Humanity

@lajiaya: Thanks for the info, I checked that article out and it's definitely really interesting to hear them talk about it. Also I'm always really taken aback how in Japan everyone is always very enthusiastic about the projects they're working on but it somehow seems a lot more earnest than when you hear people in the west. It's hard to explain but they all feel so, I don't know, I guess "honored" to be part of the process. The one voice actress mentions how the game made her see society and herself in a different way, and motivated her to "challenge herself" - thats kind of a powerful statement.

@shindig: I think you might be projecting a little here. I very much doubt Hideo Kojima is basing Death Stranding on the current political climate of the US. Kojima has always dealt with wide-sweeping ideas that are presented through stories happening in America, not so much about America. Patriotism, governments, dissemination of information, legacies, cultural barriers - these are all themes that could have been represented through numerous countries and protagonists. The one thing that seems somewhat clear is that Death Stranding has something to do with the way people connect in this day and age, not about US foreign policy, police brutality or the income gap.

@ntm: yah I’m generally interested simply because Kojima does forge his own path in the gaming world which is always exciting. People will often bemoan the lack of creativity and risk taking in the industry, and then something like Death Stranding comes along and somehow plenty of folks aren’t that interested anymore. I’m just really worried that my base PS4 is going to have issues with this, but then again Phantom Pain ran near flawlessly so who knows? I know there is a chance this will come out for PC but I think it’s a game beat experienced during the zeitgeist.

There is another 30 minute demo that Kojima is doing tomorrow that is supposed to continue on where they left off with the 48 minute one above.

I'm curious to see more weirdness - fortunately I have no issue with Kojima writing because I think it's a perfect mix of serious and absurd. I had just finished Gears 5 last night and I have more confidence in Kojima delivering an interesting story than the Coalition did with Gears thus far. Videogame writing is a very low bar for the most part.

It's been years since I had a ton of fun with Borderlands 2, and I still don't think I'm ready to play "another one of those" and I'm not sure I ever will be. The gaming market has evolved to the point where personally, I don't think that gameplay by itself satisfies me anymore. I just got done playing Gears 5 and that game similarly feels very dated in this day and age, especially after a game like Control which has this amazing freedom of movement and interesting set pieces. More than anything in modern games I look for evolved mobility - feeling like I'm not constrained by arbitrary boundaries. Gears was always bad about that and it hasn't gotten any more palatable in 2019. Borderlands 3 looks to be more of the same in a way that just looks kinda boring - but hey thats me.

@nodima: For Tomassi I think the trick is to just go up on that catewalk near the top of the room and then it's super easy to manage the regular enemies and the invisible guy only has one way to approach you.

Mold-1 can get fucked though. I saw videos on YouTube where people take that boss out extremely quickly by tossing his own grenades back at him. I always got to the phase where the floor gets covered with toxic gas and you have to stay up on the platforms and would get wrecked. The time I beat him was just luck because I was a slither of health away from dying and then a random launch took off a huge chunk of his health.

The one thing that seemed inconsistent on bosses is how much damage launch did. There is a timing there or something because sometimes it would be like a critical hit and other times just a normal ding.

It's sad to admit but I do feel a small sense of regret that I played it through the Epic Game Store as I did everything there was in the game and have no achievos.. but hey a cool member of the Forums was willing to give me their key for free so I can't complain.

It’s not all just about slowly walking while holding a bunch of FedEx boxes full of sperm and singing to a baby.

Chris Kohler, Kotaku

Kojima showed off 48 minutes of gameplay from Death Stranding at TGS. There was also a cinematic trailer in english that had some hilarious lines in it. Like the presidents daughter being called Samantha America Strand..

Anyway the gameplay has Kojima narrating it but sadly it's all in Japanese and Googles auto translation produces complete gibberish (if anyone here knows Japanese and could shed some light on things that would be awesome!) ..although.. at one point the subtitles said "sperm eggs" and I chuckled like an infant, and then up on the UI I actually saw Sperm Eggs written plain as day in english in the game. So far this thing is looking like it's a whole lotta' walking around on green hills. There is a boss fight that seems pretty basic and they fight some human enemies using a neat looking bola gun. Weirdly enough a lot of the combat options showcased were non-lethal. The engine seems to be pretty good, who knows maybe it's even as good as their Phantom Pain engine was because there seems to be a wide range of options for movement. Every 30 seconds there seemed to be a prompt to shift you weight, to rest, to massage your shoulders.

I dunno it looks as weird as it ever did and the gameplay portion seems still very enigmatic. On the surface it appears to be a game about walking from the east coast to the westcoast connecting these points back to the Chiral(?) network, whatever it is, using a Cupid, whatever that is. Not sure if anything more exciting happens along the way but Kojima is known for showing you about 5% of the game in the trailers and gameplay and hiding a ton of content through clever editing and tricks. Visually I'm really into it.

Death Stranding is out in November.

As dumb as it sounds I kind of missed achievements, but other than that the EGS worked perfectly fine for me as well.

@doombot13: There are very direct references to Alan Wake; didn't see anything relating to Quantum Break but then again I never played that one so maybe I missed something.

Control is so far my favorite game of this year - really love just playing it - so I'm really excited for actually meaningful story-driven DLC. The horde mode thing they are giving away for free should also be pretty fun since the combat in Control is in itself a blast.

I'm also curious to see how that PC patch will affect performance. The patch is apparently out for PS4 users, and lord knows they needed one, but I haven't seen any followups on how much it actually improved performance.

I'm also looking forward to finally being able to upgrade Pierce.