I genuinely do not understand how people praise the writing in these games like it’s some profound piece of storytelling.The ideas can be interesting, sure. Isolation, human connection, grief, rebuilding society, our dependence on technology, death becoming physically entangled with life, there is absolutely material here for a great story.The problem is that Kojima apparently does not trust you to understand a single fucking thing unless a character explains it to you for five minutes, then another character explains it again, then someone sends you an email explaining it a third time.There is practically no subtext. Everything is text.Characters don’t just have themes associated with them. They are frequently named after the fucking theme.Deadman. Heartman. Fragile. Die-Hardman. And then the game has the audacity to deliver some enormous dramatic revelation about the guy literally named Die-Hardman, as though Kojima has been subtly weaving Shakespearean symbolism underneath your nose. None of this shit is subtle at all.
>>748897276Kojima also seems completely incapable of allowing an emotional moment to exist without smothering it in exposition.A scene will finally become genuinely affecting, and then somebody starts delivering a dissertation explaining exactly what you should be feeling, what the metaphor represents, how it relates to the Beach, what extinction means, what connection means, what America means, what humanity means, and probably what the fucking umbilical cord represents just in case you fell asleep during explanation number six.Kojima, buddy, sometimes you need to let a scene breathe.And that’s what makes the writing so frustrating: Kojima clearly has an incredible imagination.He is a great ideas man.DS contains imagery and concepts that are infinitely more interesting than the dialogue used to explain them.A world where the dead physically threaten the living? Awesome.Rain that rapidly ages whatever it touches? Very cool.People transporting cargo across an isolated post-collapse landscape while slowly reconnecting communities? Fantastic.Then someone opens their mouth and starts speaking like a philosophy student who has just discovered metaphors.
>>748897305And Kojima apparently believes repetition automatically creates profundity.Connection.Strands.Bridges.Hands.Ropes.Extinction.America.Connection.Connection.Did I mention connection?YES, HIDEO. I UNDERSTAND THAT THE GAME IS ABOUT CONNECTION.You named the organisation BRIDGES.You gave me a device connecting people to a network.You made the protagonist literally reconnect America.You called the game DEATH STRANDING.I promise you I have located the metaphor.
>>748897360And then there are the tonal shifts.One minute the game desperately wants you to contemplate death, loneliness, and humanity’s existential fragility.Five minutes later, someone is called Die-Hardman and Monster Energy is sitting on your table.Then a character delivers a painfully earnest monologue.Then Kojima inserts some goofy fourth-wall gag.Then it’s straight back to existential despair.Kojima fans will sometimes defend this by saying that the weird tonal mixture is intentional.Yeah.Intentional things can still be badly executed.That’s probably my biggest problem with Kojima as a writer generally: he constantly confuses having something to say with saying it well.His games contain huge themes, bizarre concepts, and ambitious political and philosophical ideas, which makes them extremely fun to analyse.But ambition is not automatically sophistication.Sometimes DS feels less like a carefully written exploration of human connection and more like Kojima repeatedly grabbing you by the shoulders and screaming:“DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE SYMBOLISM YET?!”Yes.I understood it twenty hours ago.Please let Norman Reedus deliver the fucking package.
>>748897276DS was a beautiful game - most of you niggers have no style or taste in art, philosophy has no meaning to you at all - you are grind slop niggers
lereddit spacingchimpoutthreadXD
>This gayass copypasta AGAINNotice how this homosexual doesn't even bother to mention the brilliant GAMEPLAY, which indeed delivers the main bulk of the game's actually profound SUBTEXT.It would seem that Amerimutts indeed are incapable of thinking for themselves and recognizing art, unless they are TOLD to do so.
Kojima fans are so fragile
>>748897839OMG DEATH STRANDING REFERENCE???
You didn't get it broYou just didn't get it>there are people itt who didn't get itMaybe you should try something different, you won't get itI don't think you get it, anonYou will NEVER get it, retard
>>748897739Kojima has a better understanding on how to take advantage of the medium than the vast majority of game developers.
