Hideo Kojima recently announced that his upcoming games have found a new home. The Japanese designer and auteur, together with his company, Kojima Productions, will partner with...
listen i love the mechanics of his games. the attention to detail, the art direction.
but his stories are kinda crap. his best games were made when he was forced to answer to authority. when given cart balanche he meanders around the plot, gets distracted, dumps the narrative to chase some shinyer meta narrative that is not set up, and never ever pays off. and i have played all his games always hoping to get back to that high of the original metal gear solid, or metal gear solid 3 (fuck you metal gear solid 2). and Death Stranding stole its world building from Blades in the Dark.
I agree with every point you make except the conclusion that he’s an overrated hack. I was rolling my eyes through every cutscene of Death Stranding 2 (except the electric guitar fights which were incredible for the naked spectacle), but his inability to rein in his silliest indulgences is a relatively minor facet of his overall artistic merit in this medium.
The guy’s a certified auteur, and like most of them, he has some serious gaps in his repertoire. But when you play a Kojima game, you’re almost always going to play something completely unlike anything else on the market, and there’s a solid chance you’re going to have a blast doing it.
the criticism comes from a place where he has consistently missed his potential, and he is over rated due to this, it goes into hack status when he gets high on his own supply. if i didn’t care deeply for his work i would not care enough to have such a strong opinion.
his self indulgence in these accolades should not be encouraged, and he should not be given infinite time, infinate money, and infinite control on a project unless you expect him to continue to succumb to his problems of meandering story, overspending, and spectacal at the cost of the narrative.
he is an artist, a visionary, and a hack, and sometimes art is defined by its constraints
kojima is a hack.
listen i love the mechanics of his games. the attention to detail, the art direction.
but his stories are kinda crap. his best games were made when he was forced to answer to authority. when given cart balanche he meanders around the plot, gets distracted, dumps the narrative to chase some shinyer meta narrative that is not set up, and never ever pays off. and i have played all his games always hoping to get back to that high of the original metal gear solid, or metal gear solid 3 (fuck you metal gear solid 2). and Death Stranding stole its world building from Blades in the Dark.
i can spend hours dissecting his overrated ass
I agree with every point you make except the conclusion that he’s an overrated hack. I was rolling my eyes through every cutscene of Death Stranding 2 (except the electric guitar fights which were incredible for the naked spectacle), but his inability to rein in his silliest indulgences is a relatively minor facet of his overall artistic merit in this medium.
The guy’s a certified auteur, and like most of them, he has some serious gaps in his repertoire. But when you play a Kojima game, you’re almost always going to play something completely unlike anything else on the market, and there’s a solid chance you’re going to have a blast doing it.
the criticism comes from a place where he has consistently missed his potential, and he is over rated due to this, it goes into hack status when he gets high on his own supply. if i didn’t care deeply for his work i would not care enough to have such a strong opinion.
his self indulgence in these accolades should not be encouraged, and he should not be given infinite time, infinate money, and infinite control on a project unless you expect him to continue to succumb to his problems of meandering story, overspending, and spectacal at the cost of the narrative.
he is an artist, a visionary, and a hack, and sometimes art is defined by its constraints