The Giant Beastcast: Episode 232

Uhhh... pretty sure Dan changed his PSN name to "Diehardman"... well, it's a shame that Death Stranding is his RDR2 of the year.

Death Stranding definitely sounds like a game that I will never ever touch. Too tedious, too long and the payoff sounds pretty unsatisfying. You guys seem very baffled by the game... like, I actually feel bad that Alex and Vinny spent so much time with it. Jeez.

@topcyclist: ?? ??

?? Are you implying I'm the first person to refer to Death Stranding as DS? Or are you just picking my post because you have a problem with what I said, or how I said it.

Every comment section I've seen regarding this game, including this one multiple people refer to this game as DS. If you have beef dont be a passive aggressive ironic jerk off, just say it's not cool.

If you shoot a civilian in the new Call of Duty the game resets you back to a checkpoint. There is no attempt to ask a player if they made the right call or not in a situation, its either you did it right or you did it wrong, try again. Everything about the game seems like they're talking more about doing something than actually executing on it.

@meissnerd:

Thanks for making the point I came here to make about Disco Elysium. I completely understand what they were complaining about, but that makes it more interesting to me in the capacity it gave me to create an interesting protagonist to role play as.

It felt weird to me for them to go from saying DE was too cynical to talking about how much they like Outer Worlds. That game was cynical in a way that ensured I won't go back to it until I've explored as much of Disco Elysium as possible.

@continentalop: I have to disagree about OW, I don't find it particularly cynical at all. It's a game that focuses on corporations and people's relationships with them, but in my playthrough I haven't come across what I would call cynicism. Critique and skepticism, sure. But you can also blow anyone away with a laser gun, and your character is changing political landscapes almost single-handedly.

Disco Elysium, meanwhile, is full of cynicism. Political ideologies are depicted as toothless. Noble pursuits beget inevitable corruption and beauty rots. This is a large portion of the game, and I would say it's even front-loaded to establish the stakes for the main character.

The funny thing is, I think both Outer World's and Disco are actually optimistic games. It's just that, the way that the narrative is structured, you might miss most or all of that optimism depending on how you play in Disco, whereas as long as you follow the main quest you'll ultimately see what the devs wanted you to see.

I love how straightforward Dan is with his feelings about Death Stranding. It's what I like in the Gerstmann as well.

@pearsonpark: Was thinking the exact same thing. It is a perfect fit!

Jeff gets it. That FAL life.

@bisonhero: I think it's natural to be intrigued by Dan's negative reaction, as it prompts questions: well, why does he think that? How is Death Stranding so different from Kojima's previous work, which Dan so loved? His reaction also touches on larger questions about the project, such as: much ado has been made about Kojima supposedly being free of editorial influence; was this detrimental? Did Kojima fail in some way - does he actually need some sort of external guidance? It's clear Dan hated it from the hints he was dropping, yes, but the *why* is intriguing. Plus, a lot of people think that Dan's just a fun guy to whom to listen, and this promised to be a big blow-up that would be entertaining, even if you're not invested in the other questions.

As for Dan being cut off: I took a careful listen to the segment again, and by my count, Dan is interrupted or cut off no less than fifteen times. He is always cut off, with one exception, during the first half of the discussion, when he is trying to get most of his opinion out there; most of the times he's allowed to talk, he's making a short comment to agree with someone else or ask a question. Furthermore, he is the only person whose opinions are disparaged or discounted with long "well, that's just one person's opinion :\" rants - most notably around 17:30, where, despite Dan copiously noting that he understands the game took "a ton of time, and craft, and money, and work" to make and prefacing most every statement with "I think," Vinny accuses him of claiming his opinion is "objective" (again, despite Dan stating this view of the game is "for me, of course, yes,") and notes at length that a lot of games aren't "for" Dan and makes a lot of disclaimers that are, frankly, very condescending. (I love Vinny, but he's behaving pretty badly here.)

Conversely, Vinny and Alex are very patient and natural going back and forth with each other in explaining the basic story and mechanics, allowing each other to speak at length unimpeded, and Abby is largely allowed to interject opinions, including negative opinions, when she wants to add something. (Jeff is mostly silent.) Also, Vinny makes a LOT of strong declarations of opinion, particularly at around the 26:00 mark, that he does not preface with "this is my opinion" (though he does add a "stop me if I'm getting worked up here"), and which no one feels necessary to disclaim. The longest Dan is allowed to talk is a couple minutes around the 17:30 imbroglio, which is interrupted numerous times and which Vinny takes great pains to dismiss.

I didn't mean to go on for so many posts on this bit, or for so long here, but I just find utterly bizarre this idea that Dan should be required to sign forms in triplicate and obtain special approval to express video game opinions on a podcast about video game opinions on which he has been hired to appear.

@epidehl: People need to find a way to protect the integrity of a game they've not played and are looking for holes in every piece of negative criticism they get.

Boy, for once I hate how they had an early releasing of embargos for this game. It's so divisive that it feels like it's impossible to go into this game blind with them letting everyone go nuts on it 5 days early.

There's such a thing as trying to ridiculously over-control the discourse like Atlus has done with Persona 5 but in this instance I think they should've had the embargo go up on release day.

What Vinny was referring to when he spoke about Steam speaking up can be found on Youtube as: "Microsoft Narrator speaks up". It's hilarious!

@vinny: You did, and I totally missed it! Sorry, I didn't mean to misrepresent what you said. It sounds like your first impression of Disco Elysium was similar to mine. My opinions on how the game handles tone are not yet fully formed. It's an ambitious game, and overall I'm glad it's doing what it's doing, even if I end up disagreeing with its approach. Thanks for the response!

The story in Death Stranding sounds like a cross between Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots and The Who's Tommy or Pink Floyd's The Wall in it's utter silly bullshit and basic, punch-in-the-face symbolism. I'm still more excited to play it than any other game out or coming out for the rest of 2019. 2020 sounds a lot more compelling, even if some neat stuff like RE2 and Outer Wilds came out this year; those games were superb but also didn't knock my socks off. Even Outer Wilds, which is sort of a walking sim/puzzle game of it's own, is really neat but still finds stretches that I fall pretty numb on.

Honestly Death Stranding still sounds more fun than No Man's Sky, which bored me to tears even when I played it a couple months ago and realized that game is just holding down the laser button to collect rocks for 90% of it still.

While the online stuff is novel but evolutionary, almost everything else this game does has been done before and done better, even games by Kojima himself.

Revolutionary, my ass. It seems PS4 owners and Kojima-fans will bend over backwards to make this game something it is not, and even moreso with that metastatic average (have to go overboard to compensate, but I suppose overboard-ing it was going to happen either way).

I thought it was really strange too. Dan is interrupted so much during that discussion, and Vinny's "hey we need to make it clear these are just opinions" was completely unnecessary and out of place, since he never made that statement for anyone else on the podcast, and everyone else made statements that were just as strong as Dan's, if not more so; Abby even weighed in on the quality of the story, after saying she played the game for *2 hours*. She also said, unequivocally, "the style is bad" and Vinny didn't say a word. The selective treatment that Dan gets is annoying.

As soon as I heard what Dan though of the game, I went and pre-ordered the deluxe edition.

Welcome to Strands Anonymous.

Yikes to some of the hate on here.

Does anyone know what game Vinny was referring to when he said they experienced some crash and it said stuff about pain and death? I want to see that moment!

I am so fucking excited at just the concept of building transportation infrastructure with horror elements. That is fucking enticing as shit concept that I honestly would've never fucking thought of. Especially coming from my radical leftist pie in the sky dream of restructuring California into something that supports its strengths. This game sounds like it was made for me. I think rob zacny, austin walker, and I are in parallel in terms of appeal with this game's concept but idk bout all that writing stuff... imma buy some weed, a ps4 pro and take a week off work. I could not be more excited right now. (ive thought through this, not a reaction to this podcast alone)

I wonder what would happen if they tried watching Ghost In The Shell. All of them.

I hope you are not comparing GitS with Death fucking Stranding....

@avioto:I had the same problem, the thoughtful writing and choices in DE highlighted the sameyness of outer worlds for me. not a bad game, but just another one of those, which are 360 era games at this point.

@sethmode: I have to disagree, MGS 1-3 are some of the tightest most enjoyable gaming experiences I've ever had. I've played each one through a dozen times, and while the story is the main attraction, I've had playthroughs where i skip the cutscenes and just reload areas until i can set up the perfect stealth approach. Fun AI, lots of secrets, and a tremendous variety of options at your disposal is what I define metal gear by. Seems like the story in DS is just poorly executed enough, and the combat/gameplay loop just isn't there.

@sahalarious: also, I defintiely understand giving up on a game that fights against your sensibilities after 2 hours, but maybe Abby should take a step back from talking about a game she only put 1% of the total playtime into? Dan too, but 8 hours is longer than your average COD campaign so it feels like more of a quantifiable timestamp as far as criticism goes. DS doesn't look like its for me, and the combat looks like it sucks, but for such a hot topic in the industry putting in 2 hours seems lazy.

I imagine being on the other end of these parasocial relationships probably really fucking sucks. I don't have much more to add, it just makes me sad.

I feel like Dan is especially terrible at talking about games he doesn't enjoy

@faridmon: I totally started to and it came out, hours later, i realize how stupid that is, but i was seeing some connections at the time and I feel like everything they don't like about DS could be applied to why I love tjhe mamoru oshii film so so much.

At least the concept of elevated section police meets existential and cyber-surreal, with under themes of life death, self, and then spider tanks. So I dunno, yeah it's a stretch, but GiTS is my point of reference for too much probably.

@sahalarious: I mean, to be fair, literally every other person on the site is playing it, which is extremely uncommon. The game is getting an insane amount of coverage, compared to the average game. I don't see why she should be forced to play more than she wants when it's clearly getting its dues.

@swazzyswess:

"I believe today Abby even said games shouldn't *allow* you to say sexist things"

yeah no. Abby never said that.

@onijai: it's fantastic https://youtu.be/EWQxNMQoczA

It's baffling to me that Vinny finished Death Stranding, but never got around to finish Red Dead Redemption 2.

Just an obvious heads-up for the people who think Disco Elysium makes Outer Worlds look dull: given the year this has been, Outer Worlds seems to be a prime candidate to become GB's game of the year. It seems the staff likes/loves it across the board and while some staff members might have personal favourites ranked higher, I strongly feel they could all accept that game being at the top. Just... be prepared for that. Not that the comments have been terrible regarding the staff not really enjoying Disco, but well... there's already a lot of passion here.

That said, as someone who's really enjoying Outer Worlds, I'm definitely going to check out Disco Elysium now. After finishing Outer Worlds, though. 😜 Thanks!

Glad Vinny is playing Elysium. I really enjoyed what I've played so far and it really does remind me of Planscape. If you're looking for a bit more comedic relief I'd recommend putting more points into Inland Empire. It took me a while to get it, but the game rewards you for role-playing. If your skills in game reflect you being a little bit crazy, acting crazy in game will give you more experience. You really need to roleplay the character you've made instead of just doing whatever you feel like at the moment. You also don't wanna just go through every dialogue choice in the game. I could totally see how someone wouldn't like it though. Some of the scenes are... a bit uncomfortable.

As for Death Stranding. It sounds kind of masochistic. Sounds like a very interesting game but maybe not a fun game? The reviews are all over the place and it makes me wonder that if Hideo Kojima didn't make this game and some other lesser known developer had made it would we still be seeing the same scores? I was kind of worried when Kojima started the project as I think the push pull relationship between creative and financial ultimately ends up making the product often times better. Or at least more main stream... the reviews so far kind of remind me of a pretentious over the top artsy film that is loved by people who "get it" but ultimately misses for many in the mainstream. I'll still buy and play it. If for no other reason then to see Kojima make more games. Hopefully I connect with it.

Thanks guys always enjoy these!

@topcyclist: alright. I apologize, I clearly missed your original point.

@youngshields: no problem i apologize too. Noticed DS has the same take for both games. Easy to see my post being rude.

Along with other comments, I would love to hear Abby's feeling on Spec Ops: The Line if she played through it. The in depth analysis (or w/e you wanna call it) was an amazing watch, as well.

@loafofgame: I would not be unhappy about that, haha.

I said "I believe" because I knew I wasn't getting the quote exactly right. What she said was, if it was up to her, she wouldn't, quote: "even have anybody explore that kind of fantasy."

She never said ”if it was up to me”

@madbootsy: I think he mentioned about changing it to ”CheezItpizza” during the Cook, Serve, Delicious 3 video. Would be pretty great if there was a one year cooldown on the name change and he’d be stuck with ”Diehardman”.

Also I kinda forgot about Afterparty. Gotta give it a try, since it’s on Game Pass.

everything I am seeing people hate about death stranding is exactly what I want from death stranding

hideous inventory management. barren, massive open spaces to explore. weird but amazing multiplayer integration. I'm very excited to buy this game on steam in like 10 months.

I kinda sympathize with Dan. It sounds like he's in the same place with Death Stranding I was with Sekiro - a deep, immediate, visceral dislike of everything that the game is doing. Sometimes a game just ain't for you.

@meissnerd: Fair. The first Area and big choice in Outer Worlds is mostly what I was referring to as I haven't have the patience to get much further yet. It was two sides of a messed up world that didn't make me care about anybody involved except Parvati. The cynicism was about the corporate power and no one's lives being worth anything. I do plan to go back and finish it: it's just that it started with a sour feeling for me.

The burning question is what quick look had the "pane" "die" after they closed the game?

So, "Most Disappointing" GOTY confirmed?

I can't stand Kojima games because the stories have always been up their own ass. That being said it still bums me out that Dan didn't like it. It was obvious that he was super looking forward to it.

Just read through the comments section...why do I do that to myself.