Death Stranding: Tarkovsky's Stalker of video games, also The Postman with K.Costner

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Death Stranding: Tarkovsky's Stalker of video games, also The Postman with K.Costner

Det_no: Oct 24, 2003

8-bit Miniboss posted:

The trend I'm noticing is that most European outlets love it while most American ones hate it. I have to assume because the game isn't as shooty as people would hoped it would be.

Has a lot of walking too.

# ¿ Nov 1, 2019 09:42

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 22:56

Det_no: Oct 24, 2003

guts and bolts posted:

I don't know if it was a localization thing or what, but as a tremendous Kojima stan I struggled really bad with MGS3 because... like, is there a term for this? Where the sentences technically make grammatical sense, like structurally they're sentences, but they make absolutely no sense? Characters in MGS3 did not at any time appear to be talking to one another, they would just say things and then someone else would say something either tangentially related or completely unrelated. The conversations about spy movies come to mind. It wasn't just cryptic it was completely impenetrable and almost aggressively pointless and I hated it so much and I still prefer MGS1 to any other game in the franchise as a result, despite the arguable mechanical superiority of MGS3 and MGS5 especially

MGS1 had a lot of navel-gazing and moralizing and such but it made sense to me even as a kid, and the fourth wall breaks were obvious but also kinda cool. MGS3's dialogue just... doesn't make any sense to me at all. It's like one of those fake-rear end "I fed data into an algorithm and this is the Olive Garden commercial it produced" jokes that circulated a minute ago

That's because Kojima is a hackfraud and the localization was, in fact, more in the spirit of the topic than a direct translation. And it did make Kojima mad, so they had to stop doing it as much.

https://www.polygon.com/2019/7/18/20696081/metal-gear-solid-translation-japanese-english-jeremy-blaustein

There's also this infamous interview with one of the translators for the second game:

http://web.archive.org/web/20120125213707/http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/metalgear/agnesskaku2.htm

quote:

Something Agness has been critical of is Kojima's writing ability, or rather his lack of it. Offering her free opportunity to speak, I asked what she felt, "I think he's very bad at character, and I think he's extremely conventional, as in non-creative, when it comes to plotting. I know that I'll probably get an incredible amount of hate karma - can you say hate karma? - about this. So I'll just say that I did grow up reading, I told you I grew up without TV, so I read instead. And I like Cormac McCarthy, and the science-fiction writers; I love Frank Herbert, I love Alfred Bester, right now I really like Greg Egan, so I am extremely picky, and I do have a high standard when it comes to writing."

"I think that if you're ripping off Tom Clancy, it's...Tom Clancy is Tom Clancy, he deserves all the money and fame. The guy has worked hard. Writing is hard work. So to shoot out a bunch of these kinds of things, that we've been talking about, and then claim yourself as a writer when...And you know, there's good work being done in games. I think Portal is really well written, very beautifully written, but Kojima's stuff is...Fine, be a game creator, and know what you're not very good at, and learn to work with people who are. Stanley Kubrick, famously, the one thing he could not do was write. He could do everything else, but he didn't know how to write, so he worked with good writers, and worked with them in a very sort of relentless partnership. He knew his limits. I don't think Kojima's a writer. The fact that he would even be considered one shows how low the standards are in the game industry. Nothing in MGS2 is above a fanfic level. He wouldn't last a morning in a network TV writers' room, and those aren't exactly turning out the Dark Tower series or The Wire."

# ¿ Nov 5, 2019 03:56

Det_no: Oct 24, 2003

At least one person has an early copy and is streaming on twitch. Make what you will out of that information.

# ¿ Nov 7, 2019 04:33

Det_no: Oct 24, 2003

RazzleDazzleHour posted:

I was really on the fence about this due to the very consistent bashing of the game's story as being super surface level and never going anywhere, but I was listening to the Beastcast and heard something kind of weird that makes me question if it's really that bad. Vinny/Alex were talking about how every metaphor totally bashes you over the head and it's all super surface level with nothing to dive into. Abbey then asked if the "likes" are good or bad since the MULE's went crazy because of them, and Alex's response is "I don't really know, the game never tells you"

hmm.

I'm pretty sure they meant as a game mechanic that might have some sort of impact, not in the lore sense.

# ¿ Nov 8, 2019 04:55

Det_no: Oct 24, 2003

I think Kojima is just asshurt about that 6.8.

# ¿ Nov 11, 2019 06:40

Det_no: Oct 24, 2003

It's almost as if Death Stranding and its author were shielding themselves from criticism by targeting the kind of demographic that thought you need a real high IQ to get Rick & Morty, as well as using the same kind of arguments. Please pretend I linked that Rick and Morty ad for the billionth time.

# ¿ Nov 11, 2019 07:23

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 22:56

Det_no: Oct 24, 2003

The original Castle Wolfenstein (not the FPS) had stealth gameplay complete with wearing stolen uniforms and sneaking past guards. It might not even the first game to do it and that came out years before the NES.

Metal Gear invented stealth in the same way Death Stranding invented walking sims aka it didn't.

# ¿ Nov 21, 2019 06:11

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