Topic: Death Stranding OT

@KratosMD Yeah I did. Apparently the issue was that my package was ruined nearly all the way and after the fight Sam was out of stamina, so he tripped, fell, and broke the package. But it turns out that the game saves after the fight, so I didn't have to do the boss fight again fortunately.

Does Death Stranding have any branching narrative? Like can the condition you deliver a person in effect what happens?

@Jaz007 No, you just get less, or no points. If you fail a mandatory mission, you can redeploy the cargo at the pickup point.

So, I was in the mood to finally pull this game from the backlog and give it a whirl. I was waiting for the right time for me, because I knew this game was so different from any other game out there that I needed to be ready to learn new mechanics and have the time and energy to devote to a new IP. And I’m pleased to say, the wait appears to be worth it. So far, I love it.

I’m only a couple hours into it, and I had to pull away to do some chores, but I can’t wait to go back. It’s a strange world, for sure, but it is starting to make some sense to me. The trailers were so weird that I didn’t know what to expect, but it looks like Kojima actually has created a unique world with its own rules and situations that do actually have some logical direction. I can’t wait to see where this goes!

More Early Impressions

I just have to talk about this game.

I’m getting into a decent rhythm with the game now - probably about 6-8 hours into it. Man, this is great. I did not expect Death Stranding to be this compelling and resonate with me so much. Such a breath of fresh air with its unique gameplay. Yes, it’s technically a series of fetch quests, but that’s not the point. The enjoyment isn’t in the fetching and retrieving, its in the journey and the strategy. Calculating a path, managing your load, building structures and interacting with the network.

Say what you will about Kojima, but the guy is a bona fide visionary. I mean, I can’t help but see echoes of the COVID-19 isolation in this game, where people are all locked up in their locations and not interacting, and in order to restore the world order with any hope of humanity subsisting we need to reconnect. It feels very familiar to our situation where society as we know it is prone to collapse if we can’t restore social function in the midst of this pandemic.

> I was also interested to see in one of the supplemental documents in the game that they termed people to have “Delivery Dependence Syndrome”; sounds like what we are starting to see already where we are addicted to our Amazon orders, grocery and food delivery to the door, and heck - even buying a car now can be done online and they deliver it to your house. In the game, the advent of drone and non-human delivery with less social interaction resulted in decline in physiological hormone production and oxytocin deficiencies that resulted in human despair.

Then the whole thing is mirrored in a real life interaction in the game with the asynchronous online multiplayer collaboration and interchange which just further drives home the theme. As an example - after a tough trek through steep and rocky landscape filled with BTs to get to a station and bring it online, I was dreading the laborious crawl through the rough terrain filled with BT’s, only to find with the chiral network online now, there were extremely useful bridges and rest areas in place! I was so thrilled! I could feel my oxytocin levels surge!

The game is quite ingenious, in my opinion. Granted I’m early into it and I’m glazing over its weak points — like some of the acting and script is a bit cheesy, starting with the characters’ names, and the combat is a little weak, for example. But it’s a great ‘chill’ game, and then add the wonderful music in there and the gorgeous scenery, and the hours fly by while I play. After having just finished Assassin’s Creed Origins — which was a great game, mind you, but extremely iterative and a ‘safe’ recycle of well-established game mechanics and themes — it has been refreshing to have a very different experience like Death Stranding. The timing was ripe for me to play it. I really can’t understand the vitriol with which some of the gaming community reacted when the game was released and all the condescending insults thrown at Kojima. Most have surely never played the game. I suppose it’s the same people who are flaming Naughty Dog and tearing down TLoU2.

@Th3solution glad your enjoying it. I played before lockdown but have thought of the games a few times, mainly when trying to tentatively navigate supermarket isles viewing careless boomers like BTs! I love the text in the message entries, I can completely see emojis being part of standard text, irrespective of how formal the content within the next 10-15 years. A handful of pictures can remove any doubt about the tone of the content. On Kojima, im in the camp that although mgsV story is a mess, its still one of the best games on the ps4 for the systems in the world and this game has some of those hallmarks. Thats Kojimas real strength, though I wish he would let others influence dialogue and production. I'm glad I played it but I also get why it splits opinion, I very much have issue with some things in the later game. Hope you enjoy and keep on keeping on 👍🏻👍🏻

@Th3solution I really enjoyed Death Stranding as well, if only because it's so different to other games I've played. I also played offline, which kinda felt like the hard mode to me, with no help from people online lol.

@Th3solution without spoiling anything for you, the games traversal becomes quicker later in the game as long as you stay online. It's a great game.

It hasn't stayed with me though, maybe it's the weak boss fights or real slog once you get in the mountains. The only gaming masterpiece I have straight up refused to ever play again.

I’m still loving this game, but I have to admit - the voice acting is a bit inconsistent. Some of the performances are really good, and some are really poor.

I’m in Chapter 5 now and the story is really interesting. I continue to really like the gameplay as well. I know people say it starts to grate soon, but so far I’m still utterly enticed.

@Th3solution I haven't cleared it, doubt I'll get back to it now frankly. But yeah the voice acting (and storylines in general) seem inconsistent. It starts strong, gets pretty bad, and I hear it picks up again considerably toward the end.

@Th3solution @kyleforrester87 I think around chapter 4 or 5 you get in the main gameplay loop. It's all about how much time you want to spend building the network. I think you can get it done pretty quickly if you just follow the main story. I went for 100%, meaning that I spend most of my time making deliveries, but since I played offline it was quite challenging, and so it was still engaging towards the end. But story-wise the middle part of the game takes a back seat. I wouldn't say it gets bad, it's just different from the cut-scene heavy beginning and end.

@Th3solution I don't recall any performances that were notably bad, which characters do mean by that? The regular NPCs or the main characters?

@Octane That annoying woman who gets married sticks in my mind. Also that woman you have to lug across the mountain who had the invisible baby. She drones on worse than I do.

Fragile makes up for it by far though, shes the best character in the game - at least as far as I played.

@kyleforrester87 Oh yeah, I think that Japanese girl is some kind of famous person in Japan, and I think they got her to do the English VA as well. It was kinda hard to decide for me if it was just bad acting, or if it was just her trying to speak English.

Mama was alright, but her facial animations in some cut-scenes didn't look quite finished.

@Having the great voice actors just made the poorer ones stand out all the more, unfortunately.

@Th3solution When you hit the mountains the pace comes right down. Initially its a big relief to get to the top of the first big one, then it opens up more and its depressing as hell. The slow pace when you have previously with roads and Bridges makes it a bigger slog.

I loved DS. Wouldn't ever replay it though.

@KratosMD Very true. It's easy to forget all the good parts if there are a few hiccups here and there.

Poor Margaret Qualley, she was brilliant in Fosse/Verdon and I do like Mama as a character. Still though, to be Andi MacDowell’s daughter, she had to have picked up at least some of the old ‘Is it raining, I hadn’t noticed’ awfulness.

@Octane @nessisonett @themcnoisy @kyleforrester87 @KratosMD
Yeah, I was referring to the Chiral Artist mainly, since I recently finished her mini arc and got her reunited with her hubby; she’s clearly struggling to deliver the lines in English, and it completely pulled me out of the immersion. Most likely there was complaints from pre-release test groups because the game automatically switches on the subtitles when she speaks. (I had been playing with subtitles off). I feel bad for picking her out though, since her English is no doubt miles better than my Japanese. But also even some of the performance of Fragile and Deadman have been mixed, in my humble opinion. In truth, I think it has less to do with voice acting performance and more to do with poor direction and awkward scripting at times. Also the graphics are quite splendid for the most part when dealing with the environment and the monsters, but there are times when human character animation and facial expressions are a little flat and uncanny. So that visual limitation may also be pushing me to feel the acting is occasionally substandard, which of course is no fault of the actors.

But yes, I agree that the vast majority of the voice performance is perfectly acceptable or even above average, but the occasional awkward moments have stuck out to me. I think Mama is doing great so far and I quite like her, but I don’t think I’ve reached her substandard moment yet that you all are referring to.

Norman Reedus is fantastic. His 4th wall breaking antics are very amusing, while at the same time his heart wrenching struggles are adequately palpable when they need to be also.

Edit: And to be clear — I adore this game so far. Depending how the second half goes, it might be in my top 5 this gen. I’m that addicted. I’m just trying to be fair and unbiased by pointing out the VA issue I noticed.

@Th3solution Yeah, the writing can be a bit tedious at times. Deadman and Die-Hardman have no problem explaining stuff multiple times.

More impressions —

Into chapter 8 now. I’ve slowed down my playthrough a slight because I’m splitting my time with my Vita and Trails of CS, but I managed to make some progress this weekend on Death Stranding too.

I can now somewhat understand the complaints about this section in the snowy mountains. I do not find this section as off-putting as some people did, but the game really pulls you down here. The game simultaneously gives you awesome traversal possibilities in the form of the zip-line which can, when deftly and strategically placed, negate not only terrain, but all enemy encounters through a tough area; but then at the same time it takes away BB and plops you into the most harsh weather and terrain so far - and teeming with BTs to boot! The difficulty really ramped up in all theses areas surrounding Mountain Knot City. I suffered my first “death” at the hands of the BTs in a tight snowy valley with not only no BB to help me see them, but also being waist deep in snow - no means of movement to run, dodge, or maneuver to get in a good shot. And I was attacked simultaneously by 2 mini bosses. Sheesh, just brutal! So now there’s a huge void out crater in the middle of my map, which is apparently permanent. Yeah, getting to and from the Robotics expert and the Spiritualist is a royal pain in the tuchus. Even now that I’ve put them all on the chiral network, the zip lines and bridges are still not quite sufficiently built up to avoid lots of trudging through the snow.

But even with that difficulty spike, I’m enjoying it immensely. And similarly to besting an area or boss in a Soulsborne, I found a surge of satisfaction in finally getting all the surrounding preppers on the network, getting back my BB, and setting up zip-lines for future traversal convenience.

I also like how the characters are starting to get their stories told. Deadman is pretty creepy. I’m not sure what to make of him. When I found out he’s a Frankenstein-like creation of joined parts and organs from multiple dead people, it all made more sense why he acts so weird.

And I like how the preppers all have their own quirky personality, except I just wish they really hammed it up more like Conan O’Brien does during his cameo. It was awkward, but funny at the same time.

The story is still quite a tangled web, but I’m gradually getting it. Hopefully everything comes together in the end to make sense more fully.