Topic: Death Stranding OT

@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.

One of my favorite games of all time.
I gave it a 10/10 and went for the Platinum but I also haven't recommended it to any of my friends cause I can understand why some people wouldn't like it.

@Th3solution I never got a crater in my game. Are they really that big? Wouldn't that make traversal even more difficult? Anyway, I've heard they do erode away over time; just like anything in the game. No idea how long that takes though.

@Octane This one is probably over 400 meters in diameter. It’s pretty big. So yeah, it means I now have to travel around it ...I guess. I’ve not tried to descend into it to cut across. It’s looks really deep so I think it would definitely take longer to go through it rather than around. Besides it has all the flotsam and jetsam ascending into the sky that suggests it’s degraded and it looks dangerous to try to go into it, like I would be carried away, destroyed, or be sucked in to have to fight BT’s or something. So I’m avoiding it right now.
Fortunately it’s in an area in that valley that was a huge to traverse anyways filled with BT’s and snow, so it’s not like the area was a favorite footpath before anyways. Still, the BT’s in the area are not gone — rather now they are patrolling the rim of the crater, so I still have to deal with them. There’s some kind of an old building there - looks like maybe an old hospital (?) or asylum maybe and I think that might be why it’s so dense with BT’s. Interestingly the crater didn’t destroy the nearby building, the game was sure to carry me several meters away when I was caught and so I think the game programming is such that if you void out an area that it won’t destroy key landmarks. I don’t know. I’m not about to find out; I don’t want to screw up my map any more than it is is now! 😅

I must say though, I’m impressed that you played it, as you say, in your self inflicted “hard mode” disconnected from the internet. I don’t know what I’d do (especially in the current harder area) without the online structures to help me. It would be a total slog without them. I image you grew tired of trekking through certain areas. On the flip-side, I will admit that although some of the structures placed by other players are excellently placed and also clues to guide you through to good paths to take, some of the structures seem to be randomly thrown up and can actually be a hinderance at times. Last night I saw an online ladder that I used and which basically exited to a part of the mountain that was without a foothold so as soon as you got to the top you immediately tumbled the 30 meters straight down and smashed into the rocks below, BB crying like crazy, all the delivery containers strewn all over the side of the mountain and damaged now — 😒 if there was a way to give that ladder a thumbs down “dislike” I certainly would have so that other players would avoid it. But I find those instances (where structures are downright badly placed) to be rare. I have formed strand contracts with only highly rated players so as to keep my world as filled with well-liked structures as possible. It really is interesting to know everybody’s playthrough is going to be slightly different because your world will be populated with a different set of structures depending on who you’ve made contracts with, as well as how you’ve placed your own structures. You really should play again while connected online one day, if you can stomach it. It’s quite exciting to see what pops up each time I connect a new area to the chiral network.

Question for those who played this:

The file save system is really strange. I appreciate that the the game has the ability to save nearly anywhere as well as a pretty frequent autosave, but good grief does it need to keep every single save file in an 80 hour game like this?
As far as I can tell, it saves them all rather than overwrite older autosaves. I think I have like 100 saves and over 800MB worth of Death Stranding save files on my HDD.

So now I’m having trouble with the auto-upload / online backup system. Every time I turn the PS4 on it says there was an upload error for the Death Stranding saves. I think it may be from the sheer enormity of them, or there’s some kind of conflict in how the online backup system identifies the saves as being duplicates or something. I don’t know.

Did anyone else have this problem? It seems an odd development choice to not overwrite older autosaves. Manual saves, yeah - I can see that you need the player to choose whether to overwrite an old save, but creating nearly 1 GB of save data seems excessive.

The game functions fine, by the way. Saves boot up without a problem.

@Th3solution I don't use the online backup system so I can't tell, but I cleaned twice the game's save folder deleting everything except for the last save. I thought they solved the problem with an update, but I've never checked...

@Th3solution This happens with me occasionally with different games, so I'm not sure the fault is with the game as such. I don't have a solution (no pun intended) unfortunately, all I can think of is try leaving the console in rest mode, as this is when it backs up saves commonly. Also if you press X on the failed backup, you should get options to try again and delete. If this doesn't work, just try googling the problem and see what you get.

@andreoni79 @JohnnyShoulder Thanks, I think I’ll just disable the auto-upload feature for this game only on my setting menu and I’ll manually back up the latest couple saves after each session. I’d be devastated if by some chance I do lose my progress as I’m so near the end. Once I complete the game then I’ll clean up all the old saves as andreoni suggests. Being at hour number 79, I can’t see that I’d ever need the game save from hour number 35. If I have to go back that far, I’d just as soon start over. Sometimes I worry about deleting saves the game makes automatically though since some times there’s a separate save for the settings and basic core game info and a separate one for the actually place you are specifically at that moment in the game. It appears they are adequately labeled in this case, but I want to be careful about willy-nilly deleting saves that might be essential.

I’ll do a little googling when I have a chance and post on the thread if I find anything out later.

@Th3solution I don't think the actual save game files are the problem, it is the backing up to the cloud. I've never had a game not load because of this issue.

@JohnnyShoulder Yeah, probably so. Still, it will be nice to open up about three-quarters of a gigabyte of room on the HDD and rid it of all the superfluous saves. Especially after downloading the gargantuan Battlefront II. Not to mention Death Stranding has claimed a large chunk of my memory for screenshots too! 😄

@Th3solution You make want to get back into Death Stranding. I made some good progress, but trailed off of it. It's a great game that truly offers a unique artistic experience. Even when it's monotonous, it feels like a vital part of the experience. A truly great step with the idea that games don't have to be "fun" to be fantastic. It's a such a crazy ride to go through.