Until we see some gameplay, this statement is still baseless. Hold your disdain until there's something worth exerting it on.

You still don't get it. It's not about gameplay, it's about the culture of hype surrounding this game, same is it surrounded NMS, and how it is harmful to the game and its eventual reception, regardless of the game's quality. The base for it is 90% of all videos made about it and the comment sections below them. The fact that there is no gameplay to base this hype on only shows how bad it has gotten.

Is it just me, or does Mads Mikkelsen look like he does in Doctor Strange in that second trailer?

Yeah true.
Btw Del Toro's clothes in the trailer remind me a bit of Jim's lol.

Heh, I never noticed that until now, and I actually first saw the trailer when Jim Sterling was commenting on it.
Hmm... Maybe it was intentional on Kojima or Del Toro's part? You never know.

Plenty of things have lots of hype and end up living up to it. The seventh Harry Potter novel and the first Avengers movie spring immediately to mind. In the gaming world, Metal Gear Solid 3 and 4 lived up to the hype. MGS2 and 5 mostly lived up the the hype as well, aside from a vocal minority. Kojima has a strong track record of making excellent, well-received games. Granted, his track record also includes massive delays as well, but most would prefer to have a late but finished game over a rushed on-time one.

While the visual fidelity of the teasers that Kojima has shared certainly contribute to some of the hype; as I mentioned earlier, the bulk of it stems from the canceled Silent Hills game and the hope that Death Stranding is that project reborn. As we knew nearly as little about Silent Hills at that time, the hype then was just as baseless. Regardless, given Kojima's track record and the beauty and wonder of del Toro's stories, the pedigree alone could definitely cash the check that the hype was writing. Personally, I feel that Death Stranding has the potential to do the same. Of course, as I said previously, only time will tell for sure. It's too early to call anything yet.

Actually, no, it isn't. Don't get me wrong, Kojima does have his storied reputation backing him up, but up to date we have absolutely no details about (a) what this game actually is, (b) how it'll actually play, and (c) what its business model will look like.

Until we get any actual details on what this is as an actual product, there shouldn't be any reason at all to be excited. Or have we already forgotten so quickly, what happened with Hello Games and No Man's Sky?

On the other hand, HP7 was met with a sizeable backlash from the fans for its ending, and The Avengers was greeted with disdain from many for being the epitome of big dumb comic book action movies (I for the record really enjoyed it). While I can't testify to the MGS games, I can testify to the littany of games that shamelessly exploited hype culture to milk gamers out of money time and time again: Aliens: Colonial Marines, Duke Nukem Forever, Battlefront, Evolve, Dead Island, Watch Dogs, Mighty No. 9, Assassins Creed Unity, and Destiny, to name a few. Many of these games came from established studios and developers who at varying points in their history had the trust of gamers to deliver quality products that delivered on the promises of their marketing.

These days, there is absolutely no reason at all to trust a developer or studio, even one with a history as long as Kojima's unless they're willing to give you actual proof in terms of actual gameplay or an actual product reviewed by a trusted source (TB, Jim Sterling, AJ, take your pick). Why? Because any game sold on hype, no matter how slick the trailer or how renowned the developer/director, is sold on a promise; on the faith that they're going to deliver on their promises. That makes them accountable to no one. That means that they can release a stupendously good trailer in December, release a bog-standard run-of-the-mill game in June, make a ton of cash off of preorders, and not suffer any consequences at all save for the usual vocal minority who'll forget about it all in three months anyway. (And don't forget games sold piecemeal for full price, like Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes!) Do we really believe that companies like Sony, MS, or Activision have the best intrests of consumers in mind? They only want to do right by their shareholders.

Do you - do we - genuinely want better games, and an industry that's more pro-consumer? Then we need to stop buying into the hype. We need to stop automatically buying into the Religion of Hype Culture. Otherwise, this cycle of hype will only continue.

Most of the backlash from HP fans was in response to the Epilogue, not the ending of the main story. The people who disliked Avengers were a vocal minority as evidence by how well the film did at the box office and its 92% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. As for Duke Nukem Forever, were there really people who thought that game would be good after all the time it spent in Development Hell? Destiny had many ardent supporters at launch and addressed most of gamers' concerns through patches and their planned DLC. Heck, aside from Battlefront (mostly because it's still fairly new) and Evolve, every other game you listed has or is getting a sequel, so they all sold well enough despite whatever complaints certain groups had with them...save for two.

The titles that you pointed out that actually exemplify your point are Mighty No.9 and Aliens: Colonial Marines. These are both games that failed to live up to their hype. However, this was mostly due to the fact that the retail product was not indicative of what people had seen leading up to release. As I've already said, it is far too early to say that Death Stranding will do the same. Kojima is a skilled game designer. He has the track record to pull a game of this magnitude off. I don't understand why certain people here are being so cynical.

And what are we supposed to be taking a stand against exactly? You can't tell people to not be excited about something. By the same token, just because people ARE excited about something doesn't mean it's because of corporate greed and/or manipulation. Look at Shovel Knight and Undertale; these games had a lot of hype surrounding them. Having said that, both games were universally loved upon release and were created by small teams that were just trying to make a good game and had nothing to do with corporate greed. I'm all for sending a message to AAA publishers in response to their greed with things like Day One paid-for DLC and Season Passes, but this is a completely separate issue from hype. You can't stop hype and, as I've stated, it's not always a bad thing. Let's put out the torches and set down the pitchforks until there's something actually worth rioting over.

P.S. - Ground Zeroes was not full-priced, it was only $30. It easily had at least that amount of content, so I feel that the price was justified.