The thing that saves Death Strandingās writing for me is that its sentimentality is never formulaic enough to actually be cliche. It avoids being competent but mediocre and is instead spectacularly ridiculous. You could have edited this story together so that every emotional moment is built through a rote but appropriately paced arc and we end up with an āearnedā climax/payoff in the same way that a Marvel movie can effectively deliver that kind of thing. DS reminds me of melodrama actually. Everything is expedited because thereās no pretense that this is realism, itās explosively volatile and yes we are tearing off our mask and begging you through tears to in an Oscar worthy performance when just seconds ago something just as up in the emotional rafters finished happening. I can get story moments like that can be grating or even kind of emotionally alienating, but it affords so much else in the gameplay and even in the game-cutscene-story narrative space like the hug that parker talked about above. Itās worth it, and it isnāt even that bad imo because at least it is not dull in addition to being stupid.
But I also love melodrama, sentimentality and messy ambition. These are low-culture aesthetic markers that Kojima is doing at huge scale, whether intentionally or not. A real tonic for self-seriousness of games as art discourse, and cultural taste in general imo.
(Having only played MGS2 and Death Stranding) With Kojima games I feel that you have to be fully on board with them from the start and the minute you get off, itās over, the magic is gone
This happened mid-ending for me in Death Stranding, not necessarily because the story was getting way worse but mostly because the cutscene to game ratio dramatically shifted, and Kojima cutscenes are not great at keeping your attention for that long
Now that Iāve let it simmer in my mind for a year I think Death Stranding is the best video game of the 2010s TBH. Such a wild game that tried so many new ideas, and in the AAA space to boot. Having to take care of BB while expecting a child was unforgettable
me when a 2 hour cutscene with some guy named John Ropeman telling me about forming knots and reconnecting people and becoming a bridge for humanity etc starts up:
skipping kojima cutscenes is like fast forwarding a david lynch thing when itās at the part where an old decrepit man is slowly shuffling across the screen. unthinkable. this is the soul of the work. this is how the world of the thing gets built
I even liked the product placement because it made me think of one of the greatest movies ever made, Throw Down, which ends like this (spoilers for the end credits of throw down (2004)):
I used to be like this too and that sentiment probably reached its peak around MGS2 or 3. The cutscenes couldnāt ever be long enough! I craved them and I craved them since Wing Commander 3, so Iāve been into this sort of stuff for a long time. I donāt know what exactly made me 180 but here I am
the little of this iāve consumed suggests i will be consuming the least frustrating cutscenes a kojima title has ever presented
i have to think the involvement of Proper Actors is responsible
The actors are great. Itās a bit weird to look at Norman Reedusā 3D armpit hair all the time and itās like itās an actor all on its own but I like that artistic choice.
@vodselbt hit it on the head though when he used words like spectacularly ridiculous, grating, alienating and stupid - thatās what itās like to me, so yeah, I do find the cutscenes frustrating! Iām happy that others love them though. I think you have to be a kind of film connoisseur to enjoy them and you, parker and a lot of others here certainly fall within that category.
I wonder what that says about Kojima. I know he likes the usual pop culture action movie fare but maybe his tastes are really eclectic and weird, tooā¦ Death Stranding certainly leads me to believe that
i havenāt bothered to finish this yet despite being very near the end, however i did buy it on pc because it was on sale and i want to try DLSS out and fall over in 60fps
The facial capture and animation are amazing. Also the last Memories of War sequence, where
Clifford embraces Sam stood out to me. Mads and the tech convey such complex emotions so effectively. Itās really something!
My friend Kevlar has a habit of playing games randomly so heās booted up my file in the postgame and first he played all the memories of war cos he just wanted to shoot pplā¦ upon discovering he could engineer voidouts thatās all heās been doing. Heās been at it for hours.
