Holy Shit Death Stranding is beautiful nonsense

[TVC15]

You could just buy some oxytocin at GNC when you go to get your next tub of NUGENIX. That’s where I used to buy mine when I was a 19-year-old edgelord that just learned about smart drugs.

Along with Xenadrine. Man, good ol days of pseudoephedrine. America’s glory days. Fuck the people that wanted that shit banned. I hope they live long lives but terrible things happen slowly and quickly to all even remotely close to them. Those cunts ruined my health.

[thisismyusername]

Pretty sure the guy that translated MGS1 has said that it's a translation quirk and that's why it's gotten worse in every Kojima title after the first one (Konami started skimping on localizers). Japanese is more concise I think, so it probably sounds more natural to them than in English where it sounds overly wordy.

Japanese is more vauge, actually, but also more polite. The silly repetition is a consequence of the latter. Making reassurances that you're still listening is familiar to all of us, I think. A "mhm" and "yeah" here and there, maybe a clarifying question if you're generous. In Japanese, this is more frequent and can take the form of repeating a key word as a question. This can be obviated in text to make it more natural sounding outside of Japan, but MGS is fully voiced and cutscenes were timed to match the Japanese lines.

Jeremy Blaustein, who translated MGS, did take some liberties though; mainly with tone, quips and by adding military jargon. Things Kojima apparently did not appreciate.

When I read that Snake’s earpiece was just called a 無線機 (“wireless”), I tried to come up with something better for American players. I researched the problem for a significant amount of time before coming across something called a “codec” that I thought sounded cool. I had never heard the term before, but it sounded pretty official.

When Campbell told Snake that he would have to do 現地調達 (“acquire locally”) for his weapons, I knew I needed something that sounded like military jargon. The only problem is that no one in real life would ever put themselves in that situation if they could help it, so I coined the term OSP, or “on-site procurement,” which is still used to this day.

(...)

From what I heard at the time, Kojima began to hear that his work had been “tinkered” with. I’d argue there might have been a lack of appreciation for the needs of localization due to his not being bilingual, but he was not happy. As a result, all future Metal Gear games would be closely monitored for fidelity to the original Japanese script.

[Ed. note: Konami declined to comment when contacted about this story.]

This approach resulted in lines like: “I won’t scatter your sorrow to the heartless sea. I will always be with you. Plant your roots in me. I won’t see you end as ashes. You’re all diamonds.”

There's also an interesting interview with Agness Kaku, the translator of MGS2, who had to deal with some of the fallout from Kojima's clamp-down:
http://web.archive.org/web/20120125211117/http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/metalgear/agnesskaku.htm

And another interview with Blaustein:
http://web.archive.org/web/20120330110037/http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/jb/jb.htm

KOJIMA IS NOT A WRITER


Hideo Kojima

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."

It's clear Agness has the experience and language ability to speak with authority on the subject of MGS2's writing. Which leads on to an interesting subject. Just prior to the release of Metal Gear Solid 4, Ryan Payton commented on MGS2, shifting the blame for fan dissatisfaction on to the translation. As he told 1UP, "I did walk away from Metal Gear Solid 2 a little bit disappointed and really confused about a lot of the plot elements and the narrative. Now looking back at the script and looking back at the translation and realizing where things might have gotten cut and where things got lost in translation - there really wasn't a problem with the original Japanese print. I think it was more a problem with some of the translation and some of the direction that was taken with the localisation. With MGS4 being the direct sequel to MGS2, I decided to investigate MGS2 as much as possible to gain a thorough understanding of it. I played the [Japanese] game over and over again, looked at the script with a fine-toothed comb, and realized: 'You know what? This is actually pretty cool now that I fully understand what is going on.'"

Having heard how others had tried to bait Agness into a confrontation regarding Jeremy's work, I was very careful not to appear wanting to do the same regarding Ryan's comment. But at the same time it did warrant investigating, and allowing Agness to explain her side of things. First off she debunked the idea that in its original Japanese the game was more palatable, "One thing I remember is I played it with someone so I could take notes - so my boyfriend was playing it - and I just sat next to him, and he loved the original game. He's a total kind of gamer generation, he knows way too much about [retro] things. But even he was like 'God! They just talk on, and on, and on, and there's a Colonel that'll go on and on, in this kind of political intrigue babble that wasn't particularly well written, droning.' The sheer amount of talking, I think makes it rather difficult to get through, but then if you just go ahead and skip it, maybe there was something in there?"

JS: I disagree with Ryan's stance, because no matter how you look at it, a majority of fans felt that Kojima had jumped the shark with MGS2.

AK: "I guess some people said it jumped the shark. I'll believe that, because these are people who loved the first one and liked the second one fine. But it's kind of like the difference, and not that I'm comparing Ridley Scott to Mr Kojima, but between Alien and Aliens. Aliens is a lot of fun, but Alien is something else. In my opinion. Obviously you may not agree."

JS: To me it seemed, maybe, almost like revisionism? MGS4 was coming out, fans were concerned with how the story had gone on MGS2, so someone came out and said: 'MGS2 was great, but you'll only know this if you speak Japanese. So trust us when we say MGS4 will be just as great...' Ryan was of course heavily involved with MGS4.

I will say: #FuckRyanPayton Dude was clearly a bad influence on Kojimbo in terms of changing a control scheme to be even worse (I remember CQC being particularly bad in MGS4) and wanting it to be all about HIM and how HE's helping Kojima with MGS4 at the time.

And then his own game fucking flopped, never to be heard from again. #SweetSweetKarma

AK: "It's weasel words, kind of, but you know, if [Ryan] is indeed doing that, he might want to think about the fact that the guy who worked on the first MGS, Jeremy, has since been blamed [by Kojima] for its lack of brilliant perfection, so much so that his work was replaced wholesale for GameCube; the girl who worked on MGS2 has been blamed for getting in the way of its brilliance, and continues to be talked about like an unfortunate relative online; I don't know what happened to the person who did the third one, I turned it down. But if Kojima gets it in his head, that MGS4 was not brilliantly perfect, then perhaps Ryan will be joining Jeremy and I, in the lost-in-translation, unfortunate-relatives' club.

Oop.

[bluemax]

Ryan Payton is one of those people who has continued to fail upwards. From podcast guy to helping one of the most famous game designers, to helming one of the most popular game franchises, to running his own thing and now making something again based on a major IP.

Then again if 10 years in the industry have taught me anything... it's that there's a lot of people in design director roles who failed their way into them. I still don't understand why.

[Sho Nuff]

Ryan keeps his team paid and fed, I have his back in a fight

[kingv]

What did he even do after Republique? That’s the last I heard of him.

[thisismyusername]

From podcast guy to helping one of the most famous game designers, to helming one of the most popular game franchises,[

Wait, what? I thought after MGS4, he left Kojima Productions Konami to do Republique? Oh. no, now I remember! He was on Portable Ops because Kojima didn't want do shit and would've rather let the "new generation" do something. Portable Ops wasn't terrible, but fucked with canon (because Kojima didn't really oversee that). And then after folks were like "this isn't terrible but it's not good..." Kojima did Peace Walker which blew the fuck out of it in making recruiting soliders less a pain in the ass (fulton for Phantom Pain came from Peace Walker, for instance).

I will say that as much as I enjoyed Peace Walker (despite it being clear it was for the Japanese market with the co-op focus and no online means of doing that until the console "HD" ports), AC!D 1/2 (which were done by an older Kojima Productions Konami person) was the killer apps for the series on PSP. If I could turn back time, I'd force Kojima to make a third with Phantom Pain cards. *sigh*

Edit: Oh no, you're talking Halo 4. He joined 343 and was only voice-over director for Portable Ops apparently... Ho-hum, no wonder Halo 4 apparently sucked shit (but being fair, 5 and other 343 titles have sucked shit. So...)

to running his own thing

Which flopped, so he went off into the sunset and...

and now making something again based on a major IP.

Wait, what? WTF. Oh, no you mean Iron Man VR which is because VR is a dead meme. And apparently it's from the Republique studio he made so somehow they bankrolled it by using Kojima yakuza connections. Hmm...

Ryan keeps his team paid and fed, I have his back in a fight

(God I wish I had the old subredditdrama for this context)

Fight me loser bottoms.

What did he even do after Republique? That’s the last I heard of him.

Ironman VR, by somehow limping Repubflop into Repubomb: HD edition: Now with more no1currs platforms!

It was supposed to be  HIS Metal Gear, and then he made it like mobile-only at launch and it sank, never to be heard from again.

[kingv]

Republique was bad.

[Rahxephon91]

Hey you can see exactly what Ep.51 was supposed to be on Youtube, it was a better finale than repeating the intro, sure, but it was just that, a closing climax/set piece.
The story problems and game design problems up to that point are much greater than a bad ending, to my eyes.

Too few ideas spread too thin, too little story spread too thin, too little character development (for any of the characters involved) spread too thin.
A better finale wouldn't have made Quiet or Skullface actually worth a shit, wouldn't have made the skull babes a decent enemy, and wouldn't have gave the game decent bosses.
They still would've needed to repeat all the missions to stretch the run time, they still would've left the map mostly under utilized, etc etc.

I'm a "bigger = better" kinda guy when it comes to open world games, but if there's one exception in my mind, it's MGSV.
It's should've been a series of small, GZ-style maps, pretty much like a Sniper Elite or Hitman of sort.

Simply because they just had no expertise or time to fill two massive, empty maps like they tried to do, and MGSV isn't a game that thrives in a contemplative pace (since you're dropped in with a clear objective every time, and extracted at its completion).

Ive been saying this basically since the game came out. It really fails as an open world game and a Metal Gear Solid game. One of the worst in the series, but it’s all been bad since 3. Peace Walker and MGSV have really made me question Kojima as both games are filled with tedious bullshit and lack the personality of the series. Death Stranding has really inherited this as well. It’s also taken MGSV’s change in tone. That game is really where I felt Kojima was smelling his own farts. MGSV was so up it’s own ass with its paltry story. Gone is the nerd making homages to his favorite schlock. Now he’s an artist. But I haven’t finished the game(only one chapter 3) other then asking how this game gets a pass while FFXIII got shit on for it’s confusing early hour noun a thon, I’ve kind of liked it. 


I also think regardless of chapter 3 or mission 51, the game would still be terrible.

[thisismyusername]

Republique was bad.

What I want to know is how the studio stayed alive after it dropped. Apparently the last episode dropped in 2012, and then a PS4 version was ported in 2016, which seems like a crazy long time for a development house to stay alive on a niche-not-so-hot product. It looks like GungHo bankrolled the publishing duties but I remember the doing a kick-starter for the project that wasn't that hugely (I mean half a million is good, but compared to like Bloodstained or Shafer's projects) successful.

Camouflaj was funded in 2011, they're still alive with only one product out there. That's the part.

Oh what do you know, their main site actually has an article from Payton on this very thing: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2016-04-13-how-camouflaj-cheated-death-in-a-volatile-industry

[stufte]

just got to chapter 4 and I'm loving it so far, it scratches that bizzare kojima itch.

[Tasty]

Did any review ever use "It can Republique my balls"? Cause if not, missed opportunity.

[thisismyusername]

Did any review ever use "It can Republique my balls"? Cause if not, missed opportunity.

But what does this have to do with Death Stranding? This is the Death Stranding thread.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

[close]

I haven't finished the Blaustein article yet, but it seems like most folks would agree that Kojima's writing is hit and miss without a team of editiors. Sort of like the Magic the Gathering dude that is getting flack for their latest novel now.

[Tasty]

[bluemax]

Did any review ever use "It can Republique my balls"? Cause if not, missed opportunity.

But what does this have to do with Death Stranding? This is the Death Stranding thread.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

[close]

I haven't finished the Blaustein article yet, but it seems like most folks would agree that Kojima's writing is hit and miss without a team of editiors. Sort of like the Magic the Gathering dude that is getting flack for their latest novel now.

We've already deviated into Refn movies, what's a little deviation into one of Koijma's most favorite hangers on?

[bluemax]

Also I only knew about the Iron Man VR because I've been working in VR for like 3 years now so I track this stuff. Licensed VR is stuff that is good for a company making it in that the IP holder over estimates how important or useful it is so they pay you plenty and consumers have such low expectations that your end product doesn't have to be all that much.

[Don Rumata]

I also think regardless of chapter 3 or mission 51, the game would still be terrible.

That's the things though, the gameplay part of it, what you get in GZ without all the bullshit, basically, is one of the best games of the generation in my opinion.
That's what makes it such a weird game, because bad games abound, but MGSV is simultaneously horrid and amazing.  :'(

They have an amazing skeleton layered with a whole lot of shit, and it was definitely better than the shit MGS past MGS1 was doing (where the shit controls and camera of the past couldn't support the level design anymore).

[benjipwns]

celestialbuffalo

It's time to drink 15 monster energy drinks and haul ass to the pacific.

[thisismyusername]

We've already deviated into Refn movies, what's a little deviation into one of Koijma's most favorite hangers on?

You're missing me poking fun of him getting snippy in the Flopdia thread. Why do you think he posted what he did? :p

[kingv]

Is little homie with the hourglass supposed to have Down syndrome or something?

[benjipwns]

Licensed VR is stuff that is good for a company making it in that the IP holder over estimates how important or useful it is so they pay you plenty and consumers have such low expectations that your end product doesn't have to be all that much.

The Miller Report exposed this through hardcore investigative journalism a few years back:

[Coffee Dog]

I'm nearing thirty hours into this game and I don't think I could describe a single character's personality beyond Conan O'Brian unless I label them as "stoic" or "vague".

There's no humanity to any of the dialogue. All of it is expository and functional. Snake is a character who, for all his mumbles and grumbles, had a colorful history that would frequently come up in his dialogue when he spoke to other characters, and it made them both feel more alive. He gave a shit about guns and war stories. He gave a shit about anything.

Norman Reedus is a fucking near mute, MGSV style, and it means I have a cast of characters with backstories and plot functions but I dont actually feel as if I know any of them in any way beyond how they help norman deliver these boxes. At least MGSV gave you Kaz, Ocelot, and Huey, established characters that you already had some connection to. This game is as if every supporting character in MGSV was Quiet. And that's ass.

[HardcoreRetro]

THIS STORY ABOUT HUMAN CONNECTIONS!

COME MEET THE HOLOGRAM MAN

[Trent Dole]

THIS STORY ABOUT HUMAN CONNECTIONS!

COME MEET THE HOLOGRAM MAN

It's about connections from stoic ass hyper formal Japan, so.

[kingv]

I'm nearing thirty hours into this game and I don't think I could describe a single character's personality beyond Conan O'Brian unless I label them as "stoic" or "vague".

There's no humanity to any of the dialogue. All of it is expository and functional. Snake is a character who, for all his mumbles and grumbles, had a colorful history that would frequently come up in his dialogue when he spoke to other characters, and it made them both feel more alive. He gave a shit about guns and war stories. He gave a shit about anything.

Norman Reedus is a fucking near mute, MGSV style, and it means I have a cast of characters with backstories and plot functions but I dont actually feel as if I know any of them in any way beyond how they help norman deliver these boxes. At least MGSV gave you Kaz, Ocelot, and Huey, established characters that you already had some connection to. This game is as if every supporting character in MGSV was Quiet. And that's ass.

Outside of Higgs they pretty much all suck.

I think I would like Fragile if her line delivery wasn't trash, same goes for Deadman. Mama could have been good but bad lines and probably the oddest arc followed by the game forgetting about her completely doesn't do her any favors. the game really wants you to like and connect with the characters to, and I'd argue it fails at that almost catastrophically.

Having a super international game that takes place in post apocalyptic America is weird.

Like, shouldn’t everybody have American accents?

[BisMarckie]

Now that I am about 10 hours in, I started to hate every single second playing this game. The BTs are just a pain in the ass, not a huge threat, just annoying. Having to hold in R2 and L2 constantly to not fall over is not fun in any way. Having to manage and repair your fucking containers during the rain sucks. Constantly having to rearrange your cargo sucks. The "combat" is incredibly shallow.

I'd rather play MGS 4.

[mormapope]

So......Kojima makes better games when a Konami suit is basically telling him politely that if he doesn't get his shit together, he'll be spending his older years in a closet drafting pachinko games.

[demi]

I read the story on wiki and saved myself a click

[TEEEPO]

this game sux  x

[OnlyRegret]

So......Kojima makes better games when a Konami suit is basically telling him politely that if he doesn't get his shit together, he'll be spending his older years in a closet drafting pachinko games.

it's probably some real gem or two back in the studio or older studio that shot down bad ideas, people wank kojima too hard and don't give props to the team around him
like how MGS3 was cowritten with Fukushima who left during MGS IV development

[chronovore]

https://twitter.com/atPeteDodd/status/1193278124726861826

[Coffee Dog]

It's kind of funny that when all is said and done I'm probably the guy who liked this game the most in this thread and yet every other sentence I'm shitting on it

I actually really enjoy what I've played as well. for as bad as i think every narrative element is, it's probably my favorite *playing* kojima game in 15 years.

All of my problems with the narrative fall to the wayside amidst the intensity of hauling 300kg of cum and eggs up a steep incline in a storm.

[kingv]

I just finished up episode 3, and am still enjoying it.

Took a peak at a walkthrough and it seems like the rest of the episodes are a lot shorter.

[Svejk]

I just got to episode 3 last night. That boss battle was lol that's it? easy.  Thanks peeps for leaving all the grenades, but fak... I think we're good folks.     I'm still enjoying the game though. Not sure why, but prepping my load out and the tension of traversing is engaging enough for me to want to keep going.

This is gonna sound weird, but I couldn't help but feel like this game is the Dark Savior of the Climax games... Pretty graphics with a neat gameplay twist and story, but it's no Landstalker or Alundra.  That popped in my head at 4am with a few drinks in me.
 

[kingv]

Did the boss ever literally attack you?

When I fought it I just stood on a platform and pelted it with grenades until it eventually ruined my perch. Then it was dead a few seconds later.

It basically just stood there the whole time.

Edit: I feel like episode 3 is where you will decide if it clicks with you or not for good. It’s much more just “take the packages back and forth” in episode 3, but you also get more toys to play with.

[Svejk]

Did the boss ever literally attack you?

When I fought it I just stood on a platform and pelted it with grenades until it eventually ruined my perch. Then it was dead a few seconds later.

It basically just stood there the whole time.

Directly?... Not that I recall actually  It was just all flashy commotion for the most part.   

[kingv]

I will say that the mules have downed me once.

You can get overwhelmed if you aren’t careful.

But they don’t kill you, they just take your stuff.

[Switters]

This game is fucking great. Just beat it... kinda.

The only thing that sucks is that I spent 10 hours setting up a zipline route through the mountains and their respective preppers that looped all the way back to mama's lab. 300 likes... while some chode's useless bridge that spans a river you could jump across has 2908729872987289 likes.

I almost had an emotion when you realize

spoiler (click to show/hide)

the figures in the sky from the 1st trailer were the people who loved you and just wanted you to be happy

[close]

 

[team filler]

likes 

[chronovore]

https://twitter.com/NudeEskimo/status/1195565873496543232

[kingv]

I just got through episode 4, and it was honestly a pretty good boss fight. Easy as hell, but good.

Mama though. Oof? Voice acting not so great.

[Rahxephon91]

It's pretty dumb that private lockers aren't universal.

[TVC15]

I didn’t get very far in the game, but I thought that sounded like it could be annoying

[Svejk]

I will say that the mules have downed me once.

You can get overwhelmed if you aren’t careful.

But they don’t kill you, they just take your stuff.

Getting that bolo gun, I wreck their shit now; Hog tie them bitches, go and kick them, steel their ride, load it up with all the shit in their camp and ride off like a pimp.
 

[Coffee Dog]

Every mandatory fight has been boring as sin. I'd call them bosses but they dont actually do anything? Theyre just bullet sponges. Whoopee. Sam doesnt have any movement abilities, or ways to reposition himself quickly, the guns are all bland and perfunctory, and the enemies just slowly advance at you until you apply hitstun 40 times and then they die if you don't get bored and kill yourself first. At least i could count the number of times ive been forced to fight on one hand and I'm 30+ hours into the game now.

I don't know who told Kojima that his game had to have shooting, but forced or not, that's not an excuse to be a shitty shooter. Just dont include weapons.

I'm completely checked out of the "story". I only dont skip dialogue if I'm meeting another character in person.

[Rahxephon91]

To be honest, Kojima hasn't had good boss battles since MGS3.

MGS4-Most of them are pretty shitty and the main gimmick are that they references to MGS1 bossess. Just without anything really clever or cool.

PW-Well none of them are hard, but incredibly tedious and time consuming. Espically  if you haven't grinded and are playing solo.

MGS5-This game had boss battles? The Frogs are the absolute worse and pretty much the end conclusion of Kojima running out of ideas.

I'm liking Death Stranding, but even then I feel like it's proof the dude has kind of lost it.  MGS1-3 are full of so many neat encounters, battles, situation, story telling moments. I think everything post MGS4 has been dry and really avoiding that stuff. I'm finding DS enjoyable, but it is through a lawyer of extreme tedium and lacking of what feel like set piece moments. 

[Don Rumata]

Maybe Kojima wasn't the mind behind the bosses in mgs1-3, and whoever was, left (which doesn't imply Fukushima, dev teams have dozens of people).
Or maybe his interests in design shifted, over the years.

[kingv]

It's pretty dumb that private lockers aren't universal.

Wouldn’t that defeat the purpose? it’s a resource management game.

Like what would stop you from putting a package in your locker, fragile jumping to a destination, taking your package out of the locker, and then turning it in?

[Rahxephon91]

Resident Evil 2 R is a horror game with item management. The chests aren’t stupid in that game. You already have such rigid limits on what you can carry on you anyway, why make it harder on the player just trying to manage thier ladders?

Fragile can’t transfer you to every point.

Why have it that you can put cargo in your Private Locker anyway?

How is the system anyway convenient  and useful that when I need my extra ladder I bought I need to go across the entire map because I left it at a previous city? It’s busy work and extra tedious fluff.

[kingv]

This is really nothing at all like Resident Evil though.

The reason that the private boxes don’t work that way are:
- the gameplay revolves around carrying things back and forth and choosing what you want to bring with you
- a major theme is leaving things behind for other players to find and use
- most items are priced trivially low anyway

Having an item box that works like that would defeat the purpose of those first two mechanics + also doesn’t really matter that much because a ladder is like 10 metal or something.

[Rahxephon91]

Then why even have private and shared? What’s the point of private?

You still have to decide what you bring on shipments as you have rigid limitations. So it’s not like that would change that aspect of the game if private lockers were universal. Resource management would mostly be the same. Nothing would really change. I just now wouldn’t be purposely inconvenienced.

Players can’t get into your private locker anyway so other players aren’t finding them anyway.

I mean you are right in that yeah things like ladders are cheap and this so far has not really bothered me.

It just seems like a dumb choice made in the name of "theme" instead of not wasting the the player's time.

[thisismyusername]

Every mandatory fight has been boring as sin. I'd call them bosses but they dont actually do anything? Theyre just bullet sponges. Whoopee. Sam doesnt have any movement abilities, or ways to reposition himself quickly, the guns are all bland and perfunctory, and the enemies just slowly advance at you until you apply hitstun 40 times and then they die if you don't get bored and kill yourself first. At least i could count the number of times ive been forced to fight on one hand and I'm 30+ hours into the game now.

I don't know who told Kojima that his game had to have shooting, but forced or not, that's not an excuse to be a shitty shooter. Just dont include weapons.

I'm completely checked out of the "story". I only dont skip dialogue if I'm meeting another character in person.

Does the difficulty level make a different? Apparently they made a "very easy" mode for Games Journalists to where things wouldn't attack or the like?

[kingv]

Then why even have private and shared? What’s the point of private?

You still have to decide what you bring on shipments as you have rigid limitations. So it’s not like that would change that aspect of the game if private lockers were universal. Resource management would mostly be the same. Nothing would really change. I just now wouldn’t be purposely inconvenienced.

Players can’t get into your private locker anyway so other plays aren’t finding them anyway.

You put stuff in the shared locker when you want to send it out into other players worlds. You put in private if you want to make sure you can use it later.

Personally, I almost never use the private locker. The only time I do is when I get an item from a shared locker that is a higher level than I can personally craft, and thus want to make sure I will have access to it later. Other than that I can find exactly what I need from the shared lockers about 75% of the time, and craft things the few times I can’t. Like I almost never craft vehicles anymore, because there’s always 4 in the garage at ever stop.

[kingv]

I’m a bit confused what happens when you get caught by BTs.

Has anybody done this a bunch of times and understands how it works?

spoiler (click to show/hide)

I went yolo on a section and just tried to drive straight through the BT area and got caught. But like, I got caught by the hands, then one of the big things came out.

I didn’t even fight it, I just ran away until I wasn’t in the black hoop any more and then... all of the BTs just disappeared?! It was really weird.

[close]

Like if that’s how it works, it’s almost more convenient to get purposefully caught.

[Rahxephon91]

I only happen to use a private locker because one of the shipments was like 120 lbs. No, it’s not a earth shattering issue.

As for the bts, yeah I kind of have been thinking it’s easier to engage with them. Like a few gernades are enough to end them or yeah just run away.

[kingv]

Cool.

If you haven’t been  checking shared lockers, I would do it. I’ve got level 2 versions of a bunch of the gear from them already.

[bluemax]

Maybe Kojima wasn't the mind behind the bosses in mgs1-3, and whoever was, left (which doesn't imply Fukushima, dev teams have dozens of people).
Or maybe his interests in design shifted, over the years.

I don't think Kojima has designed moment to moment game play in any of his games since probably the MSX or NES. He writes the scenario and story outline and  some dialogue other people handle the rest.

[Svejk]

Didn't realize how bad I needed a reverse trike in my life.

[thetylerrob]

I have a weird clicker-like level of addiction to this game. Something about the way it drip feeds new feature or unlocks at a constant rate just makes me keep playing.

[kingv]

I agree.

I understand that it’s kind of dumb, but I still enjoy it. I have accidentally gotten into a lot of tense moments as well.

Like the time I was carrying a person by truck, and accidentally got stuck in a terrorist camp, and then had to book it because I also had left all of my weapons except one stun grenade in the truck. Luckily old girl ate most of the bullets for me, but she almost died lol.

Had dead eyes anyway when she’s on your back but her little shroud thing was just straight up covered in blood when I delivered her to where she needed to go.

And then got treated to like 10 mins of gay shower bear erotica.

[TVC15]

Maybe Kojima wasn't the mind behind the bosses in mgs1-3, and whoever was, left (which doesn't imply Fukushima, dev teams have dozens of people).
Or maybe his interests in design shifted, over the years.

I don't think Kojima has designed moment to moment game play in any of his games since probably the MSX or NES. He writes the scenario and story outline and  some dialogue other people handle the rest.

Isn't it likely he had a lot of gameplay input in MGS? He wasn't a superstar vidya director yet back then.