| I agree with most of your post. But this part: > Hideo Kojima is creative and has proven himself time and time again with both his repeated success and his wide array of unusual work. ...I'll disagree with. Kojima seems to be a guy who wants to actively subvert expectations which, with the release of Death Stranding, felt even more like a rebellious teenager wanting to stick it to the system above all else, and not make an actual fun and engaging game. (Not to mention that the premise and general plot have been beaten to death long ago and are well-known for most but the most juvenile of gamers.) "Unusual work" does not equal "interesting and fun result". In fact I find most modern incarnations of "unusual" to be rebelling against the "norm" just for the sake of it. But I in general have a beef with a lot of these Japanese "creators". They might be unusual on the background of a lot of the copy-paste Japanese (or generally Asian) works but on the global scale they are nothing special. In fact they are a running joke in no small amount of circles: "Oh, a Kojima game? I bet now we'll have a crying raven, or a talking baby, or cows will turn out to be the superior race on Earth all along? And I bet there will be a government conspiracy even if most of humanity is already dead? And the protagonist will be just a regular guy who reluctantly saves the world?" I kid you not, the above is almost word-for-word quote from a table discussion I had with a few other guys and girls when Death Stranding was 2-3 months away from release. You and others might find this unconstructive and maybe even obnoxious but I'd still like to bring the perspective on you that guys like Kojima are in fact fairly predictable as well, and not in a good way. |