Death Stranding (A Hideo Kojima Game)

At the very least, this trailer has some things that could plausibly be recognizable gameplay mechanics. A little appendage that points towards [mostly/usually] invisible enemies and makes different noise patterns based on proximity allows for comprehensible, controllable threat detection as an aspect of play. Having to be still, silent, and hold your breath creates some kind of challenge that complicates dealing with those threats in a way that you can easily picture in play, too.

Now, neither of those on their own sound at all like novel or particularly engaging takes on the general mechanics of "recognize threats" and "hide from threats" — to be frank, the little robo-arm working as your radar just sounds like a kind of shit take on Silent Hill's radio, the resemblance to which might not be an accident — but it's something you can actually go on, rather than just that vague BS about how "the gameplay will focus on the ropes humans use to secure what's precious to them rather than the sticks we use to defend them" or whatever guff Kojima chatted up ages ago.

Edit: I will say that these mechanics are, at best, merely suggested to be possible — and that they also don't seem to clearly suggest actually following up on that whole "rope instead of stick" nonsense. Kojima babbles a LOT of crap habitually.

edited 8th Dec '17 8:51:14 AM by RegisteredUser

I think it's far too early to cast such harsh judgment, but I can see where your pessimism and concerns are stemming from Soble.

As time passed, it became clear that the issues The Phantom Pain suffered from weren't due to a budget and development time cut short along with horrid working conditions, but rather Kojima wanting a bit too much from his product beyond what he was capable of delivering. I don't have a link to the interview (especially since I forgot just which interview in particular it was), but I recall one of his senior design team members recalling during a podcast that Phantom Pain was more or less released as intended, and that Kojima probably wouldn't have been able to implement Kingdom of the Flies within the release window due to all of the new features they'd have to create, just for that one mission.

For example, they were having a hard time developing the booby traps the child soldiers had scattered around the jungle island. Also, the mission design structure for MGSV mostly favors scenarios which can be resolved within less then an hour, something that wouldn't fit well for such an extended mission, and the final fight pitting a psychically enhanced Sahelanthropus versus all of Diamond Dogs would've been VERY demanding to create.

edited 8th Dec '17 9:17:02 AM by SgtRicko

Uh what?

The "rope" is clearly representing protecting the baby and the "stick" is protecting it from... whatever you're fighting.

This is just me guessing, of course, but... it seems obvious to me this is what it's going for. Hopefully I'm not wrong otherwise I will commit sudoku.

There will likely be other "ropes" as time goes on.

One of the games, to go a little off topic, to have a "rope" mechanic is Abe's Odyssey and some related titles, saving and guiding Mudokon slaves to a destination.

The little appendage also bears similarities to the scanner from the Alien franchise. It also suggests knowing where these strange threats are will be important in some way. Like, it's more accurate than Silent Hill's radio and Alien's scanner. I wonder if we can employ Throwing the Distraction - and how would that work since they seem to only pay attention to human sounds (at least as far as I can tell).

I'm probably gonna take another extended leave from this thread.

EDIT: Basically, the game will be a remake of Yoshis Island. Real Talk: I think there will be scenarios where you can drop the baby and must protect it. Also similar to, say, Ico.

EDIT 2: I've already thought up some compelling scenarios of "normal" enemies - Read, the Skeleton Warriors - who act like regular Metal Gear mooks, and having to juggle the rather loud and bright sensor to deal with those strange, not quite human like figures and the standard mobs.

edited 8th Dec '17 12:09:09 PM by PolarPhantom

Oh gosh, I really hope this doesn't turn into another case of "seasoned developer is given carter blanch to do whatever he wants, and loses his mind as a result."

Cause that trailer was one of the strangest and most pretentious things I've ever witnessed.

We must never forget the last time a beloved developer was "freed from the shackles of an evil company".

Gods, let's hope Kojima isn't one of those cases. At least the quality of the cutscenes indicates that he hasn't lost his cinematic touch, so that's good news.

In fairness, I'm pretty sure Kojima wanted V to be exclusive to PS 4 and X Bone, but having to have the game on PS 3 and 360 ended up limiting them somewhat with what they wanted, and resulted in. Issues. With the development time as a result.

Having to make sure that the game worked on three vastly different system architectures, (I'm pretty sure that the internals of the PS 4 and X Bone are more similar than they are different, especially compared to the PS 3's weirdness) and that all three had parity.

From one standpoint, a lot of people only played V on the earlier consoles, so it's not even that the decision there was a bad one, but. Still. When all three were seemingly mostly developed in-house. That results in a lot of time devoted to that, when he probably would have prefered to use it for other things.

Like finishing a game that never got its final chapter.

In any case, I can't imagine that the budget and time constraints, along with the, to be clear, atrocious working conditions at Konami, helped anything.

Poor, poor Kojima.

His grand finale/swan song for Metal Gear was absolutely fucked.

Damn is that a tragedy.

edited 8th Dec '17 7:06:54 PM by slimcoder

As for Kojima here, he's always been reigned in by his personal Kojipro team.

He wanted to kill off Snake and Otacon via firing squad, something his team refused to even consider and demanded he change it or else they wouldn't work with him.

I don't think we have to worry about Kojima, these trailers are fairly typical of him, he hates it when trailers spoil the entire plot, so this right here is him just doing what he does best. Making a trailer that tells us nothing.

Plus Sony is said to be working with this project so even with absolute freedom he's presumably got people pulling him back in.

edited 8th Dec '17 7:07:51 PM by EchoingSilence

Just because Kojima overreached himself and wasn't as good at project management as he should have been doesn't mean that Konami weren't dicks.

Some of the working conditions stuff, about employees not getting the materials they need even when asked for, isn't something I think he could have done anything about.

Like, I guess he could have tried to go behind the company's back and gotten the materials out of his own pocket, but. When your employees need a lot of computers, that's not feasible, depending on his salary, and depending on how many employees needed those computers. And the company might not have approved of him going around their "process" like that and fired him anyway.

edited 8th Dec '17 7:19:47 PM by unnoun

@Unnoun: that's correct, Kojima wanted to develop MGSV for the next-gen consoles exclusively. What screwed him there was the game's development taking several years: the demand for MGSV to function on both previous and next-gen systems came early on, back when the PS 3 and Xbox 360 still had some wind left in them. Still though, as mentioned, it ultimately worked out in the end since everybody loved the final product.

MGSV is lacking in story but more than makes up for it in gameplay. I keep coming back to the game because it is just that fun to play.

I am looking forward to Death Stranding and whatever insanity it brings.

Yeah, after TPP this style of teaser is making me more worried than anything else.

I believe in Kojima-san.

edited 9th Dec '17 4:16:05 AM by Gault

Well, at least the game's already in a playable state, I guess.

About the trailer:

I think it's a tad early to be criticizing the game, since we have seen no gameplay nor any indication of anything resembling a storyline whatsoever.

Trailers are made to get people pumped; some trailers show the crazy gameplay, others focus on the storyline, many more show off the visuals, and a few rely on mystery and intrigue to get people... well, intrigued.

Also, while I think sometimes Kojima's writing falls on the odd side (and I blame that mostly on the translations, since the Japanese have a very peculiar flamboyance and dramatism in their acting and writing that the Occident lacks), I think that, as far as videogames go, Kojima's work is amongst the best of the best.

I don't think his work is pretentious in the slightest; I do think, however, that some portion of his fanbase is pretty pretentious, and that kind of ruins things for everybody. I mean, imagine the very vocal and annoying Rick and Morty fanbase, but applied to a videogame.

In the end, if there's something I've learned from his games, is that Kojima always has something he wants to express, and, luckily, most of the time what he has to say is pretty interesting.

I do think that there is that "complete freedom to do anything doesn't equal good, sometimes great product is made with restrictions" thing yeah especially since I don't believe in auteur theory(sure Kojima games have their own bizarre style to them, but they still aren't one man games, unless there is literally only one developer for the game, no game is product of one person). I have no real expectations or lack of them here so no gonna be disappointed either way

I would argue though that I don't think Inafune is straight up hack even though he was over hyped too much. I mean, most of his game dev credits are character designs or producer stuff <_< I don't know why people thought he had much game design experience when most of his job was about managing the development.

edited 11th Dec '17 3:49:00 AM by SpookyMask

Once there was an explosion, a bang which gave birth to time and space...

I thought the fourth explosion would be some people spontaneously developing weird powers. Kind of like the Ludens from a scifi universe.

Huh, he pretty much argues against his ultimate theory. Alien invaders aren't quite on the level of "event that fundamentally changes the nature of the world"

Agreed. Death Stranding's plot looks to be steeped in a kind of Cosmic Horror that deals with the fundamental nature of reality and the universe, and I couldn't be happier that's the case.

Member when Kojima wanted the End to be two weeks long. As in, it took two actual weeks to beat him? And he got vetoed?

Kojima, I love ya and want ya to continue being weird, but thank Cthulhu you work with more sane people.

@Explosive Lion: I mean, I don't think anyone has been criticizing the game itself, but the marketing. Taking over a year and three trailers and still showing no gameplay is unacceptable for any game. Even FFVII Remake managed to do that in its second trailer and the director of that game didn't even learn he was directing it until the game was announced.