not to say that it was mindblowingly amazing storytelling. It was very silly and anime, even by the series' standards, it just happened to be silly in a really likeable way.
I got the feeling from MGSV that Hideo Kojima was self-conscious about the the series' overall campy reputation as well as the insane, over-the-top verbosity of MGS4 and tried to prove he could make a serious game that wasn't just a goofy meme, and Death Stranding looks to me like him going further in that direction, unaware that no matter what he does he'll always be a hack.
My own pet theory is that PW, being a smaller PSP title maybe wasn't as tightly overseen by Kojima and that the story might've been written by others who tried to emulate the series from back when it used to be good.
What would you consider amazing story telling in a game. Not trolling, genuine.
Deadly Premonition
What I was mostly getting at with Peace Walker is that it's goofy as shit. Also problematic I guess since Snake can go on a date with an underage schoolgirl and have sex in a cardboard box