Are Games Bad?
Let's Talk About Hideo Kojima
Hideo Kojima is a puzzle. More than any other game designer, he represents the idea of video games as ambitious, complex, pop cultural works. A Kojima game is never an anonymous corporate product, it’s always an expression of his personal thematic obsessions and idiosyncratic stylistic and formal concerns. Kojima has earned his status as a beloved video game auteur by channeling action movie inspirations through clever and compelling game mechanics to create something totally new. His games take creative risks, explore an eccentric vision, and are genuinely weird. In an industry dominated by the predictable, the formulaic, and the generic, it’s no mystery why Kojima is considered a genius.
And yet. There’s another thing Kojima games are famous for. Interminable cutscenes filled with terrible dialogue. I mean really, really bad. Vast stretches of boring, repetitive exposition, explicating backstories that are so incomprehensibly convoluted that they wrap around into self-parody and back again. Imagine a version of The Bourne Identity where, every other scene, the action pauses for an hour and we have to listen to Matt Damon argue with GPT-2 about The Silmarillion.
This tedious exposition is interspersed with forgettable, cliché-ridden character interactions, corny jokes that fall flat, and pompous moral declarations that give the whole proceedings a wafer-thin veneer of thematic seriousness: war, when you really think about it, is pretty bad.
The good parts of Kojima’s games are truly amazing. They are pioneering explorations of a new grammar for cinematic interaction. They are visually sophisticated, experientially dense, and playfully postmodern. Even the cartoonish, over-the-top worldbuilding and plotlines might be fine, when considered separately from their flat-footed delivery. But the bad parts are truly bad.
Or are they?
Yes, they are.
But what if they’re not?
Ok, but they are.
But…
A fairly common take on Kojima is that all the things I’ve said are bad are actually not that bad. Because they are bad on purpose. Or their surface badness masks a hidden profundity. Or, while ostensibly bad, they are somehow a necessary ingredient of the overall gestalt of the work, which, because it is good, makes them good.
See, for example, this recent piece by James Bareham. He starts out making the imminently sensible observation that Death Stranding is
one of the most visually stunning, imaginative, technically accomplished, and brilliant video games I have ever played. In fact, I’d consider Death Stranding as close to a true video game masterpiece as is possible to get were it not for one significant and consistent nagging flaw that runs throughout: The English language dialogue in the cutscenes is really bad…
…a trite, nonsensical, repetitive, forced script that is so exposition-heavy that plot points are made with all the subtlety of a pickaxe smashing through concrete.
But then, eventually, he starts to change his mind…
As I progressed through the game, I became more and more impressed with the gameplay and the astonishing creative vision behind it. I adore the industrial design of the vehicles, the logo design, the design of the game’s graphic interface, and yes, I even found myself enjoying some of the dialogue in the cutscenes. Though most of the script is still bad, I now realize that it’s all part of the Kojima aesthetic and have learned to embrace it
This idea, that the idiotic cutscenes are “part of the charm” is very common. And I sort of get it. There’s a lot to love about a Kojima game, and when we love something, we shouldn’t pick it apart, take the good parts and reject the bad. When we love something, we should accept the whole package, warts and all. Maybe we shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Maybe we should just be grateful to have something this lovable and, who knows? Maybe the mysterious recipe that produced it required huge, heaping portions of inedible dreck. Art is complicated, who can say?
I can. I can say. I’m confident that these games are much worse than they could be. Worse than they should be. They should be genuine masterpieces, not half-masterpieces that require you to suffer through oceans of trite nonsense. I’m not immune to the charm of ridiculous, over-the-top genre pulp. I’m familiar with the hyper-stylized theatricality of anime. These games could be every bit as bonkers as they currently are, they could be equally eccentric and flamboyant and hilariously bizarre, and masterpieces, if they weren’t ruined by so much stupid dialogue.
Why do I care about this? Why can’t I just let people like things? Because I think that the puzzle of Hideo Kojima is, in some ways, a microcosm of the puzzle of video games in general. So many of the worst things about video games are not just reluctantly tolerated but enthusiastically embraced because, through association, they have become emblems of our beloved hobby/artform/lifestyle. The same kind of winking, tongue-in-cheek affection that people have for the “bad” parts of Kojima games reflects the way the broader video game audience has internalized their deepest flaws as being, not just acceptable, but welcome. Not just welcome, but somehow necessary. Video games are childish and vulgar and corny and silly on purpose. And we like it this way!
Except we don’t like it this way. Not really. Deep down we recognize that these things are an unfinished project, and it terrifies us. Video games are technical and creative marvels, sublime and ridiculous. They are the cathedrals of the modern world. Only we don’t know what they are for. So we tell ourselves the comforting story that they are just for puppet shows and cartoons and dressing up and make-believe and playing house and playing soldier. But they are not. They are not.
I've never played any other Kojima game than 'Death Stranding.' I felt it essential to learn more about Metal Gear Solid and Kojima's dialogue in the original Japanese (and I am very grateful to Sam Byford in Tokyo for his help here) to understand why the script in DS is SO bad—and yes, you're right that it is really bad; so bad it often verges on becoming a pastiche of itself.
But despite the bad dialogue, the rest of Death Stranding is so good, which is why the turgid cutscenes didn't bother me as much the more I progressed and came to enjoy other aspects of the game, some of which are truly astonishing.
For further context, I find the writing bad in most video games tbh. Cutscenes aren't my thing. As a result, I tend to avoid narrative-driven games in general. I quickly gave up on 'Horizon Forbidden West' and 'Assassins Creed Valhalla,' not just because of the interminable cut scenes and garbage dialogue, but because I also found the gameplay a chore. The same was true of 'Star Wars Outlaws.'
That is why I love FromSoftware games so much; the story and dialogue are there simply to propel the game forward. I couldn't tell you what Elden Ring is about—I haven't a clue. But that hasn't stopped me from playing well over 300 hours of the game and DLC, and I consider it one of the greatest games ever made.
FromSoft seems to treat storytelling as simply a necessary part of making a great game, but one that should never get in the way of the gameplay itself. I certainly think Kojima would benefit from heeding that lesson a little.
This is a great piece that better articulates some thoughts I've been having.
Death Stranding was my first Kojima game, and I tried to like it, hearing how his convoluted dialogue was part of his intentional *style*.
I kept on trying to appreciate it, but it just didn't feel like the kind of intentionally surreal dialogue I was expecting. For example, David Lynch's films have strange and dreamlike dialogue that are very effective and feel intentional. Kojima's dialogue just felt flat and unmemorable to me. I can't remember a word anyone said in the opening hours of endless dialogue.
This piece made me think a bit more and decide that Death Stranding, indeed, simply has bad dialogue that is not trying to be bad. Death Stranding garnered some criticism for its gameplay, but this is the first I've seen of a focused critique of the dialogue, and I have to agree. The gameplay worked for me, but I stopped playing because I wasn't looking forward to seeing what happened next in the story. I didn't care about anyone. BB was probably my favorite character, and could be due to the lack of dialogue! BB conveyed more personality through little tiny body motions than the other characters did in hours of time.
And I agree that we are beyond the point where games need to be defended as an art form, and we should be having more conversations about what games *can* be, versus defending them as if we're still in the 1990s and politicians like Joseph Liebermen is wagging his finger at games for daring to include explicit violence or target older audiences. We made it. Last of Us was adapted into an HBO show.
I'm much more excited about what's possible than what exists currently in the industry. But we'll never get there if we, as a collective audience, reward and extoll the virtues of more of the same.