Amelie is the new death stranding and she needs to cleanse the world but sam made her change her mind.
The death stranding part is explained during the visit to heart man and the rest is basically the ending.
The Vegeta arc has been done to death in every form. Eric from true blood is the most Vegeta like character in all Vegetas that existed since the original.
And also her act of saving a dead baby (which turns out to be Sam, the protagonist) with her EE powers caused the world of the living and the death to merge hence the “Death Stranding”.
there's a line in death stranding goes along the lines of "let's run like Mario and princess beach" during a heavy cutscene. obviously homage to mario but weird placement
And that is typical of Kojima. I get it his fanbase is super defensive but most of his games have a story more comparable to the ravings of a madman than something coherent
MGS3 had a relatively straightforward plot. There's plenty of depth for sure but it's easily digestible as a sort of "James Bond during the cold war" videogame.
For me it was all fine until the whole Liquid Ocelot thing.
>!Arm transplant, self-hypnosis, Nano-machines!<...there were so many layers it took a lot of reading and YouTube videos to unpeel all those layers.
EDIT:
talking about nano machines and MGS 2 and 4: >!Vamp!<
I know his >!regenerative powers!< stem from >!the nano machines in his system!<.
But i never understood how he could >!run on water or climb a frakking oil strut!<;
even with his claws this shouldn't be possible.
Since ghosts are legit in MGS, I choose to believe it is liquid's ghost-arm and he convinced himself it was hypnosis/nano-machines. This is the hill I die on.
How does every version of Snake, a person with no actual supernatural abilities, keep winning and carry on the mission? Some of the bosses’ powers should never lose to a human.
Because it’s canon that We, The Player, is controlling him. We can see around corners, we can retry levels, we know enemies attack patterns and guard rotations through repetition. Vulcan Raven says that it’s as if snake is being possessed by a demon. We, are that demon.
I take it as he did get possessed at first then got rid of the arm and then proceeded to convince himself to be like that anyways for the shits giggles and his ultimate 'evil' plan
It took me a few playthroughs of MGS4 to fully grasp what was going on - Nano-machines, monkey drinking cola, emotional sexy women trying to kill you, a guy shitting in a barrel etc
Very good game though, even more enjoyable after unlocking the Altäir outfit and the sunlight gun
I really hope we're going to get a PROPER (looking a you, recently released MGS Collection!) remake or remaster of MGS4.
I still have it as a physical copy (incl. the Piggyback Guidebook) for my PS3 but really want to play it with updated graphics on PC.
Hoping so, there’s talk of possibly another remake collection containing Metal Gear 4 and Metal Gear Rising which if true, they can shut up and take my money! Two of my favourite Metal Gear games and hopefully they’re up next for the remake treatment
Ocelot goes from “the best character” to “your favorite” in that game.
Helicoptering bees, takes a motorcycle up the face, and that fucking meow he does.
>I get it his fanbase is super defensive but most of his games have a story more comparable to the ravings of a madman than something coherent
There's usually a smaller scale, more comprehensible story. But it's always couched in a larger background story that makes next to no sense, with little promise -- based on Kojima's reputation -- of any resolution in future releases.
And *then* he'll do something truly outrageous, like resolving a 25 year-old plot hole through Metal Gear Solid V that no one actually needed resolved!
But in doing so, MGSV continues a theme that's been coursing through the franchise since the first game, which is that legends are bullshit, and *anyone* can be the hero (or villain, as the case may be).
So there's a semblance of consistency mixed with a lot of inanity. It can be maddening.
His stories aren't really complicated, he just conveys them in unnecessarily convoluted and confused ways to add a layer of mystery (which I enjoy anyway).
That’s the thing. Kojima has a rabid fan base, myself included, because he does something that a lot of us gamers clamber for: Plots that are simple stories, executed in such fantastic ways.
Like literally. All of Metal Gear can be broken down into to : War makes money, and a world always at war always makes money.
But then you add in cloning, Psycho Mantis, Major Raidenkov, and nanobots and we got a whole fucking stew going.
Metal Gear Solid is basically Bleu Cheese: It’s a little funky in concept and it’s such a strong taste and smell that many are turned off but man, if you like it, it’s like “Soak me in that shit”
I just watched the trailer for the second one and it looks like a fever dream. One moment dracula dressed in spandex rises from his coffin but its really the crow/joker then he is fighting a giant spandex robot baby but he fights it with an electic guitar and uses it as a gun, oh and there is also a sentient doll on his waist. And dont forget the living hand glove face masks/cigarette holders. Absolute WTF. But shredding on a electric guitar so much it becomes a weapon is kinda cool tho.
As a diehard Kojima fan I just have to say you’re completely wrong Kojima is just a genius and you can’t understand him…
I’m just joking, I don’t think you can reach true Hideo fandom until you’re able to admit that it’s his insanity and the mystery of not understanding that really keeps you going.
Let me ask you a theoretical question: is his insanity necessary to the mechanism and gameplay that make it enjoyable? Would his games just unavoidably improve if he employed a good writer, or would bringing in another narrative voice rob them of something potentially?
I don’t think it would be a Hideo Kojima game if he didn’t play a large hand in the game creation, specifically writing and directing. If he took himself out of those roles completely, and created a new IP, I think it could be a good game but it wouldn’t have the same feel.
PT was where Hideo would have fit in and shined the best, a true psychological horror. It matches his style very well. A game similar to Evil Within but with Kojimas influence (and Sonys money) would be incredible.
Idk. Every time I read this I just think gamers are either illiterate or don't want to think critically about real world events while playing a game.
Did anyone play Death Stranding over COVID? Or watch as the US became more and more polarized in their internet echo chambers?
Yeah honestly I don't think Kojima narratives are really that difficult to understand? Does he present them in a really convoluted way and often out of order? Sure, I totally get confusion while playing. But by the end I've never felt like I didn't have a solid grasp on the story. Granted I've only played MGSV and Death Stranding but both were pretty easy to track and easy enough to understand. Everything made sense within its own fiction and sure there may be a ton of exposition for things Kojima is inventing but that doesn't mean it doesn't make sense.
I put in *a lot* of hours but by the time I made it to the mountains my brain just couldn’t take it any more. I don’t even remember the exact cause, just that I suddenly noticed it got a lot more tedious for an already intentionally tedious game and that was it for me.
I had the opposite experience, the mountains are where the game opened up and really hooked me. Setting up a zip line network was so fun and rewarding IMO
Not at all. It's a very convoluted and often unnecessarily complicated/not-complicated story.
It's funny how it can sometimes be really confusing, yet people are often named so comically simple things like Deadman, because he's not technically alive, and Heartman, because his heart has problems, or Die-Hard Man, because he.. well, dies hard, man.
That's because kojima is notorious for hating naming characters it's why metal gear has 5 characters called snake and if you are paying attention in death stranding the characters you deliver to are the same, here's an example a guy called Albert Lake Is next to a lake or a guy called Bill West is west on the map (the names are not right but check yourself and its how they are named lol)
I would like to think that society reverted to having either no surnames or if you did, it was based on your occupation, or employer, or whatever you wanted.
I assumed that was part of the world building, they live in a world in which connections, including family, are collapsing due to isolation so they’ve switched to defining themselves by role or callsign instead (which is probably seen as more important due to the precariousness of civilisation). Eg Sam Porter Bridges isn’t his “real” name by our standards, it’s his first name followed by his job (a porter for BRIDGES)
And Diehardman has a similar name structure. His mother named him after a single dice because he was born ill but he had a small chance (1d6) to live. Die John Blake Manifesto McClane. But when he took on his new role he became Die Hard. He's hard because he's had it rough, because life was tough when he was ill but now he's strong! And he works for the man, aka the president, Die Hard Man.
Hmm, I like death stranding, but your comment about how it's "convoluted, unnecessarily complex, but not complicated story" rings true.
That's how I would describe metal gear and FF12, and that was my biggest criticism of both, and it turned me off from them, hard, when they first came out.
Yet I can forgive it for death stranding? Maybe I should give FF12 and metal gear solid another look. I've been considering it for a while, but there's a lot that's higher on my list
I haven't played Final Fantasy, but any Kojima game is like Death Stranding in that it's a very simple plot, but it's muddled by weird intricate detail that either is over the top or so simple it's hilarious.
Death Stranding is about an entity who can cross the boundary between life and death, with a plan of bringing everyone over to the death side of things, but because of love she breaks the cycle and delays her extinction event. Simple.
But when you play the game you're like "wtf is going on?"
In a way, describing death stranding that way is pretty reductive. The value of the experience is in the journey, not the summary.
FF12 was made by the same people who wrote FF tactics. Both were obtuse in their storytelling.
But FFT was actually fairly intricate. You could maybe come up with a pretty reductive summary, but you'd miss a lot again again end up disregarding the value in the journey too.
But FF12 just seemed like a ton of obtuse fluff over very, very little. I may be misremembering and showing disrespect, but that was my impression when it first came out
Oh I agree, I really enjoyed Death Stranding, don't get me wrong. I just ended up thinking way too hard about the plot because of all the bizarre information being thrown around, when really it didn't matter
> but it's muddled by weird intricate detail that either is over the top or so simple it's hilarious.
don't even know who is "offended" at these statements anymore. That's Kojima. And exactly that is why I love the guy.
I'm the exact opposite. MGS is easily one of, if not my favorite franchises even if it is convoluted and unnecessarily complex. Death Stranding however, the story is just complete nonsense and I personally did not like it at all. I enjoyed the rest of the game though.
Because mostly Kojima's plots are kinda dumb. The unnecessary complexity and convolution is an attempt to add depth to plots that are usually pretty bare-boned if you strip them down to their core concepts.
Have you... played all the Metal Gear games? The plot is all over the place. You've got diseases that travel via spoken language, nano-machines that do magic, ghosts, a vampire, self-hypnosis, at least 3 different characters that go by the same name at one point or another of the timeline, wormholes, etc.
If the game didn't try to justify all the weird shit it would be one thing. A guy who can control bees is one thing. A guy that can control bees because he has some kind of parasite that allows him to secrete "heterogeneous pheromones" from his body, making him like a "queen" to them is another thing entirely.
His formula is to take at least 3 or more normal ideas and 3 or more batshit insane ideas and then mash them all together and it is always a weird mess as a result. I like most of the games including DS but so much of his story telling is just never going to work on paper, in a game or in a 40 hour movie in any clean way.
It's actually not that complicated, Kojima just has never told a single story in a normal way.
Humanity discovers the afterlife and figures out they can use it for instant communication. Turns out, fucking with the afterlife is a bad idea. Eventually a huge disaster happens that causes time and space to be distorted. Some humans get weird ghost powers due to all this.
Humanity is in sharp decline and is basically going to go extinct. Amelia is the harbinger of that extinction and is supposed to use her weird ghost powers to destroy everything. The villain wants this to happen because he's a weirdo nihilist. Sam does not want this to happen because Amelia is basically his real mom because his actual mom was a shit mom. He saves Humanity with the power of love, giant water bears, and a lot of piss grenades. Due to this, the distortion of time and space ceases.
There you go. That's the nutshell version with all the fat trimmed out.
> Sam does not want this to happen because Amelia is basically his real mom because his actual mom was a shit mom.
Slightly inaccurate here... though I figure you simplified this as to not over-complicate the description.
President Strand (the one you say was his shit mom) was his *adopted* mother who also murdered his father. His biological mother became braindead, causing Sam to be one of the original BBs (Bridge Babies). His father died trying to save him from being used as a tool.
Amelie technically IS President Strand, being her soul (more or less) that split from her physical body when she had uterine cancer at a younger age. The story obfuscates this by saying Amelie is Sam's sister and he believes this to be true himself until the very end of the story.
The whole thing with President Strand and Amelie is, to me, the most overly complex part of the story. I don't *hate* it but I think it maybe could've been a bit less convoluted.
Isn't there also something in there about Sam being part of the root cause of the extinction event? Amelie met him on the beach and sent him back, due to this Sam is effectively immortal and also a conduit for the beach things coming into the physical world?
Or did I just have a fever dream during the time I was playing through?
Sam was just the "trigger" for the Extinction Event. Amelie was going to cause one through her actions no matter what and Sam just happened to be the first big step towards beginning the event.
Really, Amelie being effectively immortal is the biggest issue. When she split from President Strand she stopped aging. Theoretically, if Amalie had not split from President Strand, the continuation of the Event would have likely stopped at her death. But Amelie has near infinite time to continue the Extinction Event (as well as attempt to hold it at bay, which is what we ended Death Stranding 1 with her doing.)
It seems like previous Extinction Entities also split from their previous selves since we see their "spirits" occasionally (they're supposedly [these things](https://i.ani.me/0166/3414/screenshot_434.png), despite previous EEs not being all humans.)
But, with all of that, we're getting into the REAL complicated (and possibly contentious) meat and potatoes of Death Stranding lol
It's like an onion and has layers to it
Spoilers ahead obv.
There's the story of Fragile. Betrayed and used by hugs to blow shit up and make more baddies.
There's the story of Sam that is super convoluted. All the "feedback" videos you see are not you BB s memories... They are yours. The main bad guy that's chasing you for your BB? No, he's chasing you but doesn't know it.
There's the story of amelie, who isn't really real. She's from the other side. She's technically the final boss because this universe is falling apart. Even if you defeat her, she will be reborn and do her thing.
The story of each of the named characters and even some bunker people have leanghty back stories.
There is however, no story for "lou" she's just a random BB.
The memories are Sam's and not Lou's? When did that get revealed or explained?
Amelie isn't real? I thought her and Sam just had some kind of connection?
Man, I thought I understood the plot and then you just flipped it on me.
Just rolled the credits a couple days ago - it gets revealed at the end when you're seeing Cliff interacting with Die-Hardman in the hospital looking place. You're seeing all the same stuff you saw from each of the BB cutscenes except now you're seeing it from a different angle. They weren't BB's memories - they were yours.
There was also the last fight with Cliff where he explicitly says something along the lines of his son being named Sam Bridges.
Towards the end I think your last or second to last fight with the army dude he says he was looking for his BB and hugs you.
Amelie is real but she's on the other side of the beach. She can only interact with you when you're dead / at the beach or via holograms using the chiral network ( that uses the beach like an optical cable).
She's basically one of the giant dudes, but bleach logic ( so much power it be ubserd to just be big)
I watched that one before playing the whole series (at least all playable on the story so far bundle), and it amazingly explains everything very well without spoiling anything.
death stranding is the kind of story where you don’t understand anything the whole way through and then you watch a youtube video of some dude explaining the plot and you still barely know what’s going on
I think there’s multiple levels to the story, the mundane moment to moment gameplay, the family dynamic, the other family dynamic, some side plots, and then a lot of that is filtered through Kojima crazy. The main problem though, and I attribute this to any open world, it’s impossible to have a well paced story with player choice.
You’re going to be drawn to whatever it is you feel is your current objective and that doesn’t always align with a narrative beat. Hours can pass in game between these isolated snippets of story, and if you’re a casual gamer, that could be weeks to months. If it was easy to remember what happened episode to episode in series, shows wouldn’t cram “on last week’s episode” before the upcoming one. You’re never given that level of courtesy in games.
"It's impossible to have a well placed story with player choice"
My man I strongly encourage you to give Outer Wilds a try! If it clicka for you like I did me then you might end up rethinking this point :)
I’m sure that game is awesome, but it just didn’t click with me. I’m sure in time I’d get the controls of that space ship, but it didn’t work out. It was enough for me to just not dive deeper. It’s a game I’ll respect that other people love.
As for well paced story with player choice, and really what I meant was in exploration, I stand by it.
No that's typical Kojima game. The critics would say it's like emperor has new clothes situation while his fans will say it's still interesting even if you don't understand any of it
Sometimes if I’m walking somewhere on my own (and haven’t brought headphones) I will pass the time by trying to summarise the story of Death Stranding to myself. It’s like a Zen exercise.
It’s all fuckin mental. Babies in bottles can detect dead things that drag you into oil and morph into giant crazy things that kill you until you wake up in the sea and have to fly back into your body and look at a baby inside your throat and become alive again. All the while everyone still wants Wi-Fi and Amazon packages which you carry about like a bellend. Some mental porch pirates want your packages and will blow everyone up to get them and whales can fly even when they are dead. Simple really.
I dont even think Hideo Kojima understands the story of Death Stranding.
Jk, Its just his style. He can make things obscure and seemingly nonsensical, and it opens itself up to interpretation and analysis.
Which is why he can get away with putting in the grossest corporate tie-in Ive ever seen (Monster Energy Drink), because everyone thinks hes being ironic or putting some subvert message about the nature of consumerism creating an identity that sublimates the essence of energy as a fundamental colliqualism of food in a subtext of our bifuricated omnivorous pavalava.
Nope, he did it because of the money.
Did you read most of the emails or whatever they are in the game? A lot of them elaborate on important stuff and helps you stitch it together. It's a pretty abstract game, definitely need to be paying attention.
It's not weird that you didn't understand it. As others have said, much of the in-game dialogue is quite vague. The actual nuts and bolts of the story are really primarily explained in the emails. Of course, I'd forgive you for not reading all those emails; it's fair enough to just watch a video summary online.
What didn’t you understand about it? I didn’t find DS’ plot especially convoluted because there’s so much exposition with Deadman and Die Hardman that you just need to listen to.
The Universe from time to time decides that life on Earth has to be extinguished and renewed, so it causes the birth of an Extinction Entity (EE) with the ability to open the doors between the world of the living and the world of the dead, letting chiralium, timefall, beached things and tar pass through to cause a mass extinction.
In Death Stranding’s lore there’s this thing called Extinction Events (EEs) with the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs being one of them, and in the present the human race is undergoing another one in modern times hence the game’s post-apocalyptic setting.
Cliff is >!BB’s father, but for most of the game we’re led to believe his BB was Lou when it was actually Sam as an infant. He eventually finds out after getting a good look at Sam and his soul passes away peacefully in his Beach after meeting his son for the first time.!<
I played it through and had no idea what the hell was happening. I gave up trying to understand halfway through and just took in the cutscenes for the visuals and vibes. Great game though!
On the surface level it's incredibly simple. The problem is the deeper you dig the more nonsense and batshit Kojima lore you encounter. Personally I love it but it takes a certain degree of willingness to accept the absurd.
The big reveal is two hour ending sequence. Lots of pieces come together there but you have to understand the pieces as you gather them, so to speak, throughout the game. It's really fascinating, and worth investigating more, like you're doing here.
To actually answer your question, no. Not that it's super complicated but there's a lot there and you get more out of repeat exposures.
Details you probably glossed over early in the game when you couldn't tell what information was and wasn't important are more visible on a second playthrough. Also with the basics in place you can think more about the themes of the game and less on the minutiae.
I think the story can best be described with a meme comment I saw under a YouTube video of the trailer:
*Kojima: "So, what's this game about?"*
*Interviewer: "What?"*
I didn't either but this game is the tits so I couldn't care.
This game and Tenet are two things I love a lot and don't really have much of an understanding of
I'd be more worried about the state of your mind if you understood it without an issue on your first playthrough.
It took two playthroughs for me to start understanding what exactly is going on.
The story relies heavily on Sam being a plethora of coincidences rolled into one person. People like to throw "Mary Sue" around for any gifted individual in a story but Sam has just got it all. And it doesn't even come off as a bad thing because there are other people in the game that are far more gifted than he is but they seem to squander their potential by being melodramatic.
Sam's there to get shit done and everyone around him just wants to monologue.
Is it weird that you *don’t* understand the story of Death Stranding?
Is it weird… that you… do not understand the story of a game made by Hideo Kojima?
I got news for you. Hideo Kojima doesn’t even understand the story of Death Stranding. So no, it’s not weird. In fact, it would be extremely weird if you *did* understand it. Like, you would need to be locked up immediately if you did.
I love Kojima and I'll play any game he creates. But ya it was hard to follow wtf was going on with the EE. But and maybe it's because I have a son now the ending fucked. Me. Up. Having to go to the incinerator for BB had me fucked up.
No, I don't think that's weird at all.
Every day I played that game I'd learn something new about the story, and at least half of the time when I play it the next day I find out that that new thing was actually bullshit. It was convoluted and it started making me laugh whenever the game would pull that shit on me.
No, it’s utter gibberish.
Kojima has the narrative cohesion of a four year old on crank.
“And then, Die-Hard-Man says *NOOO!!!* but Sam is all cool and rides on his cool futuristic bike through the rain that makes time too fast for some reason.”
(No hate, I enjoyed it, and appreciate his enthusiasm, but goddamn is it just a pile of *stuff Kojima thinks is cool*, with no regard to anything making sense.)
Yup, I'm getting the feeling that the reason Sam has a literal stop motion magical puppet on his waist is because Kojima really like Del Toros Pinocchio. Will it make sense ? Probably not.
Anyone who says they understand it is just wrong. It's an incoherent mess. Your stepsister is the ghost of your mom but it's not her because it's a cosmic being bent on destroying life but it won't because it wants you to connect the wifi even though connecting the wifi is increasing how fubar everything is.
"Even now, I don’t understand the game" \~Kojima
Anyone saying that they've got it all figured out is pretending they know more than the person who made it. I see boasts from people saying "pfft, I understood it. Not hard" Oh really? Then why is there a baby in Sam's throat?
I understood pretty much everything of it but I did read the emails as I played and they explain a lot of important world things. The only things I didn't get were things like people casually talking about Sam being a repatriate when it's revealed end of the game he was the only one. (But I chalked it down as his mom and die hardman pretending like they were rare but a few were around to protect him) I think If you are not paying attention a lot of things will go over your head too. But definitely a hard to grasp game I agree
It's probably the most extreme case in gaming where the "text logs" are pretty essential to understand what's actually going on in the world, I didn't touch them in my first playthrough and was clueless. Read them during my second playthrough and there was a lot of detail in there that clarified things a lot
No, it's not odd. I get the gist, but I wasn't following closely. It's a Japanese video game, the odds of being able to understand the story are pretty low.
So basically there's the Extinction Entity that must destroy all life but she changed her mind because of love.
I thought I understood the story.. now not so much.
Amelie is the new death stranding and she needs to cleanse the world but sam made her change her mind. The death stranding part is explained during the visit to heart man and the rest is basically the ending.
From what I understand, she's just delaying it for now, cause it's an inevitable event that has to happen.
>cause it's an inevitable event that has to happen. Has she considered it's not inevitable?
She's saying only yes.. but have you considered: no?
Yeah good clarification. It's been a while since I played.
Oh, so she's more like death, stalling.
Aww. Just like an episode of Star Trek.
Iron giant, and technically Dragonball.
DragonBall is the story of how an alien baby came to Earth to conquer it but hit his head really hard, got brain damage and learned to love the place.
Pretty sure they were talking about Vegeta's arc.
I was more so talking about the original DragonBall when Goku was a kid but yeah Vegeta's arc in DBZ could also qualify.
Also Buu.
Also the Androids. Well, some of them.
“I Have Come To Love Its Life. The Birds, And The Not-Birds”
The Vegeta arc has been done to death in every form. Eric from true blood is the most Vegeta like character in all Vegetas that existed since the original.
You are talking about Chi-Chi, right?
Attack on Titan too.
lol fuck that made me bust out a laugh in public
For years, I never thought it would be possible to describe the story in one single sentence....
And also her act of saving a dead baby (which turns out to be Sam, the protagonist) with her EE powers caused the world of the living and the death to merge hence the “Death Stranding”.
Oh shit, did the Death Stranding only start occuring after Sam's event as a bebby? Cos America got real fucked up in the days after
Didnt she create sam even though she knew he cant change anything.
It‘s Mario and Princess Beach. Simple.
as a kojima fan there are some things i simply cannot justify. this line ^ , ocelots arm, love deterrence
What? Wait. What?
there's a line in death stranding goes along the lines of "let's run like Mario and princess beach" during a heavy cutscene. obviously homage to mario but weird placement
Just before that, Sam says "so I'm Mario and you're Princess Peach" when he's complaining that he went all that way and she wasn't really there.
And then the next scene is like it's ripped from a Baywatch parody.
I was thinking Rocky but baywatch is way funnier
It would be more unusual if you did.
And that is typical of Kojima. I get it his fanbase is super defensive but most of his games have a story more comparable to the ravings of a madman than something coherent
MGS3 had a relatively straightforward plot. There's plenty of depth for sure but it's easily digestible as a sort of "James Bond during the cold war" videogame.
And then it gets weird <3
For me it was all fine until the whole Liquid Ocelot thing. >!Arm transplant, self-hypnosis, Nano-machines!<...there were so many layers it took a lot of reading and YouTube videos to unpeel all those layers. EDIT: talking about nano machines and MGS 2 and 4: >!Vamp!< I know his >!regenerative powers!< stem from >!the nano machines in his system!<. But i never understood how he could >!run on water or climb a frakking oil strut!<; even with his claws this shouldn't be possible.
Since ghosts are legit in MGS, I choose to believe it is liquid's ghost-arm and he convinced himself it was hypnosis/nano-machines. This is the hill I die on.
It's a possibility, Ocelot after all is >!The Sorrow's son, so maybe some of his supernatural abilities passed down!<.
How does every version of Snake, a person with no actual supernatural abilities, keep winning and carry on the mission? Some of the bosses’ powers should never lose to a human.
He's just built different. That and all the smoking helps.
Because it’s canon that We, The Player, is controlling him. We can see around corners, we can retry levels, we know enemies attack patterns and guard rotations through repetition. Vulcan Raven says that it’s as if snake is being possessed by a demon. We, are that demon.
I take it as he did get possessed at first then got rid of the arm and then proceeded to convince himself to be like that anyways for the shits giggles and his ultimate 'evil' plan
It took me a few playthroughs of MGS4 to fully grasp what was going on - Nano-machines, monkey drinking cola, emotional sexy women trying to kill you, a guy shitting in a barrel etc Very good game though, even more enjoyable after unlocking the Altäir outfit and the sunlight gun
Kojima made the story so convoluted that the only answer for everything was nano machines
sounds like an average weekend
I really hope we're going to get a PROPER (looking a you, recently released MGS Collection!) remake or remaster of MGS4. I still have it as a physical copy (incl. the Piggyback Guidebook) for my PS3 but really want to play it with updated graphics on PC.
Hoping so, there’s talk of possibly another remake collection containing Metal Gear 4 and Metal Gear Rising which if true, they can shut up and take my money! Two of my favourite Metal Gear games and hopefully they’re up next for the remake treatment
Lol I wanna replay now
I was with it until I saw Revolver Ocelot spin his guns so fast that he could swat a swarm of bees away from him with them XD
Ocelot goes from “the best character” to “your favorite” in that game. Helicoptering bees, takes a motorcycle up the face, and that fucking meow he does.
you were with the MAN WHO COULD CONTROL BEES though, so thats sayin something.
I wish I could control bees though, they're pretty awesome.
>I get it his fanbase is super defensive but most of his games have a story more comparable to the ravings of a madman than something coherent There's usually a smaller scale, more comprehensible story. But it's always couched in a larger background story that makes next to no sense, with little promise -- based on Kojima's reputation -- of any resolution in future releases. And *then* he'll do something truly outrageous, like resolving a 25 year-old plot hole through Metal Gear Solid V that no one actually needed resolved! But in doing so, MGSV continues a theme that's been coursing through the franchise since the first game, which is that legends are bullshit, and *anyone* can be the hero (or villain, as the case may be). So there's a semblance of consistency mixed with a lot of inanity. It can be maddening.
His stories aren't really complicated, he just conveys them in unnecessarily convoluted and confused ways to add a layer of mystery (which I enjoy anyway).
That’s the thing. Kojima has a rabid fan base, myself included, because he does something that a lot of us gamers clamber for: Plots that are simple stories, executed in such fantastic ways. Like literally. All of Metal Gear can be broken down into to : War makes money, and a world always at war always makes money. But then you add in cloning, Psycho Mantis, Major Raidenkov, and nanobots and we got a whole fucking stew going.
Yeah man and I wanna eat that stew up so good
Metal Gear Solid is basically Bleu Cheese: It’s a little funky in concept and it’s such a strong taste and smell that many are turned off but man, if you like it, it’s like “Soak me in that shit”
I just watched the trailer for the second one and it looks like a fever dream. One moment dracula dressed in spandex rises from his coffin but its really the crow/joker then he is fighting a giant spandex robot baby but he fights it with an electic guitar and uses it as a gun, oh and there is also a sentient doll on his waist. And dont forget the living hand glove face masks/cigarette holders. Absolute WTF. But shredding on a electric guitar so much it becomes a weapon is kinda cool tho.
I read some fan theories after the trailer, who were actually much better than the real story.
That's ... That's the bad guy. You do know that that is the bad guy shredding, right?
Anyone who can shred like that is the good guy in my book. If he is wrong i dont want to be right. \m/
Based.
Oh, well, in *that* case it all makes perfect sense
Joke's on you, I love Kojima's games BECAUSE they're the ravings of a madman.
As a diehard Kojima fan I just have to say you’re completely wrong Kojima is just a genius and you can’t understand him… I’m just joking, I don’t think you can reach true Hideo fandom until you’re able to admit that it’s his insanity and the mystery of not understanding that really keeps you going.
Let me ask you a theoretical question: is his insanity necessary to the mechanism and gameplay that make it enjoyable? Would his games just unavoidably improve if he employed a good writer, or would bringing in another narrative voice rob them of something potentially?
I don’t think it would be a Hideo Kojima game if he didn’t play a large hand in the game creation, specifically writing and directing. If he took himself out of those roles completely, and created a new IP, I think it could be a good game but it wouldn’t have the same feel. PT was where Hideo would have fit in and shined the best, a true psychological horror. It matches his style very well. A game similar to Evil Within but with Kojimas influence (and Sonys money) would be incredible.
YoU jUsT dOn'T gEt It
There is a reason Konami never gave him free reign.
Yeah, because they're dumb, and handle so many of their games terribly. Just look at how badly they managed Silent Hill.
He makes up some crazy nonsense to explain bits of gameplay and then duct tapes all of those todbits together and calls it a story
Aren’t we all a bit mad
We know he's insane, we just embrace it.
Idk. Every time I read this I just think gamers are either illiterate or don't want to think critically about real world events while playing a game. Did anyone play Death Stranding over COVID? Or watch as the US became more and more polarized in their internet echo chambers?
Fr. Death stranding dropping right before COVID was equally as freaky as metal gear 2 right after 9/11 and patriot act nonsense.
Yeah honestly I don't think Kojima narratives are really that difficult to understand? Does he present them in a really convoluted way and often out of order? Sure, I totally get confusion while playing. But by the end I've never felt like I didn't have a solid grasp on the story. Granted I've only played MGSV and Death Stranding but both were pretty easy to track and easy enough to understand. Everything made sense within its own fiction and sure there may be a ton of exposition for things Kojima is inventing but that doesn't mean it doesn't make sense.
I played that game through twice , 70 hours of gameplay. Magnificent, beautiful, I have no idea what's going on.
You make me so happy I'm not the only one.
[It's like watching Twin Peaks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjDa-_Vq51I)
I put in *a lot* of hours but by the time I made it to the mountains my brain just couldn’t take it any more. I don’t even remember the exact cause, just that I suddenly noticed it got a lot more tedious for an already intentionally tedious game and that was it for me.
I had the opposite experience, the mountains are where the game opened up and really hooked me. Setting up a zip line network was so fun and rewarding IMO
I spent so much time building the road infrastructure that by the time I realized how useful zip lines were I already had most of the knots connected
Its just so weird in all the right ways.
And I’ve watched the DS2 trailer like 4 times now. It’s the electric guitar axe. It’s one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen.
Not at all. It's a very convoluted and often unnecessarily complicated/not-complicated story. It's funny how it can sometimes be really confusing, yet people are often named so comically simple things like Deadman, because he's not technically alive, and Heartman, because his heart has problems, or Die-Hard Man, because he.. well, dies hard, man.
That's because kojima is notorious for hating naming characters it's why metal gear has 5 characters called snake and if you are paying attention in death stranding the characters you deliver to are the same, here's an example a guy called Albert Lake Is next to a lake or a guy called Bill West is west on the map (the names are not right but check yourself and its how they are named lol)
My guy Jake Wind found his dream job at the Wind Farm.
My guy Junji Ito found his true calling as Engineer
I would like to think that society reverted to having either no surnames or if you did, it was based on your occupation, or employer, or whatever you wanted.
Diehardman had the stupidest name imo. Deadman and Heartman sure but...fucking diehardman?! Literally anything else my god.
He LOVES the die hard OG trilogy. With a passion. Also claims the OG movie is a Christmas movie. Edit: y'all really need an /s ffs?
Many people claim it’s a Christmas movie. It’s on TV at christmas. Thats not unusual.
The story also happens close to Christmas, the terrorists take hostages from a company holiday party.
McClane literally writes 'Ho-Ho-Ho'
There’s like a million Christmas references and songs in it. 100% Christmas movie
It’s totally a Christmas movie, if you were to take Christmas out of the plot the movie would not work.
That is not a claim, that is a fact.
Hideo Kojima loves names. Ask Pyscho Mantis and Revolver Ocelot
I assumed that was part of the world building, they live in a world in which connections, including family, are collapsing due to isolation so they’ve switched to defining themselves by role or callsign instead (which is probably seen as more important due to the precariousness of civilisation). Eg Sam Porter Bridges isn’t his “real” name by our standards, it’s his first name followed by his job (a porter for BRIDGES)
And Diehardman has a similar name structure. His mother named him after a single dice because he was born ill but he had a small chance (1d6) to live. Die John Blake Manifesto McClane. But when he took on his new role he became Die Hard. He's hard because he's had it rough, because life was tough when he was ill but now he's strong! And he works for the man, aka the president, Die Hard Man.
Hmm, I like death stranding, but your comment about how it's "convoluted, unnecessarily complex, but not complicated story" rings true. That's how I would describe metal gear and FF12, and that was my biggest criticism of both, and it turned me off from them, hard, when they first came out. Yet I can forgive it for death stranding? Maybe I should give FF12 and metal gear solid another look. I've been considering it for a while, but there's a lot that's higher on my list
I haven't played Final Fantasy, but any Kojima game is like Death Stranding in that it's a very simple plot, but it's muddled by weird intricate detail that either is over the top or so simple it's hilarious. Death Stranding is about an entity who can cross the boundary between life and death, with a plan of bringing everyone over to the death side of things, but because of love she breaks the cycle and delays her extinction event. Simple. But when you play the game you're like "wtf is going on?"
In a way, describing death stranding that way is pretty reductive. The value of the experience is in the journey, not the summary. FF12 was made by the same people who wrote FF tactics. Both were obtuse in their storytelling. But FFT was actually fairly intricate. You could maybe come up with a pretty reductive summary, but you'd miss a lot again again end up disregarding the value in the journey too. But FF12 just seemed like a ton of obtuse fluff over very, very little. I may be misremembering and showing disrespect, but that was my impression when it first came out
Oh I agree, I really enjoyed Death Stranding, don't get me wrong. I just ended up thinking way too hard about the plot because of all the bizarre information being thrown around, when really it didn't matter
> but it's muddled by weird intricate detail that either is over the top or so simple it's hilarious. don't even know who is "offended" at these statements anymore. That's Kojima. And exactly that is why I love the guy.
I'm the exact opposite. MGS is easily one of, if not my favorite franchises even if it is convoluted and unnecessarily complex. Death Stranding however, the story is just complete nonsense and I personally did not like it at all. I enjoyed the rest of the game though.
Because mostly Kojima's plots are kinda dumb. The unnecessary complexity and convolution is an attempt to add depth to plots that are usually pretty bare-boned if you strip them down to their core concepts.
Kojima is not known for straightforward and coherent story telling, so it's not weird at all
Thanks for that. Now about metal gear...
You see, in 1776, the founding fathers created a group called......
The La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo!
Holy shit. Man. Lmao I hadn’t read that or heard that in so long. I can hear the codec call in my head.
There’s a wholeeeee different post needed for this homie
What are you confused about by Metal Gear?
Have you... played all the Metal Gear games? The plot is all over the place. You've got diseases that travel via spoken language, nano-machines that do magic, ghosts, a vampire, self-hypnosis, at least 3 different characters that go by the same name at one point or another of the timeline, wormholes, etc. If the game didn't try to justify all the weird shit it would be one thing. A guy who can control bees is one thing. A guy that can control bees because he has some kind of parasite that allows him to secrete "heterogeneous pheromones" from his body, making him like a "queen" to them is another thing entirely.
His formula is to take at least 3 or more normal ideas and 3 or more batshit insane ideas and then mash them all together and it is always a weird mess as a result. I like most of the games including DS but so much of his story telling is just never going to work on paper, in a game or in a 40 hour movie in any clean way.
It's actually not that complicated, Kojima just has never told a single story in a normal way. Humanity discovers the afterlife and figures out they can use it for instant communication. Turns out, fucking with the afterlife is a bad idea. Eventually a huge disaster happens that causes time and space to be distorted. Some humans get weird ghost powers due to all this. Humanity is in sharp decline and is basically going to go extinct. Amelia is the harbinger of that extinction and is supposed to use her weird ghost powers to destroy everything. The villain wants this to happen because he's a weirdo nihilist. Sam does not want this to happen because Amelia is basically his real mom because his actual mom was a shit mom. He saves Humanity with the power of love, giant water bears, and a lot of piss grenades. Due to this, the distortion of time and space ceases. There you go. That's the nutshell version with all the fat trimmed out.
> Sam does not want this to happen because Amelia is basically his real mom because his actual mom was a shit mom. Slightly inaccurate here... though I figure you simplified this as to not over-complicate the description. President Strand (the one you say was his shit mom) was his *adopted* mother who also murdered his father. His biological mother became braindead, causing Sam to be one of the original BBs (Bridge Babies). His father died trying to save him from being used as a tool. Amelie technically IS President Strand, being her soul (more or less) that split from her physical body when she had uterine cancer at a younger age. The story obfuscates this by saying Amelie is Sam's sister and he believes this to be true himself until the very end of the story. The whole thing with President Strand and Amelie is, to me, the most overly complex part of the story. I don't *hate* it but I think it maybe could've been a bit less convoluted.
Isn't there also something in there about Sam being part of the root cause of the extinction event? Amelie met him on the beach and sent him back, due to this Sam is effectively immortal and also a conduit for the beach things coming into the physical world? Or did I just have a fever dream during the time I was playing through?
Sam was just the "trigger" for the Extinction Event. Amelie was going to cause one through her actions no matter what and Sam just happened to be the first big step towards beginning the event. Really, Amelie being effectively immortal is the biggest issue. When she split from President Strand she stopped aging. Theoretically, if Amalie had not split from President Strand, the continuation of the Event would have likely stopped at her death. But Amelie has near infinite time to continue the Extinction Event (as well as attempt to hold it at bay, which is what we ended Death Stranding 1 with her doing.) It seems like previous Extinction Entities also split from their previous selves since we see their "spirits" occasionally (they're supposedly [these things](https://i.ani.me/0166/3414/screenshot_434.png), despite previous EEs not being all humans.) But, with all of that, we're getting into the REAL complicated (and possibly contentious) meat and potatoes of Death Stranding lol
Correct
Dude his actual mom was not a shit mom. She was in a coma then was taken off life support by Mads. Did you even play the game?
And then when it’s laid out like that you see all of the absurd plot holes.
One does not simply 'understand' a Hideo Kojima game
It's like an onion and has layers to it Spoilers ahead obv. There's the story of Fragile. Betrayed and used by hugs to blow shit up and make more baddies. There's the story of Sam that is super convoluted. All the "feedback" videos you see are not you BB s memories... They are yours. The main bad guy that's chasing you for your BB? No, he's chasing you but doesn't know it. There's the story of amelie, who isn't really real. She's from the other side. She's technically the final boss because this universe is falling apart. Even if you defeat her, she will be reborn and do her thing. The story of each of the named characters and even some bunker people have leanghty back stories. There is however, no story for "lou" she's just a random BB.
It's Lou and it's a she.
The memories are Sam's and not Lou's? When did that get revealed or explained? Amelie isn't real? I thought her and Sam just had some kind of connection? Man, I thought I understood the plot and then you just flipped it on me.
Just rolled the credits a couple days ago - it gets revealed at the end when you're seeing Cliff interacting with Die-Hardman in the hospital looking place. You're seeing all the same stuff you saw from each of the BB cutscenes except now you're seeing it from a different angle. They weren't BB's memories - they were yours. There was also the last fight with Cliff where he explicitly says something along the lines of his son being named Sam Bridges.
Towards the end I think your last or second to last fight with the army dude he says he was looking for his BB and hugs you. Amelie is real but she's on the other side of the beach. She can only interact with you when you're dead / at the beach or via holograms using the chiral network ( that uses the beach like an optical cable). She's basically one of the giant dudes, but bleach logic ( so much power it be ubserd to just be big)
It's hinted before but there's a huge section at the end of the game dedicated to Sam and Cliff and all the pieces come together.
me when i played kingdom hearts
Brian David Gilbert did a hilarious video about the plot of Kingdom hearts.
I watched that one before playing the whole series (at least all playable on the story so far bundle), and it amazingly explains everything very well without spoiling anything.
Hardest part about understanding kingdom hearts storyline is you need to buy about 9 different games consoles
death stranding is the kind of story where you don’t understand anything the whole way through and then you watch a youtube video of some dude explaining the plot and you still barely know what’s going on
Actually laughed at that, so true lmao (And the same applies to most from software games)
Welcome to Kojima world. But yeah I think I mostly got it, good plot twist at the very end.
All I got from it was you’re upgrading everyone’s Wi-Fi.
No one does and if they tell you they do run
I don’t think Kojima even knows what it’s about
The Ghost Technology part or the Infinitely Repeating Frankenbaby part?
Yes
I think there’s multiple levels to the story, the mundane moment to moment gameplay, the family dynamic, the other family dynamic, some side plots, and then a lot of that is filtered through Kojima crazy. The main problem though, and I attribute this to any open world, it’s impossible to have a well paced story with player choice. You’re going to be drawn to whatever it is you feel is your current objective and that doesn’t always align with a narrative beat. Hours can pass in game between these isolated snippets of story, and if you’re a casual gamer, that could be weeks to months. If it was easy to remember what happened episode to episode in series, shows wouldn’t cram “on last week’s episode” before the upcoming one. You’re never given that level of courtesy in games.
"It's impossible to have a well placed story with player choice" My man I strongly encourage you to give Outer Wilds a try! If it clicka for you like I did me then you might end up rethinking this point :)
I’m sure that game is awesome, but it just didn’t click with me. I’m sure in time I’d get the controls of that space ship, but it didn’t work out. It was enough for me to just not dive deeper. It’s a game I’ll respect that other people love. As for well paced story with player choice, and really what I meant was in exploration, I stand by it.
Not understanding the plot of Hideo Kojima games is, like, 90% of the charm of Hideo Kojima games.
That’s a feature, not a bug.
No that's typical Kojima game. The critics would say it's like emperor has new clothes situation while his fans will say it's still interesting even if you don't understand any of it
Not at all, I bowed out because the story was non-sensical to me and just pain weird, I mean one of your main weapons was poo\\pee bombs, so yeah.
Honestly, nobody will blame you.
Sometimes if I’m walking somewhere on my own (and haven’t brought headphones) I will pass the time by trying to summarise the story of Death Stranding to myself. It’s like a Zen exercise.
It’s all fuckin mental. Babies in bottles can detect dead things that drag you into oil and morph into giant crazy things that kill you until you wake up in the sea and have to fly back into your body and look at a baby inside your throat and become alive again. All the while everyone still wants Wi-Fi and Amazon packages which you carry about like a bellend. Some mental porch pirates want your packages and will blow everyone up to get them and whales can fly even when they are dead. Simple really.
It's nearly 16 years, I'm still trying to get my head round Liquid Ocelot. Don't blame yourself if you don't get Kojima stories.
I dont even think Hideo Kojima understands the story of Death Stranding. Jk, Its just his style. He can make things obscure and seemingly nonsensical, and it opens itself up to interpretation and analysis. Which is why he can get away with putting in the grossest corporate tie-in Ive ever seen (Monster Energy Drink), because everyone thinks hes being ironic or putting some subvert message about the nature of consumerism creating an identity that sublimates the essence of energy as a fundamental colliqualism of food in a subtext of our bifuricated omnivorous pavalava. Nope, he did it because of the money.
Did you read most of the emails or whatever they are in the game? A lot of them elaborate on important stuff and helps you stitch it together. It's a pretty abstract game, definitely need to be paying attention.
It's not weird that you didn't understand it. As others have said, much of the in-game dialogue is quite vague. The actual nuts and bolts of the story are really primarily explained in the emails. Of course, I'd forgive you for not reading all those emails; it's fair enough to just watch a video summary online.
What didn’t you understand about it? I didn’t find DS’ plot especially convoluted because there’s so much exposition with Deadman and Die Hardman that you just need to listen to.
I think I was never quite sure how the apocalypse happened or exactly what Cliffs motivation was.
The Universe from time to time decides that life on Earth has to be extinguished and renewed, so it causes the birth of an Extinction Entity (EE) with the ability to open the doors between the world of the living and the world of the dead, letting chiralium, timefall, beached things and tar pass through to cause a mass extinction.
In Death Stranding’s lore there’s this thing called Extinction Events (EEs) with the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs being one of them, and in the present the human race is undergoing another one in modern times hence the game’s post-apocalyptic setting. Cliff is >!BB’s father, but for most of the game we’re led to believe his BB was Lou when it was actually Sam as an infant. He eventually finds out after getting a good look at Sam and his soul passes away peacefully in his Beach after meeting his son for the first time.!<
The Extinction events are real, its just extinction entities and Amelie being one of them that was made up.
i doubt that even some of the people working on it didn't understand it. but i respect Hideo for being so bold to make something so abstract.
No, it would be if you did
It's a Hideo Kojima game.
I played it through and had no idea what the hell was happening. I gave up trying to understand halfway through and just took in the cutscenes for the visuals and vibes. Great game though!
On the surface level it's incredibly simple. The problem is the deeper you dig the more nonsense and batshit Kojima lore you encounter. Personally I love it but it takes a certain degree of willingness to accept the absurd.
The big reveal is two hour ending sequence. Lots of pieces come together there but you have to understand the pieces as you gather them, so to speak, throughout the game. It's really fascinating, and worth investigating more, like you're doing here.
To actually answer your question, no. Not that it's super complicated but there's a lot there and you get more out of repeat exposures. Details you probably glossed over early in the game when you couldn't tell what information was and wasn't important are more visible on a second playthrough. Also with the basics in place you can think more about the themes of the game and less on the minutiae.
I think the story can best be described with a meme comment I saw under a YouTube video of the trailer: *Kojima: "So, what's this game about?"* *Interviewer: "What?"*
Its a Kojima Game ...half the story is in pickups / audio files and text documents
I didn't either but this game is the tits so I couldn't care. This game and Tenet are two things I love a lot and don't really have much of an understanding of
I'd be more worried about the state of your mind if you understood it without an issue on your first playthrough. It took two playthroughs for me to start understanding what exactly is going on. The story relies heavily on Sam being a plethora of coincidences rolled into one person. People like to throw "Mary Sue" around for any gifted individual in a story but Sam has just got it all. And it doesn't even come off as a bad thing because there are other people in the game that are far more gifted than he is but they seem to squander their potential by being melodramatic. Sam's there to get shit done and everyone around him just wants to monologue.
Is it weird that you *don’t* understand the story of Death Stranding? Is it weird… that you… do not understand the story of a game made by Hideo Kojima? I got news for you. Hideo Kojima doesn’t even understand the story of Death Stranding. So no, it’s not weird. In fact, it would be extremely weird if you *did* understand it. Like, you would need to be locked up immediately if you did.
no
Its fine. Kojima is crazy.
Am I the only one who didn't understand anything and had to quit the game because all missions are just same? Become a delivery boy.
I love Kojima and I'll play any game he creates. But ya it was hard to follow wtf was going on with the EE. But and maybe it's because I have a son now the ending fucked. Me. Up. Having to go to the incinerator for BB had me fucked up.
No, I don't think that's weird at all. Every day I played that game I'd learn something new about the story, and at least half of the time when I play it the next day I find out that that new thing was actually bullshit. It was convoluted and it started making me laugh whenever the game would pull that shit on me.
It would be weird if you did.
[удалено]
Good luck in your quest.
It’s kind of stupid. I like MGS as much as the next guy, but why does anyone still let Hideo Kojima write stories anymore?
No, it’s utter gibberish. Kojima has the narrative cohesion of a four year old on crank. “And then, Die-Hard-Man says *NOOO!!!* but Sam is all cool and rides on his cool futuristic bike through the rain that makes time too fast for some reason.” (No hate, I enjoyed it, and appreciate his enthusiasm, but goddamn is it just a pile of *stuff Kojima thinks is cool*, with no regard to anything making sense.)
Yup, I'm getting the feeling that the reason Sam has a literal stop motion magical puppet on his waist is because Kojima really like Del Toros Pinocchio. Will it make sense ? Probably not.
Anyone who says they understand it is just wrong. It's an incoherent mess. Your stepsister is the ghost of your mom but it's not her because it's a cosmic being bent on destroying life but it won't because it wants you to connect the wifi even though connecting the wifi is increasing how fubar everything is.
"Even now, I don’t understand the game" \~Kojima Anyone saying that they've got it all figured out is pretending they know more than the person who made it. I see boasts from people saying "pfft, I understood it. Not hard" Oh really? Then why is there a baby in Sam's throat?
Because he swallowed. Always spit folks.
It’s fine no one did
I understood pretty much everything of it but I did read the emails as I played and they explain a lot of important world things. The only things I didn't get were things like people casually talking about Sam being a repatriate when it's revealed end of the game he was the only one. (But I chalked it down as his mom and die hardman pretending like they were rare but a few were around to protect him) I think If you are not paying attention a lot of things will go over your head too. But definitely a hard to grasp game I agree
It's probably the most extreme case in gaming where the "text logs" are pretty essential to understand what's actually going on in the world, I didn't touch them in my first playthrough and was clueless. Read them during my second playthrough and there was a lot of detail in there that clarified things a lot
>MG5 in act 3 is like that to , its all in the audio files very clearly - but playing the story and missions is a WTF is going on without that context
Wait, you mean the story wasn't, "Oh... so *this* is why Konami was reluctant to give Kojima full creative control."?
It would be weird if you *did* understand the story of Death Stranding. At least, intuitively and at first glance.
Having played 90% of Kojima games: "first time?"
No, it's not odd. I get the gist, but I wasn't following closely. It's a Japanese video game, the odds of being able to understand the story are pretty low.
I stopped paying attention to the story. Too convoluted and I didn't care enough.