It seems cool. Thoughts?
Also is the directors cut the way to go if I do okay it?
i like when life deadman told woman manwomanman about how the nanomachines control the patriots after 2 hours into a cutscene that appears before the start menu
10/10
My favorite part is when President Mommy and Guillermo del Toro have to convince the sentient Monster Energy can to save the US using his own refuse.
Best game ever made. No storytelling will ever surpass this.
Yeah like others have said you really need to approach it differently. I think it's a masterpiece and there's nothing else like it, but it's not the most mechanically precise game nor always the most engaging. It's like a decompression tool sometimes, then other times it's like a transportation simulator. It's at its worst when it throws you into combat, then it's just a kinda clunky third person shooter. It's at its best when you're designing a route all the way across the map.
It really made me think about how little some developers put into simple things in a game, like just walking around. The main guy Sam is extremely well animated and responds to the environment in an intimate way. He stumbles, he falls over, he says "son of a bitch" when he lands on his face. He makes little grunts when the load is too heavy. He walks through water in a believable way.
A lot of developers would just ignore that, especially in an open world game. In most games walking around is just to get you somewhere else. In Death Stranding you're never separated from this feeling of walking being important. I dunno how to explain it well. I feel closer to Sam from Death Stranding than I have with most characters, just from little stuff like how you can get him to take a nap
In most games walking around is just to get you somewhere else. In Death Stranding you’re never separated from this feeling of walking being important. I dunno how to explain it well.
I do!
The action of getting from A to B has always been difficult for developers. The sprint button (with stamina) has made its way into every single game for a reason - it gives players a thing to do when travelling from A to B. It's only a minor thing, pressing sprint, managing sprint stamina, waiting, pressing sprint again... But it's something that engages players a little bit more than just holding a stick in a direction, so it has become necessary in ALL games. Sprint isn't about getting from A to B faster, if that were the case you'd just change the default movement speed to make it faster, it's about the engagement even if small.
Death Stranding takes this issue of engagement in moving from A to B and seeks to make that the entire game. It takes the concept of the sprint meter being a method of engaging the player to make the movement from A to B more interesting and expands on it drastically, it makes the entire game about the journey and the engagement in-between rather than the destinations, where every single step is something the player carefully decided upon, where balancing themselves is an act of constant engagement, where every meter traveled is a careful thought. All of this is like the stamina and sprint meter, but expanded enormously.
Thank you for the explanation by the way! I'm gonna start telling people this, since I really do cherish developer attention to basic stuff like walking and engagement
It's a really really fun thing to look at. I don't think many developers even consciously realise why the sprint mechanic is mandatory in games these days. Once you realise the sprint mechanics is about engaging monkey-brain in the in-between parts even in the smallest way you realise that the entirety of Death Stranding is built around understanding this.
It's the same for climbing mechanics too. Climbing a wall sucks ass but Breath of the Wild added a stamina bar and a dash mechanic to it which is basically just a sprint mechanic for vertical movement and suddenly climbing up a wall is significantly less painful for the player. It's not FUN, but neither is travelling from A to B in any other way, but it's more engaging and that stops it feeling horrible.
If more developers understood the mechanics at such a deep level then we'd see more focus on expanding in these areas to really fill in the gaps that make certain parts of games boring as hell. Walking from A to B is not as tedious in real life as it is in a videogame because in real life your brain is engaged in hundreds of little ways that it isn't in a game, filling in the gaps for more engaging mechanics gives monkey-brain more juice that stops it feeling bored.
I would argue that the combat is so easily broken it's not as much of a nuisance once you know what to do. I actually really enjoy getting into it with the MULEs just because smacking them in the face with their own packages never gets old.
I was thinking more like the parts where they throw you into WW2 or you're fighting bosses. That always felt really tedious and jarring. The only boss fight I remember liking was with Higgs.
Get it cheap or on game pass.
Personally I'm not into 90 minute cut scenes and I couldn't get into it. I play games to PLAY the game dangnabbit.
I wanted to love it, but I ran into the same issue. The cutscenes are cool in their own right, but they got in the way of finding a consistent interactive flow. I'd get to the end of a cutscene like "Oh, I guess it's my turn now. What am I supposed to be doing again?" I can see why some people would be really into it, but it's not for me.
Real Death Stranding fans always skip the cutscenes to get back to that sweet, sweet package delivery content
Depends on your tolerance for Kojima bullshit.
I was wildly curious about the gameplay because it wasn't something that had been done before, but after a few hours of his extremely long and nonsensical cutscenes I just uninstalled it. Also the gameplay bored me to tears anyway.
Its on gamepass though if you have access I would recommend playing it that way.
Do you like inventory management? Do you really enjoy fiddling with the briefcase in Resident Evil 4?
Do you like terrain traversal? Are you the type of person who either disables or never uses quick travel in open world games?
Do you have a high tolerance for silliness and pretentious writing?
If you've answered 'no' to any of these, then skip it. If you've answered yes to all of these then go download and play it right now.
For what it's worth I answered yes to all of the above and I really, really enjoyed the gameplay of Death Stranding but I found the storyline to be disappointing in a lot of ways.
If you are expecting some really cool mysterious cosmic horror, uh, temper your expectations on that front. Don't be like me.
If you are expecting some really cool mysterious cosmic horror, uh, temper your expectations on that front. Don’t be like me.
But once you recognize the secret of Kojima's writing, you will be ashamed of your words and deeds.
Isn't the plot basically identical to the Oscar-bait movie that Zoidberg, his uncle, and Calculon make in the Futurama "That's Lobstertainment!" episode?
No, you see your mom who is also the President who is also the end of all things made flesh started the Death Stranding after she shot you and your dad and felt bad about it and brought you back to life, and there are ghosts everywhere who make a nuke go off if they eat a person. You can make the ghosts go away by peeing on them or kill them with your blood. Anyway there's a guy in a robot skeleton mask named Die-Hardman and he needs you to know that delivering packages is super important, also Guillermo Del Toro wants you to join him in the shower. And then Troy Baker says "We're all of us part of the Death Stranding." Actual direct quote.
You left out the part about the unskippable Blitzball cutscenes, and how your dad was a pro before he turned into a whale
Alternative to question one: Do you mind pressing Y on the cargo menu? No? Then do that and the game will auto-sort cargo for you.
I love that that started off as a meme, but it's legitimately true. For once a developer wasn't just lying about their game being unique.
Yes, and yes. Director's cut adds a bunch of items which is cool, it's an amazing game that's an interesting meditation on work under late capitalism. And I mean meditation because it's really about the vibe/visuals for me (and they're extremely good for both)
It's just new items to build/use- I know on PC you can get the director's cut DLC for like $10 if you have the base game. There's a few new missions and stuff in there which is pretty cool, but I wouldn't say it's like essential for the game. More of a nice to have than anything I guess.
Death Stranding is a beautiful game, a rich game, an interesting game, but not always a fun game. The game is best played when in the mindset of “ready to experience a game” rather than “mastering mechanics and systems”. I dig Death Stranding (and it’s some most uncut raw Kojima one can imagine) but it’s really a game that I think if you’re not feeling it after the first hour or so put it down.
There is an aspect of mastering systems, the path generation system (paths you constantly walk get easier to traverse over time), the highway building system, and the Zipline system all help make your progression actually have some weight.
You start off delivering 4 boxes in like an hour and end up delivering 20 in 5 minutes. When you build a good Zipline network, you can traverse half the map in like 2 minutes. And with the trucks you can park at zip points and mass deliver cargo without ever touching the ground.
For me that build up was really fun. I will say that over time it did start to wear off, but the mastery portion was definitely there.
It's one of the few games I bothered getting all the achievements for. The gameplay loops were really compelling and relaxing, so I looked for more excuses to keep playing.
Also, I ugly cried at the ending.
I got my fill of the game before the directors cut came out on PC. I think it adds extra things like racing and some stealth gameplay? Might be neat if it doesn't cost much more, but the base game is a very complete experience.
Yeah for all of its storytelling faults, the game actually manages to create some good emotional moments.
Directors cut adds a bunch of things if you like the game. The downside - you can’t be sure it’s worth the extra unless you play it.
I like it
I personally loved it. If you're looking for something that wants to do something different & has a mind-blowing story, this is for you.
