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Death Stranding, new Hideo Kojima joint

Started by Mister Six, May 29, 2019, 09:56:17 PM

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Cuellar

Right.

So it's nothing to do with being 'open world' or any of that shit?

popcorn

Quote from: Cuellar on May 31, 2019, 02:54:32 PM
Right.

So it's nothing to do with being 'open world' or any of that shit?

Nah. It means it's the game equivalent of a high-budget blockbuster movie (as opposed to some indie thing or whatever). Started off as marketing talk but has become a mainstream gamer term.

C - any of mobile game
B - visual novel, shit puzzle game, retro inspired shit
A - Crap games amazing personality like Dragon's Dogma
AA - Demon's Souls, janky but best games ever made stuff
AAA - The stuff that thick people buy 4K tellies for
S - SHMUPS

Cuellar

Ok, Ok. well they should have used something else because it is VERY confusing. I originally thought AAA pass just meant 'very good' until it was pointed out to me about a year ago that it meant Access All Areas and that threw me right off.

St_Eddie

Quote from: The Boston Crab on May 31, 2019, 01:55:49 PM
No offence but the only interesting thing about that film director aaaahhh stuff is that anyone would make such a trite point in 2019.

Well, excuse me for having an opinion.  I'm not parroting a secondhand opinion, I'm merely stating things as I see them.  If other people have echoed similar thoughts, then perhaps there's an element of truth there.  You can point out a cliché, but a cliché is a cliché for a reason; there's a fundamental truth within.

Quote from: Mister Six on May 31, 2019, 02:49:04 PM
Yeah it's a bit of an inane point to make. It's like saying "Everybody loves Jackson Pollock but could he design a skyscraper?" Er, no, probably not. What's that got to do with anything?

No, it's like saying 'this game which is focused on narrative is poorly written'.  When I read a novel, I judge it by the writing, as I do for any other narrative focused medium. Since when has being critical of bad writing been trite and unworthy?  It's fine that you like the game (yes, I spotted the bias) but that shouldn't preclude objective criticism.

Clownbaby

If a game wants to flaunt its writing and direction in particular, the writing and direction better be good, and  should naturally come under scrutiny because the developers behind whatever game it may be made a big thing about how well written and cinematic the game is. If game directors and developers are selling their game as an evocative cinematic experience as well as a game, I don't really see how looking at a sweeping movie quality game as comparable/contrastible to an actual film is bollocks. The game creators obviously want it to be seen that way. They want to bridge actual well witten and directed story and gameplay. Unfortunately most of them dick it up and you end up with the absolute display of a beige mess that is Heavy Rain or some other twat

Kelvin

Quote from: St_Eddie on June 01, 2019, 02:10:49 AM
No, it's like saying 'this game which is focused on narrative is poorly written'.  When I read a novel, I judge it by the writing, as I do for any other narrative focused medium. Since when has being critical of bad writing been trite and unworthy?  It's fine that you like the game (yes, I spotted the bias) but that shouldn't preclude objective criticism.

I totally agree, you are entitled to criticise the writing of the game - it's just not the only measure by which something can be judged. As I said upthread, I don't believe anyone specifically loves the Metal Gear games for their dialogue. It's really much more about their art direction, conceptual ambition and the density of ideas that makes them stand out from other series. Not to mention the gameplay itself. A bit like how Star Wars: A new Hope is badly acted and only competently written, but still gets by on its characters, visuals, and simple, effective story telling. Sometimes things are loved for reasons other than a script that looks good on paper. 

robotam

Plus the story is better than any movie and most books

Mister Six

Quote from: Kelvin on June 01, 2019, 02:51:30 AM
I totally agree, you are entitled to criticise the writing of the game - it's just not the only measure by which something can be judged. As I said upthread, I don't believe anyone specifically loves the Metal Gear games for their dialogue. It's really much more about their art direction, conceptual ambition and the density of ideas that makes them stand out from other series. Not to mention the gameplay itself. A bit like how Star Wars: A new Hope is badly acted and only competently written, but still gets by on its characters, visuals, and simple, effective story telling. Sometimes things are loved for reasons other than a script that looks good on paper.

This, except A New Hope is shit. The point was phrased as "What if Hideo Kojima was a film director?" but he's not - he makes video games, and while the dialogue may be subpar (though I would say rather charming in its idiosyncrasies) and the cutscenes absurdly self-indulgent, they are but two parts of a greater, more complex - and clearly, for many people successful - whole.

By all means criticise the writing (or any other aspect of the game) but "What if Hideo Kojima made a film?" is a ridiculous hypothetical. What if Gabriel Garcia Marquez were a contortionist? What if David Lynch were a juggler? What if Salvador Dali were a kissogram? 

Kelvin

I imagine that a film written and co-directed by Kojima would be massively entertaining, tbh.

Urinal Cake

Kojima has always revelled in B movies, cheese and even popular film (like the Bond franchise). The problem is sometimes you don't know what is intentional, accidental/sloppy or a cultural misinterpretation.

St_Eddie

#41
Quote from: Mister Six on June 01, 2019, 03:19:54 AM
This, except A New Hope is shit. The point was phrased as "What if Hideo Kojima was a film director?" but he's not - he makes video games, and while the dialogue may be subpar (though I would say rather charming in its idiosyncrasies) and the cutscenes absurdly self-indulgent, they are but two parts of a greater, more complex - and clearly, for many people successful - whole.

By all means criticise the writing (or any other aspect of the game) but "What if Hideo Kojima made a film?" is a ridiculous hypothetical. What if Gabriel Garcia Marquez were a contortionist? What if David Lynch were a juggler? What if Salvador Dali were a kissogram?

I think that you may have missed the point which I was making; bad writing in videogames tends to get overlooked, simply because it's a videogame.  I merely used the hypothetical "what if Kojima was a film director?" in order to highlight the double standard.  If the writing in Metal Gear Solid 4 was in a film, it would get rightfully slated.  I don't see why it should get a free pass just because the other aspects of the game are good.  I think that we, as gamers, should expect better of our favoured medium.

Clownbaby

Quote from: St_Eddie on June 01, 2019, 01:15:57 PM
I think that you may have missed the point which I was making; bad writing in videogames tends to get overlooked, simply because it's a videogame.  I merely used the hypothetical "what is Kohima was a film director?" in order to highlight the double standards.  If the writing in Metal Gear Solid 4 was in a film, it would get rightfully slated.  I don't see why it should get a free pass just because the other aspects of the game are good.  I think that we, as gamers, should expect better of our favoured medium.

Agree. I don't really see any reason why games can't get better writers than they often end up getting. With some games it feels like the writers are just some guys who were doing another aspect of the game and said "I'm okay at writing stories, I'll have a crack at it lads" (I'm not saying anything about Metal gear Solicitors though because I don't know enough about them)

Kelvin

Quote from: St_Eddie on June 01, 2019, 01:15:57 PM
I think that you may have missed the point which I was making; bad writing in videogames tends to get overlooked, simply because it's a videogame.  I merely used the hypothetical "what is Kohima was a film director?" in order to highlight the double standards.  If the writing in Metal Gear Solid 4 was in a film, it would get rightfully slated.  I don't see why it should get a free pass just because the other aspects of the game are good.  I think that we, as gamers, should expect better of our favoured medium.

I agree that's a different point, then. Games do, generally, feature pretty bad - or increasingly just okay - writing and story-telling. Although the obvious answer to your question, "Why is the writing in games not criticised as harshly as it would be in a film?" is that plot, dialogue, and even characters, are much more important in a film, whereas generally speaking, all three take a backseat to gameplay in a game, meaning people care far less if they're mediocre.   

St_Eddie

Quote from: Kelvin on June 01, 2019, 01:52:31 PM
I agree that's a different point, then. Games do, generally, feature pretty bad - or increasingly just okay - writing and story-telling. Although the obvious answer to your question, "Why is the writing in games not criticised as harshly as it would be in a film?" is that plot, dialogue, and even characters, are much more important in a film, whereas generally speaking, all three take a backseat to gameplay in a game, meaning people care far less if they're mediocre.   

Yes, but if anything the gameplay takes a backseat to the plot, dialogue and characters in Metal Gear Solid 4 (only a third of the game is spent with a controller in your hand), hence my film comparison.  If a game aspires to be cinematic and has hour long cutscenes, then it should be held to the same standard as a film.

Kelvin

Quote from: St_Eddie on June 01, 2019, 02:05:08 PM
Yes, but if anything the gameplay takes a backseat to the plot, dialogue and characters in Metal Gear Solid 4, hence my film comparison.

But isn't MG4 considered one of the weaker entries, precisely because the story got in the way of gameplay? In which case, people haven't just overlooked the writing once it became the focus.   

I don't think Metal Gear is a very good example of this, anyway, because while it's true that many game stories would hold up less well if you transcribed them directly into a film (which you would never do anyway), I actually think Metal Gear is one of the few series that could survive the transition, precisely because the concepts would still be entertaining.

EDIT; Or maybe they wouldn't. I've just remembered how much I disliked the recent live action Alita film, precisely because it was all about the visuals, but had terrible dialogue... so maybe I'm talking out of my arse.   

Consignia

In general, story in games is on the periphery. One with a well written story but poor gameplay will be a bad game, but vice versa great gameplay with a steaming pile of story will be a good game. Because the gameplay is the central tenet, and will be thing the story is designed around and will have to change as ideas are introduced and changed throughout development. It's not impossible to have better writing in games, but it's a lot harder and to what benefit? But even mediocre stories are better when you are interacting with them. It's the sacrifice you have to make, and one that I think works pretty well.

Blue Jam

November? I had assumed this would end up being a PS5 game.

I will probably end up buying a PS4 Pro then...

Harpo Speaks

I think I'm just always going to be intrigued by a Kojima project.

That mix of bizarre storytelling, campy dialogue, overblown action set-pieces, and innovative gameplay mechanics is just appealing to me. Even if the game itself turns out to be an ambitious failure in terms of execution, that still feels preferable to yet another cookie-cutter open world game which is competent and playable, but is otherwise unremarkable and lacking in any kind of personality.

Not that there isn't a place for those games, but just for variety you need something that's a bit off-kilter to make the gaming landscape a bit more interesting.

Kojima isn't given a pass, anyway. It's the most trite strawman type of comment.

First, loads of people are always going on about how shite game writing is in general and the response is 'not arsed, gameplay/graphics'. Where the story is central like with David Cage shit, it gets fuckin slaughtered because there's noting else and the writing is aids.

MGSV got slaughtered for the story and writing and sometimes awful high concept stuff but it also got praised for being mad and ambitious with the concepts and tonally unique in that it deals with very heavy depressing real life stuff with an absurdist Japanese sensibility, filtered through a fetish for junk tier Hollywood. It's more interesting and weird and sprawling and indulgent than almost all other game or film writing and that's entertaining. It's not Screenwriters Handbook entertaining but games don't need to be beholden to the cunted up rounded corners formulae of 'good writing'. That's what makes a lot of the more iconic writing in games fun.

Voice acting is also universally bad to the standards of theatre actors or Pixar movies or whatever but it's often perfect for the hyperreal exaggerated weird broad strokes that games often deal in. I want Balrog to bellow 'Where's mah fight moneeeyyyyy?!' when he gets KO'd. I don't want him to mumble 'the better man won, I'll lick my wounds and go again some time next year'.

Likewise, the MGS series has about a thousand iconic, memorable lines and narrative and character moments and cinematography. I'll take that over any textbook twattery. Games are their own medium and the worst thing that can happen to them is what has happened with the cinematic influence and the shame they feel to just be games. God of War is the worst example of this I can remember. For a game where you do a load of remarkable spectacular stuff, its slavish adherence to a grounded reality and crushing naturalistic, self-serious dialogue kills any excitement stone dead.

St_Eddie

Quote from: Kelvin on June 01, 2019, 02:13:11 PM
...I actually think Metal Gear is one of the few series that could survive the transition, precisely because the concepts would still be entertaining.

We may yet find out how well the transition to cinema holds up.

Quote from: Consignia on June 01, 2019, 02:13:23 PM
In general, story in games is on the periphery. One with a well written story but poor gameplay will be a bad game, but vice versa great gameplay with a steaming pile of story will be a good game. Because the gameplay is the central tenet, and will be thing the story is designed around and will have to change as ideas are introduced and changed throughout development. It's not impossible to have better writing in games, but it's a lot harder and to what benefit? But even mediocre stories are better when you are interacting with them. It's the sacrifice you have to make, and one that I think works pretty well.

Why should there be any sacrifice?  I'm not asking for a better story in something which is focused on gameplay (for example, shoot 'em ups), but when the game in question is narrative led, I see no reason to expect a sacrifice in the quality of writing.

Mister Six

I think most of what I'd want to say has been covered above, but I would like to know what constitutes "bad writing" here. Because while the cutscenes became stupidly long to the point of driving me away from the series, I never thought the writing in MGS was bad. It was frequently cheesy, preposterous and baffling, but none of those things are necessarily negatives, and all appeared to be deployed with intent; it never gave the impression it was trying for anything else. (Unlike, say, Red Dead Redemption 1, which starts off with lovely, rounded characters and great dialogue, then pisses it all up the wall by tossing away the protagonist's moral compass and surrounding him with cartoon characters about a fifth of the way through.)

Also is the implication that poor dialogue/thin characterisation/convenient coincidences/predictable plotting/trite messages/whatever doesn't get ignored in cinema when the rest of the film is actually up to snuff? Because it absolutely does.

And that's why - assuming your assertion is true, which I don't think is actually provable in any meaningful way - the writing in video games is "worse"; because it's just one part of a whole, and not even the most important part in most games.

popcorn

I think the writing in the Metal Gear Solid games is quite good, in its very daft way. I think it's quite original.

Much better than the writing in GTA5 for example, which is just turgid and juvenile and far more pretentious than anything Kojima comes up with.

Thursday

I think it's largely that it operates in the interesting space that is "Japanese America" An outsider's attempt to emulate Hollywood ends up creating something quite unique. Particularly because it's also fused with anime influences.

I suppose you could point to the Resident Evil and Silent Hill games as other examples of Japanese America, that offer different results, but I think they're both interesting in their own way. Even if Resi is dumb b-movie schlock, it's still manages to be quite fun.

David Cage games of course just end up creating something that's a bit uncanny and wrong.



popcorn

Quote from: Thursday on June 01, 2019, 07:43:14 PM
I think it's largely that it operates in the interesting space that is "Japanese America" An outsider's attempt to emulate Hollywood ends up creating something quite unique. Particularly because it's also fused with anime influences.

I mentioned earlier in the thread that I know someone who used to work for him, and in fact she was the translator of some of the MGS games. Japanese-American. Had nothing but contempt for him and his writing - she saw him purely as a ripoff merchant of Hollywood schlock. Apparently his scripts even had instructions like "and then the car explodes just like such and such scene in Predator 2" and so on.

I think she's completely wrong but it was interesting to hear her rant. I think in particular MGS2 has all kinds of brilliant, mental postmodern nonsense in it. Nonsense it is, but brilliant.

David Cage is the fucking pits.

She sounds like a stupid fucking cunt and that's not something I would say lightly.


St_Eddie

I think that she sounds marvelous and would like to marry her and that's not something that I would say lightly.

Thursday

There's a guy called Jeremy Blaustein that worked on the localisation of the first 2 games I think and talked about why in his eyes, the first one ended up much better. Someone on here linked me to a podcast several years ago, but I can't really remember any details. 

peanutbutter

The Kojima critiques are all pretty tired at this stage. He absolutely and always has lifted fuck tons from schlocky films and I'd imagine he'd jump at the chance to direct one, but he's also generally really good at tinkering with formats and getting gameplay down to just being a really fun experience. He's able to deliver his dumb as fuck stories in ways that work for the most part.

I can imagine the side who work on things from the more cinematic side of things must find him to be a colossal dose, meanwhile on the game design side of things he's probably got the unwavering faith of his whole team.