the weakness of this game is itās death stranding 2, and all the things that were novel and strange in the first game are just the death stranding formula now, even being dragged to hell to fight a mysterious soldier 3 times. and the first game had the all time triple god tier move of feeling and playing just like the last metal gear, only now youāre just a delivery man and your bullets are worthless (unless you use them on hell ghosts and only by first throwing a blood grenade once you get those and shooting through the blood mist to coat your bullets in blood), because death is too costly in the death stranding world. they donāt try to pull that move again, you just start with bullets that safely work on everything now, instead of it taking some time to get convenient access to different weaponry that dealt with the different enemy types.
interestingly though itās late in the game you can unlock lethal options on humans this time (with a cheat code) and a means for disposing of bodies (though it didnāt seem that convenient of one either). the first game I was terrified of like my truck rolling down a hill over some bandit I knocked out and killing them, this time every time I got a warning about the threat level of the bandit camp next to the motherhood increasing I kind of wanted to experiment and see how long theyād stay gone if I murdered everyone there. then I think well what about that nice ex-bandit lady you meet early on, maybe thereās someone like that down there, then I think no these arenāt knock out and rob bandits these are the lethally armed with no regard for voidout bandits, they signed on the dotted line for this.
even if the novelty of the world is lessened itās still death stranding, itās like elden ring or hitman, if they just wanted to make the same game in new places forever Iāll be there every time. itās only a little disappointing in this case cause itās kojima and the game did have a lot of itās own striking imagery and moments I thought, even if it was paced and played out near identically to the first one.
late period kojima and post covid refn and 3000 years/furiosa miller seem like a great fit for each other.
incredibly thereās a post-game option to have the game world be in the slightly more peaceful and easier state it would logically be in having achieved victory, or leave it as it was in the late game. thatās pretty great
I weep for anyone whose insecurities and posturing canāt allow themselves to lighten up and enjoy the story in these games without a shield of irony and are forced by their brain to sit around being annoyed about absurd grievances like characters not talking or behaving like real human beings or worse, kojima āgoing to partiesā or āstanding next a famous people in photosā for some reason. no one else is doing anything like this
I wonder what physint and od are going to be like. physint is supposed to be a return to tactical espionage. is it going to be like a 6-8 hour metal gear game or is that allowed in this economy anymore. are all late era kojima games going to be open worlds with near mute protagonists where you slowly unlock upgrades to make life easier.
I really need to sit down and write out my thoughts properly but have been insanely busy but
I think the fact that this is a sequel inherently hurts it. Even if it did refine or go in a new direction I feel no real reason we had to return to this world. DS1s strength by a mile is turning walking into a compelling planning routine to execute while the devs throw strange experiences and obstacles in your way. This game asks āwould you like to do the same thing again but with timefall and voidouts trivialised awayā?
Itās like if we had Noby Noby Boy 2, should we have stretched?
So to follow up on what I asked earlier, if there is anything here for someone who played a few hours of the original and noped out, the answer seems to be no?
I like how Dollman mostly seems to exist to voice lines Sam wouldāve said in the first game, like he found himself in a mgs5 situation again but didnāt just want to have the main character speak very little.
yeah this stuff was also in the first one and it rules, itās one of my favorite things heās inexplicably chosen to latch onto
Itās like Kojima thought just giving his good friend an impressive Aardman Animations-style dollsona would be enough to make him compelling as the obligatory 2020s videogame companion chatterbox. Then again, after I ranted about Dollman, I realized that like with most of this game, Iām not -entirely- sure my reading him isnāt encouraged by the game, there are at least three scenes that have fun with a fact heās a punchable messed up little geek. My issue might have been solved by the casting, if they gave Dollman the raspy hateful cartoon voice of MGSVās companion chatterbox, Master Miller, his freak vibes would be pronounced in exactly the right way.
(just checked, he was voiced by Master Millerās Japanese actor in the JP dub, we were robbed)
My honest answer is that I played a few hours of the original and just could not find an in with it, the story and characters I saw were ridiculous even by Kojima standards and I legit have no clue what anyone gets out of the gameplay, like I walked in a straight line occasionally pressing one of the trigger buttons when the game told me to (cause I stumbled/was off balance) and that was it? I assume people are honest when they talk about how mechanically fulfilling they find it but I could not even guess as to why.
My main hope for the sequel was the theoretical presence of something else new that would perhaps be a thing that I could latch onto as a way in, but now that people have had it for a bit and put time into it it sounds like it is more or less more of the first. That was probably always the most likely result and thatās good enough for everyone who was already on board, I just felt like I should check in on the off chance it took a new path.
Anyways donāt want to yuck peopleās yum so Iāll leave it at that and hope everyone else enjoys themselves.
Okay, thoughts from the first 3 chapters and a bit of chapter 4. I feel mostly down on it but just trying to work out my thoughts. Iām sorry Kojipro.
Summary
I love walking through the world and the tactile feeling of just being in the space. Iād love if there is a way to toggle the centre of mass illustration you get in the cargo management screen so that it was always visible. Organising cargo and planning trips still keeping me coming back.
I feel like I have a very bad sense of how much things cost but I guess it doesnāt really matter very much anyway since you can just ignore most economies if you want to play. It feels like most of the game exist for people who want to optimise and get the scores up.
The UI is really too busy sometimes. How do you know another human player has liked anything you do? It aināt easy.
Weapons suck and the game would be a thousand times better with less combat but I am starting to feel this about most things I play.
Bosses were one of the worst things about DS1 and theyāre back! I think some of the mech designs are cool but combat doesnāt really feel very good and isnāt particularly interesting from a challenge standpoint. The main difficulty is trying to navigate the logic of the weapons having to follow the same rules as cargo. You canāt just have a weapon, you have to have multiple crate-weapons that do not share ammunition. Also, given that every weapon is a viable nonlethal option, it feels like you just choose your favourite and move on. Enemies are so easy to take down or just simply run away from that Iām not sure what they exist for any more. This isnāt a shooter. I would find this just as annoying if I was suddenly forced to solve a sliding block puzzle to defeat an encampment. I donāt do a lot of side stuff but I am very glad that I did the sniper rifle reward mission so that I can just deal with encampments from a distance. Prior to this, I would simply just trigger the alarm, have enemies funnel through the chokepoint of their base, and fire at them until they are unconscious. Stealth is doable but not quick and since there is no penalty or apparent risk of death, I will just do this, preferably at long range, until all enemies are dead.
Mexico feels very DS1 training room, except youāve got beautiful desert. Fragile shows up and Sam just gets pressured into doing shit as usual. I tried resisting and found the cyclical cutscene tedious. Iād rather Sam just tell Fragile to go away and never speak to him again. Her entire argument is that they need a DOOMS sufferer who also works as a courier that the world is large enough surely at this point that she could find someone else. I understand the population of the post-apocalypse is smaller but it feels like the population of the world is like 50 people.
Sam uses a chiralgram of BTs to disguise his base. According to the gameās own rules only those with DOOMS can even detect and visibly see BTs. A non-DOOMS sufferer would probably be spurred to investigate further, not avoid the area. The only other way to see them is to use a bridge baby which would immediately confirm that the chiralgram is fake. I hate to get hung up on stuff like this but they take such great pains to create a library full of these rules which is constantly shoved in your face, and have people talk to you like a child about these rules that when they donāt even seem to follow their own rules consistently it makes me feel like I shouldnāt care about anything that is happening either. Anyway.
After DS1 I felt like Kojima really does just have more interest in celebrities/tie-ins than the actual content of the fictional world. I think that is the real content of the game, I donāt think itās the story or even the themes. It really does just feel like the attention is on making it a successful multibrand vehicle. It does remind me of the equivalent of a Hollywood star-studded project where the cast is really the selling point for things like Gosford Park.
People are talking a lot about Sam being mostly mute but I donāt think he really talks that much less than the first game and MGS5 had this problem as well. Extremely passive protagonist which I donāt recall being a problem ever in MGS prior to 5. Characters in DS2 never really ask questions that the audience are interested in having answered. This is not just Sam. Multiple characters are researchers and never proffer explanations, reactions, or disagreements about what they are seeing when they regularly come across novel phenomena that have never occurred in the history of mankind. Contrast this with MGS1 even, Snake is constantly questioning the mission and people are having all sorts of really interesting disagreements about what is happening or what should be done. Sam does at least seem concerned with the UCA effectively invading other countries (to the extent any nations can really be said to exist anymore in what is effectively a post-statist world) but this discussion doesnāt really go anywhere. Only Higgs and the mules are an opposing force.
The Magellan is helping me get on board with the plot a bit more. I like assembling a crew, I just wish we could ask them questions more proactively. Charlie is my favourite character I have decided. I am being stubborn now. Everyone briefly introduces what is supernatural about them and I groan at their shit as they refuse to elaborate until a later cutscene that explains their whole deal. I know in my heart that Charlie and the president are setting up some sort of ridiculous twist and Iām sort of invested in it just to see how minor it is.
Tarman and his son have a cut scene. Apart from the improbability of the Magellan being apparently crewed by two people safely in a dangerous tar ocean to collect as yet unknown animals, the scene also features rain. The scene is clearly post-death stranding so it should act as timefall does and the characters in the scene are not shielded. Once again, we forget our rules. I have to assume it is cinema rain that is used to make the scene sad, because neither Tarman or his son age rapidly in this situation.
I triggered the Daichi Miura dance that Dollman does. It is insanely well choreographed, like a lot of Miuraās videos. They spare no expense making sure that a five-person choreography is lavishly reproduced in a scene most people will never access. I actually like this. I think Iād prefer Death Stranding if it leaned fully into being a sort of media Fantasia and abandon all attempts to do conventional plotting and character.
I really am serious when I think that the game would be greatly improved with no dialogue. The lack of curiosity from characters is what makes me think why bother with dialogue at all, most dialogue is spent overexplaining the one idea of the cutscene rather than having a real back and forth with the info that is revealed, or pursuing interesting questions. The whole anecdote about the game being too good and wanting to be divisive feels hollow to me but if they are really serious about it then throw away the script. Honestly it would be really interesting. Everyone would talk about it. It would be stone cold cult classic territory. MGS1 to MGS2 was divisive, DS2 is iterative.
Deadmanās scene is a two-part message. In the first part of the message he says he has to take a break to go and have a shower before recording the second part. The second part is him confirming heās dead already. When and why did he decide to record this into two parts? Iām sorry for these questions but I must know. I will never get these answers.
Despite my grievances with the writing and worldbuilding, it has genuinely got me thinking about carrying and couriers and delivery as concepts. Thinking about your own actions everyday to carry things and stay attached to them both physically and sentimentally is working for me, perhaps moreso than DS1. Again, I canāt really prove this, but I think the gameplay does this far better than any of the story stuff.
Rainy is somewhat understandably ostracised. The harder swallow is that Bridges has no use for her. Her power is insane. Like it actually makes makes connecting the chiral network look like a minor project. I think it would be fun to play with that power in real time.
When we meet Higgs again I completely forgot that he was just left on a beach. I donāt think the game does a great job of really catching us up on why he does/did anything. He is just evil man. Out of curiosity I read the wiki for the full details since I never did his side mission in DS1. I forgot that the use of voidouts is a particularly good terrorist weapon given the availability of the materials to cause one. I think itās shame that this game basically neuters them. I wonder if the core writing team just felt that both voidouts and timefall were just annoying to design/write around, despite being the two main phenomena of death stranding.
I am greatly enjoying not having to shake the baby as much.
I think the new biomes do a lot for me personally. I wasnāt a fan of most of the game being Iceland last time. This variety suits the walking much better. I do wish a lot more if the walking missions just had the terrain be the challenge though.
Lade Rude identified a Kato and Ken-chan reference in DS2. āEvery Japanese knows this. If you donāt youāre not Japanese. At leastā¦not a Japanese over the age of 30.ā
I fought Solid Snak and met Tomorrow. Iām about to do a big delivery back to West Fort Knot and the big moon is out. In chapter 6.
I feel like I am very close to bailing on the game. I am just coming away grumpy and annoyed from each session. The game really wants me to engage with everything equally but for me its appeal is so uneven. I love long journeys, walking in the scenery, and packing up for a trip. Shooting sucks, stealth sucks, bosses suck, BTs suck, I just want to do what this game is unique at doing! It just feels like itās bogging me down with really conventional videogame cruft and structure. The plot would help as a hook but Iāve given up on that really giving me what I want.
tellingly for (or about) me, i actually recognize this song ā¦ from Love Hinata, of all places/media though ā¦ thanks for closing that gap now.
coincidentally, we had a get-together yesterday with a few friends of mine and played DS1, and seeing a savestate with significantly extensive road network was impressive, even a few years later. Was quickly reminded that it is such a weird little niche of its own, that now i am looking forward to see the 2nd Stranding!
i keep wanting to play more but iāve been so busy and tired lately. busy in a good way, tired in a bad way. but every time i do sit down to play for a bit i have such a lovely time.
iām only in chapter 6 yāall lol. gonna be quite awhile before you see āok iām done here are my thoughtsā. pencil me in for december maybe
