After completing my second playthrough of Death Stranding this year I can say its definitely one of my favorite games to play. Its so relaxing and peaceful with one of the best roll outs of new mechanics I've ever seen. Your tool box is constantly expanding to meet the expanding challenges you face as you continue to explore the world.
Its also so enjoyable to play a game that doesnt measure success with violence, with the limited shooting segments being the low point of the game for me.
It was nice to see such an in-depth and eloquent breakdown of a game I often think back on, probably more then any other.
As someone who grew up with a deep love of Star Wars as a child and wrestled with disappointment in the fiction not maturing in the way I as a consumer of that fiction would like as I grew older; I always look back favorably on KOTOR II as what I wanted Star Wars to be. I absolutely love how it tears down and dissects the often binary, moral simplicity of the universe as well as its exploration of the cyclical nature of the force and if its existence is even tolerable.
Its just FUN to dig deep into an established fiction and draw conclusions that were probably never intended to be made in the first place when some nerdy filmmaker conceived of it decades ago; but that's the fun to me about collaborative fiction and fandom - and I wish it was given a take like this more often.
The biggest tradgedy of KOTOR II is that it was never finished, and content restoration mod aside, its a bummer that we'll never definitively get to see all they had in store for us.
...short of stalking Chris Avellone down and making him tell us. Not that I would advocate doing that... (You can insert a Lionel Hutz meme for me here!)
**Edit**
Probably my favorite part about KotorII's narrative is how they let you discover (and have agency in) the Exile/Protagonist's backstory as the story develops, simultaneously managing to deliver a sense of revelation and mystery as well as letting you personalize the character in the same breath.
Simple things like the color of your old lightsaber or why you fought, or what your relationship was with Atris are such small (probably relatively throw away plot points from a development standpoint) touches that served to draw me deeper into the narrative.
Yeah I'm not seeing what looks so "breathtaking" graphically. The environments looked kind of gross; I'd love a good authentic samurai game so fingers crossed it turns out.
Yeah I agree. I grew up playing fighting games as a kid but never really "enjoyed" them beyond me and some buddies beating each other up for an hour or two before getting bored and putting another game in.
Flashforward to Injustice 2 and I'm actually still playing. Its just flashy enough to remain fresh and with enough none fighting game bells and whistles that keep me -an out of genre tourist- sticking around.
Junkerman's comments