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Death Stranding - November 8-2019

Digity

Member
Did you also notice that everyone in the trailer is crying at some point? It makes the actual action meaningless if everyone is doing it.

I’m a huge Fukushima proponent, but I think it goes beyond losing Tomokazu. But saying that, there was a Ghost Babel interview years back where Kojima thought the story was too dark. It’s a funny statement considering that MGS4’s Drebin B&B codec calls are like bad Ghost Babel villain exposition. Then there’s Ground Zeroes, which brings darker tones to the forefront. Although Fukushima is gone and at Japan Studios, his influence can be seen in later installments.
Isn't that the result of an allergic reaction?
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Based on what's said in the 2018 trailer, tears and chiral allergy are symptoms of a condition called "dooms" which has some relation to the overall Death Stranding phenomenon insofar as it manifests in the presence of the BT's.

Its basically shown visually in that trailer as we see Sam develop a rash and start to tear up as the invisible threat passes by.

its clear that the dialogue is edited, likely from a much longer exchange, but it still looks very much to me like an early-game tutorial/expositional cut-scene that outlines the "rules" of the world. For example in every bit of footage in every trailer where Sam is evading the invisible threats, he keeps one had covering his mouth to help evade detection. This being shown in that same sequence from the 2018 trailer.
 

Mista

Banned
Based on what's said in the 2018 trailer, tears and chiral allergy are symptoms of a condition called "dooms" which has some relation to the overall Death Stranding phenomenon insofar as it manifests in the presence of the BT's.

Its basically shown visually in that trailer as we see Sam develop a rash and start to tear up as the invisible threat passes by.

its clear that the dialogue is edited, likely from a much longer exchange, but it still looks very much to me like an early-game tutorial/expositional cut-scene that outlines the "rules" of the world. For example in every bit of footage in every trailer where Sam is evading the invisible threats, he keeps one had covering his mouth to help evade detection. This being shown in that same sequence from the 2018 trailer.
Beautiful analysis. I noticed that too
I believe there are lots of consequences in the game apart from dying
 

nowhat

Member
So one of the questions that has been tossed around is "how could Kojima Productions make a game in such a short time?" Decima looks great, on that I think we can all agree, but a pretty engine means very little if it's tedious to use (*cough*Frostbite*cough*). This GDC talk from 2017 was just released publicly:



Really interesting if you're into subject matter at all, but a few choice picks:
  • Prior to "Decima Editor", there was like an unholy trinity of three different programs, making rapid iteration pretty much impossible. It was decided by the tools team that a new toolset was required for a game large as HZD.
  • The editor was developed along with the game, so not all features were used extensively.
  • Decima Editor runs Decima, like really. Not only is there a copy of the game running with the editor, parts of the UI are rendered using Decima.
  • It also uses Qt. Not really relevant at all, just makes me happy as a KDE user.
  • If you felt some of the dialogues with non-important NPC felt quite artificial - it's because they were.
  • There's an external API to the editor, with a Python wrapper for designers/mere mortals.
  • At the time of the talk, not all of Guerrilla's workflow had been included in the editor. But this was three years ago.
It really looks like an awesome toolset, and I can see how that could speed up development speed considerably. But for me the most interesting part was at 9:15:

It is also important to note that our engine has always had a full PC build for development purposes

This is really surprising to me, given how heavily HZD uses GPGPU - but indeed, there is an OS layer at the very bottom in the engine. Perhaps a PC version of Death Stranding isn't so outlandish after all?
 

Rodga

Banned
I think this game will by 90% cutscenes like Metal Gear Solid 4, we have 4 or 5 trailers from Deathstranding and the 99% from these trailers are Cutscenes
 

Holdfing

Member
So one of the questions that has been tossed around is "how could Kojima Productions make a game in such a short time?" Decima looks great, on that I think we can all agree, but a pretty engine means very little if it's tedious to use (*cough*Frostbite*cough*). This GDC talk from 2017 was just released publicly:



Really interesting if you're into subject matter at all, but a few choice picks:
  • Prior to "Decima Editor", there was like an unholy trinity of three different programs, making rapid iteration pretty much impossible. It was decided by the tools team that a new toolset was required for a game large as HZD.
  • The editor was developed along with the game, so not all features were used extensively.
  • Decima Editor runs Decima, like really. Not only is there a copy of the game running with the editor, parts of the UI are rendered using Decima.
  • It also uses Qt. Not really relevant at all, just makes me happy as a KDE user.
  • If you felt some of the dialogues with non-important NPC felt quite artificial - it's because they were.
  • There's an external API to the editor, with a Python wrapper for designers/mere mortals.
  • At the time of the talk, not all of Guerrilla's workflow had been included in the editor. But this was three years ago.
It really looks like an awesome toolset, and I can see how that could speed up development speed considerably. But for me the most interesting part was at 9:15:



This is really surprising to me, given how heavily HZD uses GPGPU - but indeed, there is an OS layer at the very bottom in the engine. Perhaps a PC version of Death Stranding isn't so outlandish after all?


Not that different from UE4. You get your art assets, plop them down in the editor, run around, see how it feels, tweak it a bit, run around some more, rinse and repeat. Actually creating the assets, gameplay programming, AI, that's where the work lies if you have a fully functional engine. And you can outsource a bunch of the art if you have deep pockets.



That's why looking at the game doesn't really impress me. I've seen it before. What I'm interested in is some uninterrupted gameplay session of 5 minutes, since Kojima says it's a "strand" game or whatever. Show me how that's different from anything I've played before. So far it looks like an open world TPS. Maybe the story will blow us all away? *shrug*

As for the PC part: depends on Sony. Are they the publisher for the Quantic Dream games for the Epic store? Maybe they'll start publishing other PS exclusives for PC? I would not complain.
 

#Phonepunk#

Banned
So one of the questions that has been tossed around is "how could Kojima Productions make a game in such a short time?"

it's one of the most annoying ones, cos this was made in the same amount of time as most MGS games.

I think this game will by 90% cutscenes like Metal Gear Solid 4, we have 4 or 5 trailers from Deathstranding and the 99% from these trailers are Cutscenes

he is done with that style. MGS4 was the blowout, that is why it is in the Guiness Book of World Records twice for longest cutscenes. MGSV kept the same amount of cutscenes in earlier games (5 hours or so) but expanded the gameplay from 20 hours to 80. Ground Zeroes used a single camera shot for the entire game, from the intro cutscene to the gameplay, he has found a way to make the gameplay bleed into the cutscenes for true Cinematic Gamplay. he used it in his last game and will continue on that path with this.

i'm guessing this will have more of a focus on story than MGSV but i don't see us getting more than 5-10 hours of cutscenes.
 
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it's one of the most annoying ones, cos this was made in the same amount of time as most MGS games.



he is done with that style. MGS4 was the blowout, that is why it is in the Guiness Book of World Records twice for longest cutscenes. MGSV kept the same amount of cutscenes in earlier games (5 hours or so) but expanded the gameplay from 20 hours to 80. Ground Zeroes used a single camera shot for the entire game, from the intro cutscene to the gameplay, he has found a way to make the gameplay bleed into the cutscenes for true Cinematic Gamplay. he used it in his last game and will continue on that path with this.

i'm guessing this will have more of a focus on story than MGSV but i don't see us getting more than 5-10 hours of cutscenes.

Arre you sure you played MGSV? It is widely known that thing has barely any cutscenes. 80% is audio files to fill the story. Its nowhere near MGS 2 or 3. If you are going by Youtube "Metal Gear Solid 5: Phantom Pain All Cutscenes (full movie)" , that is full of gameplay...it has like 3 and a half hours of gameplay included lol. MGS5 literally has an hour or hour and a half of cutscenes maximum. Its 1/4th of what MGS 2 or 3 had.
 
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Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Arre you sure you played MGSV? It is widely known that thing has barely any cutscenes. 80% is audio files to fill the story. Its nowhere near MGS 2 or 3. If you are going by Youtube "Metal Gear Solid 5: Phantom Pain All Cutscenes (full movie)" , that is full of gameplay...it has like 3 and a half hours of gameplay included lol. MGS5 literally has an hour or hour and a half of cutscenes maximum. Its 1/4th of what MGS 2 or 3 had.

Barely any cut-scenes!?! That's some hyperbole right there.

I'm not going through 5hrs of footage to check either, but how complete is that youtube rip actually?
 
Barely any cut-scenes!?! That's some hyperbole right there.

I'm not going through 5hrs of footage to check either, but how complete is that youtube rip actually?

You dont have to watch all 5 hours, just keep clicking through time stamps and you will see its 70% gameplay. Its more of a video going towards a cutscene and then letting it play. And yes those are all of them. MGS5 literally has like 10 cutscenes. Everything is told through tapes or gameplay footage (sitting with skull in the jeep).

Go read any review, thats the first jarring thing every reviewer mentioned because it was so left field compared to previous main entry titles. Its on par with Peace Walker. Compared to previous titles, yes MGS5 has barely any cutscenes. For example MGS 3 has a total of 4:30h. And they were everywhere, mgs 5 you get a cutscene if you are lucky every 5-10 missions and its like 1 or 2 minutes.
 
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EDMIX

Member
Arre you sure you played MGSV? It is widely known that thing has barely any cutscenes. 80% is audio files to fill the story. Its nowhere near MGS 2 or 3. If you are going by Youtube "Metal Gear Solid 5: Phantom Pain All Cutscenes (full movie)" , that is full of gameplay...it has like 3 and a half hours of gameplay included lol. MGS5 literally has an hour or hour and a half of cutscenes maximum. Its 1/4th of what MGS 2 or 3 had.

" It is widely known that thing has barely any cutscenes." ??? Have YOU played MGSV? I have over 100 hours in the game and what that person is saying is actually correct. MGSV has around the same amount of cut scenes. The story is not as good, yes. The amount of cut scenes haven't really changed all that much, you simply get more gameplay then any other MGS title. I don't even get why you'd cherry pick 1 video when many Youtubers who do that choose what to show, not show etc. You CHOOSE to only refer to one that was 3 and a half hours.


By that logic, the Peace Walker one listed is also 3 hours which funny enough proves the point being made.
 
EDMIX EDMIX

First of all i did not chose the three and a half hour one, you already got that wrong out of the gate. I CHOSE the very first one, the one that says it has over 5 hours because that is the very first one he is referring too, by saying its same length and 2 and 3 which are almost 5 hours in length. And in that 5+ hour one, guess what there isnt 5 hours of cutscenes but mainly gameplay. The video you are referring to is the one that ONLY has cutscenes, so thank you for proving my point that MGS 5 has way less cutscenes than the previous ones which I already said 20 times. My bad its not 2 hours...its 3 hours and 22 minutes compared to the previous 5+ hour ones. Case closed.
 

EDMIX

Member
EDMIX EDMIX

First of all i did not chose the three and a half hour one, you already got that wrong out of the gate. I CHOSE the very first one, the one that says it has over 5 hours because that is the very first one he is referring too, by saying its same length and 2 and 3 which are almost 5 hours in length. And in that 5+ hour one, guess what there isnt 5 hours of cutscenes but mainly gameplay. The video you are referring to is the one that ONLY has cutscenes, so thank you for proving my point that MGS 5 has way less cutscenes than the previous ones which I already said 20 times. My bad its not 2 hours...its 3 hours and 22 minutes compared to the previous 5+ hour ones. Case closed.

No case closed bud, depends on what video on youtube you'd be watching.
 

nowhat

Member
Not that different from UE4. You get your art assets, plop them down in the editor, run around, see how it feels, tweak it a bit, run around some more, rinse and repeat. Actually creating the assets, gameplay programming, AI, that's where the work lies if you have a fully functional engine. And you can outsource a bunch of the art if you have deep pockets.
Sure, compared to other toolsets/workflow of engines like UE4, there are many similarities (I'm sure there areas where either is better, or worse, compared to the other, but in general). What just impresses me is that they were able to develop the tools while working on the actual game (and the engine too), and convincing the end users to switch over from the existing mishmash of tools/non-existing workflow to this new editor. This may seem like a non-brainer, but end users are reeeeeally stubborn if they are used to doing something, no how more complicated and inferior it would be. But a game like HZD (or Death Stranding) couldn't have been developed without the editor, that much is evident. Or it could have been, but it would have taken so much more time.

And Kojima Productions could have gone with UE4, there was never a requirement from Sony they should use some in-house tech. Yet they went with Decima. Perhaps there is much under the hood we don't know about, that makes it a preferred alternative. But this is still 99% speculation from my part - I just found the talk and the history/development of the editor fascinating, so I decided to post about it.
 

Terenty

Member
As far as i can tell, judging by the trailers, nothing changed in Kojima's approach to writing in DS. It will most likely has the same amount of exposition explaining themes, supernatural elements etc etc. When the woman says at the end of the trailer "humans arent made for living alone they are supposed to come together" it sounded like any monologue at the end of MGS recapturing the theme like genes monologue in mgs 1, snakes monologue in mgs 2, etc.
So as far as writing goes im sure its a typical Kojima game only in a new setting.

And its really a japanese thing, excessive exposition is in all anime ever, not just Kojima
 
Im hoping for his glory Mgs4 cutscene days for DS. As long as we get a solid gameplay that is. Cutscenes for me tell a better story than random scripts/books/audio files scattered around.

Obviously this depends how developers deal with it. Horizon Zero Dawn, had quite a few files to read but never felt they were too long or too frequent to run into. Skyrim on the other hand had book chapters that were 20 pages long. I mean its good to have an extra story but i just cant read so much text on a TV, strains my eyes bad and its a 58". Give us crazy over the top cutscenes again Kojima :D
 

Bwesh

Member
Just like I thought, Stefanie got dumped.


Was about to post this as well and yikes. Hayter then Joosten? I hope we can get an answer from Kojima since Joosten was pretty good with Quiet and obviously less expensive.
 

vpance

Member
Was about to post this as well and yikes. Hayter then Joosten? I hope we can get an answer from Kojima since Joosten was pretty good with Quiet and obviously less expensive.

At the end of the day obviously he can cast whoever he likes without justification, but it was awkward to see how it went down. I doubt he will say anything on this. I think he's never said anything about the Hayter situation.

I don't think it was surprising though, given how much he loves being close to Hollywood. Sony must have given him the OK or connections later on and was like, uhh yeah let's hire Lea Seydoux instead.
 

Ol'Scratch

Member
I really hope that this turns out amazing, and I hope it ends up as something awesome but I will honestly say that right now I can not even feign interest in the game. I do not know why, and I have tried. Will be interesting to see post launch feedback and reactions.
 
Im hoping for his glory Mgs4 cutscene days for DS. As long as we get a solid gameplay that is. Cutscenes for me tell a better story than random scripts/books/audio files scattered around.

Obviously this depends how developers deal with it. Horizon Zero Dawn, had quite a few files to read but never felt they were too long or too frequent to run into. Skyrim on the other hand had book chapters that were 20 pages long. I mean its good to have an extra story but i just cant read so much text on a TV, strains my eyes bad and its a 58". Give us crazy over the top cutscenes again Kojima :D
My only complaint with the cutscenes in MGS4 was the repetitive dialogue.

Deus Ex and Resident Evil games are my favorite examples of notes/books/audio files. I think it's my preferred method of world-building in a video game but, like you say, 20 pages is unnecessary.
 

Evilms

Banned
D-TAzlaVAAE9Xwo.jpg:large
D-SS4f3U0AE5roy.jpg
 

mortal

Gold Member
I still can't believe Death Stranding is releasing in just 4 months. Koji Pro are wizards confirmed.
 
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nowhat

Member
Could end up winning game of the year.
Well, first of all, which one of those? It seems everyone and his dog is giving out GOTY awards lately....

And when it comes to awards, games arriving at the end of the year seem to struggle to win them. On a very personal level, I was happy RDR2 didn't win everything last year (it's a good game, but many/most of the reviews seem to gloss over the mechanical shortcomings); at the same time, I thought it would have gotten more. The only reason I can think for that happening, as it was such a critical darling, is the release date.
 

EverydayBeast

thinks Halo Infinite is a new graphical benchmark
Well, first of all, which one of those? It seems everyone and his dog is giving out GOTY awards lately....

And when it comes to awards, games arriving at the end of the year seem to struggle to win them. On a very personal level, I was happy RDR2 didn't win everything last year (it's a good game, but many/most of the reviews seem to gloss over the mechanical shortcomings); at the same time, I thought it would have gotten more. The only reason I can think for that happening, as it was such a critical darling, is the release date.
No doubt crowning it the GOTY is a powerful statement, I'll make the argument that Kojima of all developers is probably an easy choice with Metal Gear's GOTY winning history and you can't have a FPS win game of the year and games like Cyber Punk and Last of Us have a chance but aren't till next year. Noone has a clue what R* is doing with RDR2 btw.
 

xool

Member
We've already been told that these environments have limits (obviously i suppose) .. but I hope they are huge.

I hope they double down but improve on on the large empty open areas of MGSV with isolated concentrations of humanity/activity (esp. the Afghanistan map)

[imo] One of the biggest mistakes of this gen open world design is the assumption that players need to be given trivial activities to do in the map.
 
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Generic

Member
What's so impressive about this game? It looks so normal. There are walking, shooting and stealth segments.
 
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