Topic: Death Stranding OT

@Thrillho Good to hear how well you’ve got along with it. I totally relate to how it has sucked you in. One of my favorites last gen, for sure. Brilliant game.
Be careful to not get burned out too much though. At about the 2/3 point it can get slightly tedious and cumbersome. But the ending is fantastic and so worth it.

@Th3solution Yeah, I can see that being a problem so I think I won’t be pushing for the 5* ratings immediately and let them come a bit more organically. Unlocking the truck and fixing up the roads helps with that massively though as you can just do runs covering most of the map with ease.

I forgot to say how jarring it was to see Conan suddenly turn up as a prepper too Afterwards, I remember hearing he was in it but it was still weird.

And I remembered another change in the DC version of the game; Monster energy drinks are now gone and it’s homebrand Bridges Energy Drink only now!

A fair bit of progress since my last update.

I'm almost 100hrs in now and just at the end of chapter 8 (so that's Unger, Mama, Deadman, Clifford, and Heartman done since the last post).

The battlefield chapters are really cool, even if combat really isn't the strongest point of the game. That part of the story is really interesting though.

The rest of the story has seen me do the mountain areas, reconnect with the preppers around there, and then also with the ones south of Heartman's lab. I spent a fair amount of time building the roads around the mountains but couldn't be bothered doing it all the way down to Mountain Knot City. So instead it's been a lot of time setting up ziplines around the mountains. It's a much quicker way of getting round but pretty boring just watching Sam fly through the air for minutes on end..

The rest of the characters are all kind of weird and their names are a bit on the nose too! Heartman seems particularly odd but, in true Kojima style, it all works and the overall theme to include previous extinction events is quite well done.

I've just crossed over the tar at the south edge of the map and am intrigued as to where this is going to go!

@Thrillho sounds like you’re pretty close to finishing it if I’m honest. And I know what you mean about those battlefield sections, so atmospheric... I thought the third one in particular was fantastic!

How are you rating the game now that you’ve seen the vast majority of it?

@colonelkilgore Is it really close to finishing?? I thought there were 15 chapters although some have been shorter than others..

I've really enjoyed it though. It can get a bit repetitive but that's mostly because I'm trying to do as many deliveries as possible, 5* places etc but you could easily plough through the game without worrying too much about that. As I said above, the story is nonsense but clever and there are a lot of (ahem) strands still waiting to come together.

@Thrillho from what I remember… and it’s been a while in fairness, the middle sections (which it sounds like you’ve done for the most part) is where the main part in terms of play time is spent. Once you’re through those it can all come together relatively quickly.

@colonelkilgore Yeah, I thought that on one hand there can't be many more areas to explore but having done 8/15 chapters, there must be a fair bit to come!

I saw this morning that the Kojima productions account retweeted a couple of people talking about chapter 9. I managed not to see what they were about but something big must be coming..

As an aside, Hideo himself is impossible to follow on twitter as he has spates of retweeting 100s of things in one go

@Thrillho every time I chat about it, it reminds me that I really want to play this again but don’t know where I’ll find the time. There really is nothing else like it. It was my first Kojima game… and I’ve played a fair few since, the guy is a genuine gift to the gaming industry. Like a gaming equivalent of Sergio Leone.

@colonelkilgore Well, even if you import your save from the PS4 you won't automatically ping the platinum for the Director's Cut as they've been tinkered with slightly. So maybe you can import your save to get the new plat and then have a slightly more streamlined run through the game if you ever get to it!

I'm glad that the game has held up though because it's great to see Kojima do something that isn't MGS and still be so special. Without knowing how this is going to end, it would be great to see something completely different again from him for his next project.

@Thrillho agreed, as much as I’d love a Metal Gear Solid remake, I’d be happy for it to be handled by someone else. New Kojima IP’s would be as exciting as anything in gaming moving forward.

In terms of importing my save, Death Stranding would definitely be one of the games that I’d like to fully experience again as it’s just so unique. I’ll probably get a pang of Kojima-withdrawals in a year or two and I’ll just have to crowbar it in to the schedule somewhere.

Well, hope you enjoy the rest of it, I actually thought it had a pretty good ending… if it did maybe suffer from The Return of the King syndrome, in that there are a few moments which felt like appropriate cut-off points… and then there was more… and then some more etc.

I finished off chapter 9 last night and it was one of the “shorter” but rather busy chapters so far!

And then all the story related shenanigans that follows that!

I’m currently en route back to Lake Knot City but making some deliveries and trying to get my last prepper on the network and then 5* (the veteran porter).

@Thrillho The combat / boss fights are the only bit that lets Death Stranding down as a package (no pun intended).

You've made some great progress if you've only got one more prepper to do! I must have spent way too long messing around with those zip wires

@render I did the first one I mention on hard and it was just tedious running around to find rocket launchers and using them.

I dropped the difficulty down for the second as I died once and it wasn’t difficult but just dragged on.

And yes, I have spent too much time trying to get all the preppers and all of the places to 5* already In hindsight I wouldn’t have spent so much time doing it if I knew there were going to be so many deliveries! I didn’t realise that the second area is where you’d be spending so much of the game..

As most of you will have seen, I finally got the platinum last night but completed the main story last Thursday.

Here in follows super spoilers for the end of the game and I can't be bothered having a wall of black boxes

(just in case someone else browses the thread when they come to play it)

So I was kind of surprised at how quickly the game rattles through those last chapters once you've made it all the way out East and it becomes a bit of a whirlwind finale which I'm glad I managed to get through in one go (after spending ages getting the Veteran Porter to 5* and then realising that I'd missed the musician in the first part of the map anyway...)

Finally getting to Lake Knot City saw the final battlefield scene which was pretty intense being the one in Vietnam and the sounds were incredible with the Pulse headset. The fights themselves weren't all that tricky but it was one of the harder areas with less cover than the WWI and WWII fights. And all a bit weird with Cliff at the end.

Then the crazy pure Kojima last few chapters where everything comes together with the flashbacks culminating in revealing how Cliff and Sam are linked, the whole crazy bit on the beach with Amelie and holding off on her ending everything, and the rather annoying extended part where Sam runs around on his own beach while some credits roll and Amelie drops some more plot bombs on you intermittently.

And the capped off with the presidential speech and Sam's final stroll to the incinerator..

I thought it all came together really well and the main story was some classic Kojima with the tennis links to the real life extinction events giving it some sort of base in reality before than just going batsh*t crazy and with a bonkers cast alongside it all.

Great game.

@Thrillho nice, sounds like the ending elevated something that you were merely enjoying to something great. It got so much unwarranted hate back when it released, that I'm always glad to hear about people's experiences with it when they finally give it a go. It's an experience like no other in gaming for me.

@colonelkilgore I think I’d have enjoyed it a bit more if I hadn’t spent so much time faffing with the 5* levels etc during my main play time and setting up so many roads/zip lines etc and had just kept up the momentum with the main story. But then I’d probably never have got the platinum.

Having that momentum at the end helped the story though but made the game feel very weirdly weighted/paced.

I can see why people struggle most at the beginning though as that first area involves a lot of trudging around on foot and it gets much easier in the main area with vehicles, roads, and good support skeletons. BTs also become less of an issue when you get the upgraded cuffs to take them out with.

@Thrillho Congrats, my friend! It truly is a masterpiece in my mind. Like the @colonelkilgore said, I’m a little annoyed at how the game got a lot of hate with everyone looking down their noses at it and calling it a “walking sim” and stuff like that. They clearly hadn’t given the game enough of a try. Gamers like to gripe about how there are no new gaming ideas and how Sony’s games are all too ‘samey’ or stale, but then they gripe when a game does something new and innovative like Death Stranding.

The online implementation was a fantastic addition, I thought. It was a nice balance of interactivity without being intrusive. I’m a fan of the asynchronous MP approach that I think was introduced by Dark Souls (or maybe Demon’s Souls) and this is a natural evolution of that.

I can definitely see some of the minor issues you mention with the pacing though. I took more of the approach of moving the story forward at a decent pace rather than sticking around to 5* everything, although I did do some grinding too. I spent a good amount of time strategizing my roads and ziplines too, which made the middle and latter half of the game drag a little bit. But as soon as I felt comfortable with the clearing out deliveries in an area and setting up my network, then I’d move on to the next main missions at a reasonable pace and I never got truly bored of it, despite spending about 80 hours with the game. But, as you say, it means I didn’t get the platinum as a result. Maybe one day I’ll go back.

I've been playing a bit of Death Stranding these past two days. Not as much as I wanted of course, but here are some of my first impressions:

• The game looks gorgeous. I knew it didn't look bad based on trailers and such, but I didn't expect it to be this much of a looker in motion.
• Like most Metal Gear games too, the game's design is weird at first, but quickly things start to make sense. I think this is Kojima's greatest talent, to not only come up with a great idea, but to actually make it work, to have it make sense within this weird game he's creating. I can't speak for my upcoming hours with the game, but so far the game's design is pretty convincing.
• I love how at every moment there are stakes, something to achieve, something to lose, different ways to approach every situation, and there's a physicality to it as well. All elements that make a game compelling to me.
• I am pretty glad Kojima is freed from the shackles of Metal Gear. This game feels more fresh than any Metal Gear game could ever feel, because it's not constrained by a series' past. Anything could happen (or not happen).
• There is a bit too much exposition. Everyone is constantly explaining things to me. And there is something like too much explanation. At some point I just tune out and hardly register tutorial messages anymore. I like that the game wants to help me out and understand everything about the world, but at times it can feel like the balance is off. This is something Kojima has always struggled with, so it's not like it took me by surprise either.
• Soundtrack is really good.
• I can't wait to see how the game (and its world) will evolve during my time with it.

Long story short: I love this game so far!

@Kidfried Glad to hear you're enjoying it!

The first area is great as it really is beautiful but it can become a bit tedious trekking across the same areas on foot. It's much easier once you start to unlock more gear to make things easier and the game does a pretty good job at steadily opening access to them so, like I said in the other thread, you're sometimes better off pushing on with the story a little bit to get those items.

Like you say, I think Kojima and the team did a great job making the game make "sense" even if it is absolutely bonkers when you step back from it. And I loved those times when the music kicks in during certain moments of the game too.

Do you think you'll go for the platinum on it?

@Thrillho I made a promise to myself not too long ago, to not focus too much on platinum trophies anymore. I'll play the game and if I love it, I'll make an effort!