|
It's probably gonna be one of the most easy to mine for lit crit games in a good long while, even Disco Elysium doesn't have the mad auteur syndrome of kojima (or visibility) wildly careening between (extremely mild early games spoilers anarcho communism alienated rogue truckers and asexuality is a disease discourse . You're gonna hear every single take.
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 08:49
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 05:06 |
|
|
f#a# posted:Nah, the original Manhattan incident is the first voidout, which IIRC is described in an interview as a consequence of the first BB experiments. There, Deadman says that's the cause of the Death Stranding, but I think that's overruled by Amelie's explanation later. I don't think Sam is the first BB, unless I missed something? Also, one of the BB/Mads scene has him coming in from normal-rear end rain with an umbrella so the full-on Death Stranding definitely hadn't happened yet. I'm not sure that the original BB contact is the first voidout either, I get the impression that they just kinda started happening all over
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 09:12
|
|
|
I appreciate the responses to my question but what about Sam's wife? Did she also cause a voidout in Manhattan or was I mis-remembering something I heard/read?
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 09:28
|
|
|
homeless snail posted:I'll have to go back and read but iirc the Manhattan Incident was an attempt to recreate the conditions behind another voidout that happened during a normal C-section on a braindead mother. The people observing via CCTV realized that it happened when the doctor touched the umbilical cord and wanted to research it further so obviously and very smartly they conducted their experiment in the middle of Manhattan, with the president watching personally. And then officially Bridget shut down the BB program but secretly one year later is when Sam gets BBed, idk that they ever give him a number and its probably not important ultimately but at the very least he's more than likely an early one. As I recall, that C-section incident was noted as the first time someone saw a BT, so it seems likely that voidouts had been happening prior to that and nobody had any idea wtf was going on beyond "if you get near a dead body that hasn't been burned then a huge explosion happens". Otherwise we'd have to believe that the first time someone lucks into creating a BB there is also coincidentally a BT wandering by for the first time, leading to the first voidout - or that creating the BB was actually linked to the creation of the BT as well somehow.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 09:36
|
|
|
Is there any real use for the EX Grenades? Or are they more of a gimmick/worldbuilding thing than useful anti-BT gameplay tech
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 09:43
|
|
|
CharlieFoxtrot posted:Is there any real use for the EX Grenades? Or are they more of a gimmick/worldbuilding thing than useful anti-BT gameplay tech I'd say you're much better off ignoring them and carrying some extra cargo in their place, and hurrying ahead to when you get hematic grenades which actually work.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 09:47
|
|
|
DaveKap posted:I appreciate the responses to my question but what about Sam's wife? Did she also cause a voidout in Manhattan or was I mis-remembering something I heard/read? She caused a voidout in a town near Central Knot City called UCA-01-002 (its called UCA-01-032 in the body so no idea which is the right name) so presumably this happened after the Manhattan voidout. Hub Cat fucked around with this message at 09:52 on Nov 18, 2019 |
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 09:49
|
|
|
CharlieFoxtrot posted:Is there any real use for the EX Grenades? Or are they more of a gimmick/worldbuilding thing than useful anti-BT gameplay tech I think they don't do a good job of encouraging you to use them before the way more useful blood grenades come along. All they're good for is stunning/chasing away ghosts. If that was all you had for a while and you were forced to use them it would've made more sense.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 09:51
|
|
|
Hub Cat posted:She caused a voidout in a town near Central Knot City called UCA-01-002 (its called UCA-01-032 in the body so no idea which is the right name) so presumably this happened after the Manhattan voidout.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 09:53
|
|
|
I guess another theme that jumps out to me is the fact that living people leave foot prints as they travel (there's footprints everywhere you've ever walked) and dead things leave handprints. I wrote before about Chirality but maybe I'll rewrite what I was thinking about... Modern physicists discovered that the fundamental things they were studying were not forces or particles but actually symmetries... A mathematician named Emmy Noether realized that every conservation law implies a symmetry and vice versa. What does symmetry mean? If we rotate a perfect sphere 90 degrees, can we tell that we've changed anything at all? No, so we say a sphere has rotational symmetry. If we rotated the universe 90 degrees, I mean everything in it, could we tell? Would any physics change? No. This rotational symmetry, it turns out, mathematically implies conservation of angular momentum. We can slide the universe 10 feet to the right, translational symmetry, implies conservation of momentum. We can start the big bang one year later, again no change, time symmetry mathematically implies conservation of energy. These are sorta the easy ones, there are much deeper symmetries which give rise to both the electric field and charge conservation etc. One result of symmetry, I guess, is matter / anti matter. The universe, for some unknown reason, doesn't respect this symmetry perfectly. An electron moving forward in time looks identical to a positron moving back in time, change the charge and direction of time and you have indistinguishable systems. In fact electromagnetic quantum field theory presumes anti matter is just matter going back in time. But for particles interacting with the weak force, another property needs to be reversed, their chirality. Chiral comes from the greek word for hand. Your real world right hand in a mirror is symmetric to your real world left hand. That's why something which does not have mirror symmetry is something we call chiral, it's hand like. It turns out particles have chirality, related to which way they 'spin' as they move through space irrespective of relativity. You can imagine that a clock in a mirror would have its hands spin counter-clockwise if you were to somehow reach into the mirror and pull it out into the real world.  This is the standard model of physics and besides the graviton (not listed and isn't well understood even though we know where it goes on this chart), everything in our universe is made of these fields. Protons and neutrons are made of up and down quarks, held together with gluons, for example. You can reverse the charge of all of these and get their antimatter forms, which are also much rarer in our universe for unknown reasons. A bizarre fact is that for some of these particles, their antimatter forms also necessarily reverse their chirality. It seems in our universe, left handedness is preferred for matter (and right handedness for antimatter), so for neutrinos and interactions with the weak nuclear force, right handed variants seem to not not interact, or maybe not exist. Some say they could exist in a universe that's parallel but not interacting with ours, a kind of hidden mirror universe. Kojima's lore is saying that right handed matter is what makes up the BTs and the land of the dead, and why there's a huge release of energy when life and death meet. I like the hand symbolism even though in physics chirality has more to do with a kind of rotation like the hands of a clock. Hands definitely represent 'the other side' in this game tho.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 09:58
|
|
|
Neddy Seagoon posted:Not when your axles are both off the ground. What's the deal with NPCs using trucks and getting them to lift up like 15 feet off the ground on hydraulics, but it not being in the gameplay at all? At least afaik
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 10:21
|
|
|
veni veni veni posted:What's the deal with NPCs using trucks and getting them to lift up like 15 feet off the ground on hydraulics, but it not being in the gameplay at all? At least afaik It's automatic. Try driving in deep water.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 10:25
|
|
|
Neddy Seagoon posted:It's automatic. Try driving in deep water. Also jumping isn't anything special with trucks, you just kinda  off the ground a bit but it's some straight up Evel Knievel poo poo on a Anyone notice that the monster cans get replaced with timefall porter beer in the distribution center south of lake knot? You can get rather plastered on them, he starts dropkicking the empties over into the corner by the fragile umbrella, shaking cans and blasting them into the camera like an F1 race, then after idk a handful he sweeps everything off the table with his arm before freaking out about the now-loose cryptobiotes, stomping a couple on the ground and trying to shoo flying ones away before shaking the jar and letting the rest out. Then if you try to check out BB he staggers over and goes at the kid like he's trying to get the attention of a fish at an aquarium, thumping the glass, leering at it, etc. You could go the entire game either never noticing or never caring to drink them, and they decided to throw in this whole set of goofy extra sequences because that's exactly what would happen in a game from Hideo goddamn Kojima. Also in my server apparently everyone has pissed on Conan O'Brien's doorstep. Walked out after connecting them and into this wizard of oz style mushroom garden I went, filling my pockets with cryptobiotes.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 11:08
|
|
|
All the grenades are also useful for areas where you have to retrieve a bunch of items because you can just clear out a path instead of actually bothering to kill ghosts Both ways are equally valid, the game just gives you tons of ways to deal with problems
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 11:37
|
|
|
precision posted:All the grenades are also useful for areas where you have to retrieve a bunch of items because you can just clear out a path instead of actually bothering to kill ghosts they also don't use blood, though the game spits enough blood bags at you that unless you're intentionally avoiding carrying any you'll almost never be without 4-5 of them on hand at all times (unique scenes notwithstanding).
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 11:46
|
|
|
I hate how its hard to tell if a writer is doing something deliberately or not and the weirdness with time doesn't help. Anyone else notice that in Fragile's flashback to show her time rain walk that Higgs already has the EE's necklace attached to his hip and that its old and banged up? Which doesn't make much sense seeing as he hasn't been able to get to her beach until way later. His uhh totem is the doll in his BB container which was given to him by the EE even though through most of the game he is looking for a way to get to her so it makes even less sense that he has the necklace int he distant past.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 12:03
|
|
|
Took me way too long to realize that not all the private lockers are shared. I'd spend JUST enough time between them to kind of forget what I had stowed away, and I'd be like "Hrmm. Is something missing?" I'm a dipshit.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 12:42
|
|
|
If you get to a high point and just piss on BT's it works the same as throwing an EX grenade at them, which I just found out after running into one with no weapons.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 12:49
|
|
|
dvorak posted:If you get to a high point and just piss on BT's it works the same as throwing an EX grenade at them, which I just found out after running into one with no weapons. lmao
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 12:59
|
|
|
dvorak posted:If you get to a high point and just piss on BT's it works the same as throwing an EX grenade at them, which I just found out after running into one with no weapons. No loving way, I thought this might work but never really found a situation to whip it out. Also road chat: what do you guys mean when you say no one's building roads? Whenever I hook up the chiral network in an area all the autopavers are suddenly half-3/4 filled with materials which I can then top off, presumably by other people. And I'm constantly seeing people have repaired roads messages. If you just mean finished roads aren't plopping into the game, I guess I don't really see that, except for one section early on which was randomly finished before I did anything. Real Cool Catfish fucked around with this message at 13:20 on Nov 18, 2019 |
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 13:16
|
|
|
The game pretty clearly expects you to lay down the final materials for 90% of your own roads as party of the gameplay, since roads materialize all or nothing once they have the requisite amount. There's only a few that, even with the online giving you a lot of free resources, need multiple truck halls to activate. As well as only a few that show up without you to top them off. To be honest I think the pacing of this game would be better if it didn't expect a leaning tower of deliveries from the third or fourth mission and the "network strength" went from having a few ropes, ladders and bridges in an area once on the network to the host of bullshit placed everywhere (loving trucks everywhere) that you have maybe once an area is 5 stars... or something else. Pacing and not length is a huge issue with this game edit: wishful thinking but the first mission, before you can even carry things on your arms and legs, as well as the mission to the incinerator after, have the best walking-sim vibe in the game. I really wish I could return to this design:  and turn off all the online structures. Besides that, you get things so fast, there's less sense of accomplishment and progress. Maybe give me grenades No. 0 first, then 1 and 2... maybe in chapter 8 start giving me guns only after the mules start shooting. Give me the strength legs for a long time, then speed, then the one bike I have to keep track of, then at endgame give me all the trucks and ability to call new stuff into being at will. It's endgame sandbox mode too fast, especially with ziplines. Roads placement is paced well, I didn't finish those till I had already crossed an area several times. I feel like even using your arms and legs to carry small boxes should be an upgrade of significance, or being able to stack a 150kg tower. I like how late the backpack upgrades seemed to come, I didn't know I would get them and when I did I found them really useful. Modest Mao fucked around with this message at 14:22 on Nov 18, 2019 |
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 14:04
|
|
|
Finished the game. It's my game of the year. That's all I have to say.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 14:06
|
|
|
8-bit Miniboss posted:Finished the game. It's my game of the year. That's all I have to say. Hell, same. And that is despite the final confrontation of the game being between my patience and two hours of cutscenes
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 14:11
|
|
|
from chapter 3 to chapter 9, no one had built a single road. i built all of them. i've connected south knot to lake knot, and then i built the roads from the craftsman or whoever he is and all the way to the distribution center near mountain knot city. am slowly but surely connecting the distribution center to mountain knot proper. e: please build roads so i don't have to anymore e2: also please don't leave your god danged vehicles in the middle of the road (which i've built), its rude and its bad form
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 14:19
|
|
|
I spent the better part of an evening putting together a zipline from South Knot City, to the Chiral Artist, all the way up to South Distro, to Wind Farm. Also included Film Director (somewhat close) and Junkyard. I'm almost out of bandwidth, what's the max? I guess once I've maxed out some of these out of the way preppers, I'll have to break some down so that way I can set up a zip line through the mountains too... I wish literally anyone else was putting down ziplines, but they aren't showing up in my world... Do I have to make new strand contracts or something? I am already maxed out at 30/30 EDIT: also, how do you swim? I have the otter hood but can't figure that part out. EDIT2: If you keep powerslamming the Timefall Porter, eventually, apparently, it runs out and goes back to monster. Does anyone know how to get it back? GreenBuckanneer fucked around with this message at 15:01 on Nov 18, 2019 |
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 14:35
|
|
|
People who leave unfinished bridges around are MULEs, and especially so when they don't even go anywhere useful. There's a completely baffling bridge near my Mountain Knot, that just ends in a cliff. I'd dismantle it, but why bother when I don't even get bandwidth. But I need the bandwidth for more stuff. 
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 14:36
|
|
|
GreenBuckanneer posted:I spent the better part of an evening putting together a zipline from South Knot City, to the Chiral Artist, all the way up to South Distro, to Wind Farm. Also included Film Director (somewhat close) and Junkyard. A Zipline around the South Knot region is just wasteful, use a truck for that. It's far more efficient, and you can put Ziplines to use where they're actually useful instead way up in the mountains. And you're gonna really want the bandwidth for setting up Ziplines in the mountains for some of the Prepper shelters there.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 15:05
|
|
|
I'd assume you get more porter by taking a delivery from the farmer again. That's when they first show up anyway
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 15:14
|
|
|
GreenBuckanneer posted:I spent the better part of an evening putting together a zipline from South Knot City, to the Chiral Artist, all the way up to South Distro, to Wind Farm. Also included Film Director (somewhat close) and Junkyard. You need to progress forward a little before you'll see other players' zip lines. Go do the story delivery it wants you to do. Made the same mistake. And maybe don't get carried away linking up that new region with zip lines right away because I'm betting they won't show up there until you progress even further. lets hang out fucked around with this message at 15:40 on Nov 18, 2019 |
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 15:37
|
|
|
GreenBuckanneer posted:I spent the better part of an evening putting together a zipline from South Knot City, to the Chiral Artist, all the way up to South Distro, to Wind Farm. Also included Film Director (somewhat close) and Junkyard. I've hardly built poo poo around Lake Knot City > South Knot City, but I've solitarily rebuilt all the roads on my own. I've only just started chapter 5. I burnt up all my bandwidth back in the start area, filling in the gaps between online zipline structures with my own, and now I have 100% coverage from Central Knot to Port Knot, all stops in between. I've 5-starred all the shelters & centers there in that first area mostly because of the lack of road fabrication; am I going to really need to keep up the zipline network there, with that accomplished? I haven't needed to set up ziplines anywhere I can build roads, I just rely on trucks & trikes after that.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 15:38
|
|
|
5er posted:I've hardly built poo poo around Lake Knot City > South Knot City, but I've solitarily rebuilt all the roads on my own. I've only just started chapter 5. I burnt up all my bandwidth back in the start area, filling in the gaps between online zipline structures with my own, and now I have 100% coverage from Central Knot to Port Knot, all stops in between. you don't need ziplines at all until chapter 6 and i would not recommend building any more until that point. ziplines are for high-elevation areas where vehicles have trouble reaching, and that doesn't apply to the eastern half of the map and any roads that are actually on the chiral network should get at least some help with materials. don't build roads until you've established network coverage in those areas
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 15:56
|
|
|
Oxxidation posted:you don't need ziplines at all until chapter 6 and i would not recommend building any more until that point. ziplines are for high-elevation areas where vehicles have trouble reaching, and that doesn't apply to the eastern half of the map counterpoint: ziplines fuckin rule
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 15:59
|
|
|
Modest Mao posted:Also this game seems pretty out there to westerners but I think most Japanese stuff that seems "creative" or "surreal" is just derivative of other Japanese stuff. A lot like Dark Souls owes a lot to beserk etc. Mario seems to have its own world but as a japanese kid you'll know what a tanuki is etc. Everything is derivative of nature. We literally can't talk about anything else just perceive it differently. Click on my post history and look at the post just before this in the Mr. Robot thread and I think you'll find it relates to what you just said. I don't think it's a west/east difference thing because there are many western works of art that do the same. It's more of a literal/metaphorical perception issue. TLDR: Everything is an abstraction of nature. We are animals more capable of recognising abstract patterns and yet we get lost in the amount of data we have to process along with the different perception of said data, alas the data is the same. The left, right dichotomy is also a duality. It is the evolutionary principle and the only actual 'end' to it is understanding it and accepting it. Another game that focuses on this symbolism really well is Shadow of the Colossus. Catsplosion fucked around with this message at 16:17 on Nov 18, 2019 |
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 16:05
|
|
|
Neddy Seagoon posted:A Zipline around the South Knot region is just wasteful, use a truck for that. It's far more efficient, and you can put Ziplines to use where they're actually useful instead way up in the mountains. And you're gonna really want the bandwidth for setting up Ziplines in the mountains for some of the Prepper shelters there. Can't use a truck to transfer goods from Junkyard and Chiral Artist and vice versa  Also, biking over very rocky terrain kind of sucks rear end. Using ziplines to just completely zoom past BT zones owns.Too loving tedious otherwise. Same deal with the Wind Farm and Science station, glad that one's almost done too. I might just five star these shits then break the ziplines down to free up bandwidth to repurpose in the mountains instead. Most of these South Knot preppers don't have great rewards, except the artist has great boots. lets hang out posted:You need to progress forward a little before you'll see other players' zip lines. Go do the story delivery it wants you to do. Made the same mistake. What's the story delivery? I lost track. I know there's the second stage of pizza delivery that they want me to do from south knot.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 16:13
|
|
|
The thing with EEs that I figured was, up until this point, EEs have been like... lower brain capacity creatures or animals. This time the EE was a modern human who could actually understand what her role was and have feelings/emotions about it. This leads to a person who knows they are an EE and understand it's an inevitable cosmic thing, but also is not super crazy about the idea of just destroying all life. Am I reading that right or am I off? It felt that way to me, but maybe I was just seeing something that wasn't there. 8-bit Miniboss posted:Finished the game. It's my game of the year. That's all I have to say. I agree. Also it puts Geoff in kind of a tough spot if it wins at the Game Awards
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 16:35
|
|
|
GreenBuckanneer posted:Can't use a truck to transfer goods from Junkyard and Chiral Artist and vice versa You absolutely can and skirt the BT zone like it's not even there. You are a poor Porter .Also the low-tier BT zones are a non-issue in a truck, because you can just turn right and power that Boost to escape if you get grabbed.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 16:47
|
|
|
Neddy Seagoon posted:You absolutely can and skirt the BT zone like it's not even there. You are a poor Porter This Sam would like some tips, then. There's a mountain range in between the two that is majorly annoying, which is why I didn't bother with either until I got the ziplines.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 16:49
|
|
|
GreenBuckanneer posted:This Sam would like some tips, then. There's a mountain range in between the two that is majorly annoying, which is why I didn't bother with either until I got the ziplines. there's a small mountain pass directly south of the junk dealer that you can maneuver a bike through it should be easy to see because fifty other people in your network have probably used the same route, just look for the footpath
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 16:52
|
|
|
GreenBuckanneer posted:This Sam would like some tips, then. There's a mountain range in between the two that is majorly annoying, which is why I didn't bother with either until I got the ziplines. From the Junk Dealer's bunker, drive your truck south and follow the hill with it kept on your right-hand side. You'll find a valley you can get a Truck through easily and have a smooth BT-dodging ride all the way to the Tar lake via a not-too-steep slope. From the Chiral Artist's Studio, when you find the slope leading up over the hill to a black valley skirt the right-hand slope and you'll find yourself near the Junk Dealer safe and sound.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 16:56
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 05:06 |
|
|
speaking of other people laying down paths, one of my favorite examples of the asynchronous multiplayer was in early chapter 5 where you're tasked to retrieve the mineral samples by the falls near Mama's lab. people had laid down a souls-esque trail of messages to mark the shallowest part of the river, and there was also a truck there to help me through the water itself someone also looked like they'd tried to use a climbing rope to help them with the current, no idea if that actually works
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 16:58
|
|