Board 8 > Rate the VG Story Day 15: Death Stranding

(+) Yeah! (+)

Here we have a game that was nominated multiple times but I wanted to do either way, Death Stranding. How would you rate the story on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest?
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Previous Results:
Outer Wilds - 9.86 (18 votes)
Omori - 9.6 (5 votes)
Disco Elysium - 8.58 (12 votes)
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty 8.55 (21 votes)
Final Fantasy X - 8.24 (46 votes)
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective 8.21 (17 votes)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - 8.12 (34 votes)
Celeste - 7.5 (21 votes)
Tales of the Abyss - 7.17 (24 votes)
Super Paper Mario - 7.09 (14 votes)
Chrono Cross - 6.61 (14 votes)
Uncharted: Drakes Fortune - 5.46 (23 votes)
Final Fantasy IV - 5.41 (23 votes)
Fallout 4 - 4.53 (13 votes)

You can still rate previous days games if you missed them, just write <game name> <rating>. If you want to change your rating you can just specify that you are changing your rating. Nominations for future days are also welcome, nominate as many games as you like and I will get to all of them.

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No interest eh?

Well Death Stranding gets a 1. Just garbage.

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Just finished it

I'll go 8.5

Once it really started going, I got really into the lore and world, and even though things got a little wonky toward the end I still dug the story

That being said I 100% understand why people wouldn't care for it

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7.5

I really liked the mid-end game plot exposition and even the 1 hour ending (hey I believe MGS2 endgame stretch was that long as well) that everybody complains about. However the characters are nowhere near as good as the MGS series and Sam is disappointingly quite bland. The plot is really good once it gets going though but it takes a while for it to really get going.

Story and lore are the least of the game's concerns though. Gameplay is where my main issues lie with the game but that would be off topic.

I've only played a couple hours of it, so I won't rate it just yet.

Nominate Star Fox 64

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7

Good worldbuilding and a few interesting characters. The ending is a ... curious... story telling approach. In most cases I'd say it doesn't work, but Kojima give it enough stylistic flair that it doesn't completely fail.

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7

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I would say that not even the worldbuilding worked because everything was baked in Kojimas bizarre choice of extreme literalism leading to quite possible the worst use of metaphor I have seen in any medium. It also has a tone that is frankly nonsensical even comparing it to MGSs unusual tonal balance, veering from serious and contemplative to parodying the Sound of Music? in the same scene. Also the dialogue is awful, Princess Beach may be the worst line Ive seen in a story-centric game.

I was tempted to bump it up half a point because I liked Heart Man, but I think it should stand as the lowest score until I find a worse one. I think I have more negativity towards MGS4, but this is definitely the worst for me, this or Far Cry 3.

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colliding posted...

Good worldbuilding and a few interesting characters. The ending is a ... curious... story telling approach. In most cases I'd say it doesn't work, but Kojima give it enough stylistic flair that it doesn't completely fail.

This but I'm gonna give it 7.5

The stylish presentation went a long way

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7/10

This is one of those instances where the gameplay story is better than the real story. Building up the world together and making sure people unite to beat the game is an awesome metaphor that links to the core story of the game. Seeing how far people were into the game and finding out when people gave up was amazing. Honestly I don't think I've seen something quite like it

Can't participate in today's but I'll rate a bunch of old ones.

Super Paper Mario: 9.25

Easily the best Mario RPG storywise, even though I do like the first two games a little bit more. SPM is pretty wonderful and underrated these days though. And as weird as it is...it might have my favorite love story in a game. Good nomination, whoever picked it.

Metal Gear Solid 2: 9.75

Nothing really needs to be said here because this game and story have been dissected to death. It's a masterclass

Celeste: 6.5

Yeah this game's story did not live up to the hype. There are a few standout moments, but nothing ever really impacted me that much. But damn, it's still a really good game.

Uncharted 1: 5

Okay why was this nominated. Production values might be able to add to an already good story, but they're not going to make a generic one suddenly great. l don't get it. If you're going to nominate an Uncharted game for its narrative, at least do 4, the only one with a decently compelling story.

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Uncharted was nominated as perhaps the most average video game story imaginable

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Deadman was a 10/10 character

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Nuggy posted...

This is one of those instances where the gameplay story is better than the real story.

I like this

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8.5

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I think Princess Beach is hilarious and meta(but in a unique, tongue-in-cheek way) and I love it

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7

It's campy as shit. It thinks it's way deeper than it is. The dialogue is pretty bad. For every profound moment there's an equally dumb one. Despite all this, I think it excels at telling its story on its own terms, which is basically hammer its themes in as loudly as possible while being entertaining and weird and off-kilter. Its terms are kind of bad! But if you take the massive grain of salt it wants you to, it's a fun ride. Death Stranding does not really care what your idea of good storytelling is and I find that much more interesting than most games. And it does it so confidently that most of the time I don't even mind.

This is also a weird one to rate because Death Stranding is bigger than the sum of its parts. The gameplay and game design reinforcing the narrative is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, but it's only fair.

While I'm at it:
MGS2 - 9.5

Probably Kojima's best story I've played but unfortunately only his second most predictive. The turnaround time on getting to Death Stranding's dystopian future was pretty insane.

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Yeah Uncharted was there to establish a baseline of averageness. I will want some bad ones too, it cant just be all good stories!

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8.5