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.
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
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.