thelastword
Banned
"The most implausible thing about Death Stranding is that it exists at all. Hideo Kojima, its writer and director, has been saying that he wants to stop making Metal Gear Solid games for as long as he’s been making Metal Gear Solid games. Now, with a newly independent Kojima Productions receiving what appears to have been carte blanche from Sony to make whatever it wanted to as long as it was a PS4 game, Kojima’s first non-Metal Gear directorial project in decades is here
Death Stranding positively drips with Kojima’s aesthetic, from its evocative not-quite-English terminology to its willingness to break the fourth wall and confound your expectations. Although the setting is completely different, playing Death Stranding often feels like an alternative-universe Metal Gear spinoff where characters still stop what they’re doing for lengthy Codec phone calls. And yes, there are a lot of cutscenes in Death Stranding, directed with Kojima’s distinctive, less-than-subtle flair.
Much of the familiarity comes not just from Kojima, but from the people who he works with. Yoji Shinkawa’s unmistakable character design, which effortlessly blended the organic and the mechanical throughout the Metal Gear series, is the most obvious throughline here, with instantly iconic creations like the flapping flower-like Odradek sensor and the surreal BB tank. Shinkawa even found a way to include some bipedal mech designs in Death Stranding’s post-apocalyptic world.
There’s also DNA shared with the ill-fated Silent Hills project that caused Kojima to leave Konami in the first place. It starts with its star, Norman Reedus, while the intended co-director Guillermo del Toro had a facial performance captured for a major dubbed role. It’s also easy to see echoes of the cult favorite PT demo in Death Stranding’s ethereal, unsettling take on horror, even if certain fan theories may have gone a little too far.
Death Stranding isn’t perfect. But I like it so much that I don’t want it to have a sequel. It’s not that it wraps up everything about its story, that there’s no room for expansion, or even that the ending makes any sense at all. (Let’s just say I am looking forward to reading Reddit and wikis once this game is out in the wild.) But it shows what Kojima Productions can do with a blank slate, a bunch of funding, and a mandate to create something truly unique. It is very much not a game for everyone, of course, and I expect many players won’t make it past the opening hours. Nothing about Death Stranding is accidental, though. It exudes confidence in what it is.
“Hopefully they’ll come to some sort of agreement and that happens, or we do something very similar that’s different. I don’t know,” Norman Reedus said after Silent Hills was canceled. “I have faith that we’re going to do something though because it just seems like it was one of those things that needs to happen.”
Death Stranding was revealed just six months after Reedus’ comments and released a little more than three years later. That is a stunning turnaround for a project of this scale, ambition, and originality. What could the new Kojima Productions have achieved over the past 15 years if Kojima had managed to quit after Metal Gear Solid 3?
There is an alternate dimension in which that happened and we got several new games as weird, divisive, and brilliant as Death Stranding. But rather than rue what might have been, consider that Death Stranding’s release and likely commercial success point to an exciting new future for Kojima Productions, one where the studio can continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible in blockbuster game development — as long as Kojima doesn’t find himself trapped in another franchise, that is."
More at the link.....
https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/7/20953031/death-stranding-hideo-kojima-metal-gear-solid-sequel
Death Stranding positively drips with Kojima’s aesthetic, from its evocative not-quite-English terminology to its willingness to break the fourth wall and confound your expectations. Although the setting is completely different, playing Death Stranding often feels like an alternative-universe Metal Gear spinoff where characters still stop what they’re doing for lengthy Codec phone calls. And yes, there are a lot of cutscenes in Death Stranding, directed with Kojima’s distinctive, less-than-subtle flair.
Much of the familiarity comes not just from Kojima, but from the people who he works with. Yoji Shinkawa’s unmistakable character design, which effortlessly blended the organic and the mechanical throughout the Metal Gear series, is the most obvious throughline here, with instantly iconic creations like the flapping flower-like Odradek sensor and the surreal BB tank. Shinkawa even found a way to include some bipedal mech designs in Death Stranding’s post-apocalyptic world.
There’s also DNA shared with the ill-fated Silent Hills project that caused Kojima to leave Konami in the first place. It starts with its star, Norman Reedus, while the intended co-director Guillermo del Toro had a facial performance captured for a major dubbed role. It’s also easy to see echoes of the cult favorite PT demo in Death Stranding’s ethereal, unsettling take on horror, even if certain fan theories may have gone a little too far.
Death Stranding isn’t perfect. But I like it so much that I don’t want it to have a sequel. It’s not that it wraps up everything about its story, that there’s no room for expansion, or even that the ending makes any sense at all. (Let’s just say I am looking forward to reading Reddit and wikis once this game is out in the wild.) But it shows what Kojima Productions can do with a blank slate, a bunch of funding, and a mandate to create something truly unique. It is very much not a game for everyone, of course, and I expect many players won’t make it past the opening hours. Nothing about Death Stranding is accidental, though. It exudes confidence in what it is.
“Hopefully they’ll come to some sort of agreement and that happens, or we do something very similar that’s different. I don’t know,” Norman Reedus said after Silent Hills was canceled. “I have faith that we’re going to do something though because it just seems like it was one of those things that needs to happen.”
Death Stranding was revealed just six months after Reedus’ comments and released a little more than three years later. That is a stunning turnaround for a project of this scale, ambition, and originality. What could the new Kojima Productions have achieved over the past 15 years if Kojima had managed to quit after Metal Gear Solid 3?
There is an alternate dimension in which that happened and we got several new games as weird, divisive, and brilliant as Death Stranding. But rather than rue what might have been, consider that Death Stranding’s release and likely commercial success point to an exciting new future for Kojima Productions, one where the studio can continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible in blockbuster game development — as long as Kojima doesn’t find himself trapped in another franchise, that is."
More at the link.....
https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/7/20953031/death-stranding-hideo-kojima-metal-gear-solid-sequel
