Death Stranding 2

[mmmark]

 

[DisturbedSwan]

Hype!

[one-armed dwarf]

Did you ever complete the original?

 

I'm curious what that directors cut stuff added to the game. DS1 was cool but plateaued in a fairly major way with the zipline mechanic. A better variety of tools for traversal and a lengthier progression to its mechanics would go a long way. 

 

I think in particular there needs to be a bit more danger in the open world that isn't just BTs and mules, in the form of some light survival mechanics (but none of that eating and drinking stuff). In a way DS1 felt the most similar to a game like BOTW out of all the other open world efforts out there, where both games are more about the journey than destination. imo it's a really good 7/10 that had the potential to be an actual 10 with some changes to how the mechanics get integrated into open world exploring. Less said about the story and cutscenes the better tho

 

I wonder what this game will even be tho. The tagline is saying 'should we have connected', or whatever, so it might be doing something fairly different. Either way it's cool that he made a AAA game that was about something mundane like delivering boxes and built out so many systems around that so I hope it sticks to that as a core thing

[DisturbedSwan]

Unfortunately not @one-armed dwarf I ended up fucking myself on one of the saves and got myself in a right kerfuffle, accepted one of those mission where you need a truck to transport stuff and then didn't have a truck on me so it auto loaded onto my eco-mech whatever you call it and then I walked at a snail pace but my previous saves were no good either for a reason that escapes me as of now lol. 

 

But yeah, I would love to go back to it and finish it, I think I've got the PS5 DC on PS+ Premium, apparently saves transfer too maybe so if I could find one that wasn't fucked I could carry on from where I left off, realistically I can't see a window I can slot it into anytime soon though. 

[one-armed dwarf]

Taking convo away from sony general

 

 

 

I think DS is a messy and meandering game and it didn't really get the tonal balance right, it also had some of the worst over-acting I've seen in a game (which was praised as amazing acting in other quarters, but I don't know why). But when I got on board with it I found it a breath of fresh air in the sense it wasn't just another AAA game about murdering people. I give out about Sony and other massive AAA publishers having titles which are coalescing more and more into these risk averse templates but Death Stranding was one of those exceptions that didn't. Granted it does throw the towel in eventually and decide 'actually, we also do a bit of murdering around here'. But at least those sections were mercifully brief, drop the game to very easy mode and just rush through.

 

I think too many games are about chasing adrenaline but there's something also to be said for a game which will have stretches of mundanity and have the game be about that, letting players sit with some negative emotions for a bit can actually conjure up powerful moments of catharsis when it isn't being like that. Which is super invigorating when done right. It has a lot in common with BOTW imo, where a lot of both game's friction comes from rationalising ways of dealing with the environment and its resources/terrain. BOTW and TOTK are much more rich open world puzzle boxes though, while imo I'll still say that ziplines just surfaced too quickly in the game and made the exploration options very linear when it did. So hopefully the sequel is a bit more rich in that sense, mechanically

 

I also think DS is probably Kojima's most cinematic looking game, but outside of its actual cutscenes I mean. More games need bleak scenery like this.

 

That said, nothing in this trailer specifically does much for me cause a lot of the story driven stuff was a pretty big misfire in the first one. It felt like they wanted its style to also be its substance, but found neither. 

[DisturbedSwan]

That trailer was absolutely fucking phenomenal.

 

I never finished the original and never fully got on with it but am definitely up for trying the sequel.