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December 12, 2022 8:05 AM Subscribe
DEATH STRANDING 2 (Working Title) [2022 Teaser Trailer] Kojima Productions’ next game, Death Stranding 2, was officially revealed at The Game Awards 2022 on Thursday by studio founder Hideo Kojima. The sequel will see the return of Léa Seydoux, Norman Reedus, and Troy Baker, and will bring Elle Fanning and Shioli Kutsuna to the roster of acting talent for the sequel, which Kojima referred to as simply DS2. [via: Polygon]
I hope its just as weird and full of risk as the first Death Stranding, which I still haven't finished. Guess that's going on the list. Keep being weird Kojima.
posted by Fizz at 8:49 AM on December 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Fizz at 8:49 AM on December 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
Kojima posted pics with Al Pacino lately so who knows what sort of goofery his starfucker brain can create from that. (I call Kojima a starfucker in the most loving sense, but dude LOVES a celebrity)
posted by Ferreous at 9:29 AM on December 12, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by Ferreous at 9:29 AM on December 12, 2022 [3 favorites]
I just want Kojima to make as many games as he wishes to because the world is better for it.
I probably won't ever play more than a few from his catalogue but hot damn is his impact vital.
posted by lazaruslong at 9:48 AM on December 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
I probably won't ever play more than a few from his catalogue but hot damn is his impact vital.
posted by lazaruslong at 9:48 AM on December 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
Kojima posted pics with Al Pacino lately so who knows what sort of goofery his starfucker brain can create from that.
Pacino was at the Game Awards giving a presentation, so I think its just him wanting a photo with Al, but then again, a chance meeting like that is maybe how we get the Godfather in Death Stranding.
*fingers crossed*
posted by Fizz at 10:29 AM on December 12, 2022
Pacino was at the Game Awards giving a presentation, so I think its just him wanting a photo with Al, but then again, a chance meeting like that is maybe how we get the Godfather in Death Stranding.
*fingers crossed*
posted by Fizz at 10:29 AM on December 12, 2022
Ferreous, had a similar thought about Animal. Hoping we see Animal and Pacino in DS2 now lol. I hope he comes up with a new name, DS2 is already competing with other DS2s as an acronym and I just expect Kojima sequels to have a subtitle after the number
posted by GoblinHoney at 10:30 AM on December 12, 2022
posted by GoblinHoney at 10:30 AM on December 12, 2022
I just expect Kojima sequels to have a subtitle after the number
Death Stranding 2: Bridge's Bogus Journey.
posted by Fizz at 10:38 AM on December 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
Death Stranding 2: Bridge's Bogus Journey.
posted by Fizz at 10:38 AM on December 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
I bought a console to play Death Stranding during the early lockdowns, and it was such an incredible, moving experience.
Before things shut down properly, I bought food for some friends who were shielding and dropped the bags off outside their locked doors. Death Stranding was such a strange and dream-like way of recontextualising that strange time. Crossing the game's mountain ridge for the first time was one of the best day's hiking of my life.
I tried a few other games, and they were all disappointing in comparison. Death Stranding was flawed, but it was an incredible work of art. I have no idea what Kojima is going to do with the sequel, but I'm excited to find out.
posted by orbific at 11:05 AM on December 12, 2022 [8 favorites]
Before things shut down properly, I bought food for some friends who were shielding and dropped the bags off outside their locked doors. Death Stranding was such a strange and dream-like way of recontextualising that strange time. Crossing the game's mountain ridge for the first time was one of the best day's hiking of my life.
I tried a few other games, and they were all disappointing in comparison. Death Stranding was flawed, but it was an incredible work of art. I have no idea what Kojima is going to do with the sequel, but I'm excited to find out.
posted by orbific at 11:05 AM on December 12, 2022 [8 favorites]
I just want Kojima to make as many games as he wishes to because the world is better for it.
I can't help but note but the pandemic kicked off like a month after this game was released and has similar themes of death and contagion horror.
Ok, mostly joking comments aside. And apologies if this is a huge derail, but there aren't many places left on the internet to talk about this kind of thing without getting immediately attacked by the generally Gamergate-ish factions and male dominated places of discussion in video games these days.
Note, I haven't played this game because I don't really do modern gaming or consoles because I can't afford it.
But I was fascinated with the art, design and world building of Death Stranding when it came out and have watched extensive play-throughs and cutscene compilations, and there's something like seven and a half hours of cinematic cutscenes in the movie.
And it left me feeling really disturbed, and not about the surface plots of death, contagion and general horror.
I can't help but notice there's a subtle and not so subtle (and really violent) misogynistic tone or theme that sure feels and smells like it's doing some kind of very carefully calculated psychological fan service to incel viewpoints.
I don't really recall seeing any stand out female characters or NPCs that weren't either problematic tropes or obvious agents of betrayal. Sure, there's betrayal, manipulation and confusion from the male NPCs, too, but there's also way more male NPCs and male characters dominate the game play and plot.
And this is even before we get to the whole weird concepts of using human babes as BBs and the whole cybernetic womb device that contains them and this sort of paternal/maternal role reversal, but it feels a lot more complicated than simply a role reversal.
I've had a difficult time articulating much more than this but my intuition and sniff test is that there's something fucky and toxic going on with the plot and general storyline, here, that goes beyond just the intense horror/contaigon plot.
After I went through watching many hours of game play and cutscenes I was left feeling really disturbed and manipulated in a way that just felt really toxic and misogynistic, and I'm wondering if anyone else noticed this.
I would especially like to hear from women who played this game or at least watched playthroughs and cutscenes because it's been bothering me ever since the game came out.
posted by loquacious at 11:49 AM on December 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
I can't help but note but the pandemic kicked off like a month after this game was released and has similar themes of death and contagion horror.
Ok, mostly joking comments aside. And apologies if this is a huge derail, but there aren't many places left on the internet to talk about this kind of thing without getting immediately attacked by the generally Gamergate-ish factions and male dominated places of discussion in video games these days.
Note, I haven't played this game because I don't really do modern gaming or consoles because I can't afford it.
But I was fascinated with the art, design and world building of Death Stranding when it came out and have watched extensive play-throughs and cutscene compilations, and there's something like seven and a half hours of cinematic cutscenes in the movie.
And it left me feeling really disturbed, and not about the surface plots of death, contagion and general horror.
I can't help but notice there's a subtle and not so subtle (and really violent) misogynistic tone or theme that sure feels and smells like it's doing some kind of very carefully calculated psychological fan service to incel viewpoints.
I don't really recall seeing any stand out female characters or NPCs that weren't either problematic tropes or obvious agents of betrayal. Sure, there's betrayal, manipulation and confusion from the male NPCs, too, but there's also way more male NPCs and male characters dominate the game play and plot.
And this is even before we get to the whole weird concepts of using human babes as BBs and the whole cybernetic womb device that contains them and this sort of paternal/maternal role reversal, but it feels a lot more complicated than simply a role reversal.
I've had a difficult time articulating much more than this but my intuition and sniff test is that there's something fucky and toxic going on with the plot and general storyline, here, that goes beyond just the intense horror/contaigon plot.
After I went through watching many hours of game play and cutscenes I was left feeling really disturbed and manipulated in a way that just felt really toxic and misogynistic, and I'm wondering if anyone else noticed this.
I would especially like to hear from women who played this game or at least watched playthroughs and cutscenes because it's been bothering me ever since the game came out.
posted by loquacious at 11:49 AM on December 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
I liked Death Stranding quite a bit, the gameplay was a lot more fun than I expected. Setting up a zipline network was super satisfying and the atmosphere with visuals/audio was great throughout.
But yeah the plot/characters of the game are very weird in a large number of different ways. Some of this is clearly intentional, and some of it is accidental based on the narrative structure. I don't really feel like the elements/characters connected together at all and the game might be better viewed as a bunch of character sketches based on metaphors that connect together in a loose narrative framework that doesn't make much objective sense. If it was presented as an avant-garde play it might feel natural, but when presented with that hyper-realistic style that Kojima loves it came across as pretty disjointed to me.
Kojima really wanted to make some characters based around Loss as a concept, and based on the trailer he's continuing with that. I didn't feel like the plot was dominated by male characters as I can barely remember what any of them did. But I definitely remember the scenes with the female characters doing bad things or having bad things done to them. I would have to replay the game to give more specific criticism, but there's definitely a clear coding of female = tragedy, male = action that implicitly encourages misogyny.
posted by JZig at 12:12 PM on December 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
But yeah the plot/characters of the game are very weird in a large number of different ways. Some of this is clearly intentional, and some of it is accidental based on the narrative structure. I don't really feel like the elements/characters connected together at all and the game might be better viewed as a bunch of character sketches based on metaphors that connect together in a loose narrative framework that doesn't make much objective sense. If it was presented as an avant-garde play it might feel natural, but when presented with that hyper-realistic style that Kojima loves it came across as pretty disjointed to me.
Kojima really wanted to make some characters based around Loss as a concept, and based on the trailer he's continuing with that. I didn't feel like the plot was dominated by male characters as I can barely remember what any of them did. But I definitely remember the scenes with the female characters doing bad things or having bad things done to them. I would have to replay the game to give more specific criticism, but there's definitely a clear coding of female = tragedy, male = action that implicitly encourages misogyny.
posted by JZig at 12:12 PM on December 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
Great image at :28.
I haven't played DS1, so this is new to me.
posted by doctornemo at 12:53 PM on December 12, 2022
I haven't played DS1, so this is new to me.
posted by doctornemo at 12:53 PM on December 12, 2022
I loved Death Stranding, but definitely had to choose to push through the misogynist bits that littered the game. I understand that, as a Canadian, I'm not going to necessarily have a shared cultural understanding of gender with a Japanese dev team, but even so, I found myself oddly disappointed in Del Toro for signing up.
posted by foxtongue at 2:13 PM on December 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by foxtongue at 2:13 PM on December 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
Seven and a half hours of cut scenes. Good god. Kojima is an awful director.
posted by hoodrich at 2:24 PM on December 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by hoodrich at 2:24 PM on December 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
also who lets that man name characters anymore
posted by glonous keming at 4:21 PM on December 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by glonous keming at 4:21 PM on December 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
DS was the strangest game. Like hoodrich, I was constantly thinking the guy is terrible at the thing he wants to do most out of anything in the world (direct movies), that his dialogue sucked, that his character names were laughably weird, that he has a deep-seated misogyny I'm not sure he's even capable of being aware of. (If he did, I'm sure he would be ashamed of his words and deeds...)
But somehow it's still special to me. Maybe there's just not a lot of space in pop culture for high-visibility, authentically weird shit anymore. It feels like a window into this dude's subconscious mind, with all the unfortunate mess that implies. If only we could get some women into the same kind of auteur-level roles--then we'd be cooking with gas.
posted by the liquid oxygen at 6:24 AM on December 13, 2022
But somehow it's still special to me. Maybe there's just not a lot of space in pop culture for high-visibility, authentically weird shit anymore. It feels like a window into this dude's subconscious mind, with all the unfortunate mess that implies. If only we could get some women into the same kind of auteur-level roles--then we'd be cooking with gas.
posted by the liquid oxygen at 6:24 AM on December 13, 2022
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posted by grobstein at 8:30 AM on December 12, 2022 [2 favorites]