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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=st-36t_bUnQ Hey, for anyone who may be interested, I'm doing a let's play thing soon and I made a fancy trailer for it. I already had an LP going but I had to put it on hold for various reasons, but now that I can pick it back up I've decided to start over from a more story conscious perspective. In my opinion one major weakness that drags the story down is, unfortunately, trying to slot the protagonist himself into the story Kojima Productions wrote. Well, not anymore. I'm going to do my very best to re-frame the story of Death Stranding to be more personal to Sam without changing any of the core elements. I hope you will join me for it. edit: I added subtitles/closed captions to the video as some of the dialogue is difficult to discern with certain sound setups/hearing disabilities. Thank you for the feedback! CJacobs fucked around with this message at 00:43 on Feb 11, 2021 |
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Feb 10, 2021 20:59
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trailer looks super good
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Feb 10, 2021 21:21
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Yeah, interesting way to frame an LP, color me interested
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Feb 11, 2021 02:03
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It would be cool if the ziplines had a platform around the base to stand on, or was programmed to not drop you off the side of a loving mountain when you misclick or aren't paying attention. 
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Feb 11, 2021 23:18
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Dilettante. posted:It would be cool if the ziplines had a platform around the base to stand on, or was programmed to not drop you off the side of a loving mountain when you misclick or aren't paying attention. Not sure if this is what you meant by misclick, but just in case you're unaware, Sam gets off of the zipline in the direction the camera is facing when you dismount. If some jerk puts a zipline endpoint right at the edge of a cliff you can give the camera a quick 180 before hopping Sam off of it.
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Feb 11, 2021 23:28
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CJacobs posted:Not sure if this is what you meant by misclick, but just in case you're unaware, Sam gets off of the zipline in the direction the camera is facing when you dismount. If some jerk puts a zipline endpoint right at the edge of a cliff you can give the camera a quick 180 before hopping Sam off of it. I challenge you to find a better place to connect to a zipline right outside the Cosplayer's door  E: also, bonus opportunity to connect to players
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Feb 11, 2021 23:45
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CJacobs posted:If some jerk puts a zipline endpoint right at the edge of a cliff The edge of a cliff is the perfect spot for a zipline as they can be seen and linked to from all directions. It’s not my fault if you’re not paying attention when you dismount
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Feb 12, 2021 00:33
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Wafflecopper posted:The edge of a cliff is the perfect spot for a zipline as they can be seen and linked to from all directions. It’s not my fault if you’re not paying attention when you dismount Do the gruntwork and link it up to another one so it doesn't end there then! Where are your manners!
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Feb 12, 2021 00:35
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I do but your entire network doesn’t end up in other people’s games, just random parts of it. I’m not just putting random isolated zip lines everywhere
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Feb 12, 2021 03:38
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Wafflecopper posted:The edge of a cliff is the perfect spot for a zipline as they can be seen and linked to from all directions. It’s not my fault if you’re not paying attention when you dismount I tried to place my ziplines in a way that you don’t eat poo poo when dismounting from some directions, but there is no way to guarantee it when connecting at max range. Also, some of those pillar rocks are just way too juicy targets for a zipline. There’s one between the Engineer and the Elder where I just had to bring out a ladder to plop one on there.
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Feb 12, 2021 10:00
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Also I'm not sure how else to efficiently visit the Seam to connect to other players other than zipline assisted suicide
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Feb 12, 2021 10:28
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WebDO posted:Also I'm not sure how else to efficiently visit the Seam to connect to other players other than zipline assisted suicide Can't you just use Strand Contracts to connect with them?
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Feb 12, 2021 10:34
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Party Boat posted:Can't you just use Strand Contracts to connect with them? Those are limited. Seam contacts, from what I can tell, are not? At least that's what the game suggests. And i think it's another way to get more of a particular person's stuff to show, but who knows
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Feb 12, 2021 10:42
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Currently driving myself insane by looking for optimum zipline placment locations, fighting the urge to go hogwild with the zips.
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Feb 13, 2021 11:32
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I got a ton of likes from the one I put on one of those ruined buildings east of Mountain Knot, great sightlines and a real bastard to get to by foot
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Feb 13, 2021 11:51
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CJacobs posted:Not sure if this is what you meant by misclick, but just in case you're unaware, Sam gets off of the zipline in the direction the camera is facing when you dismount. If some jerk puts a zipline endpoint right at the edge of a cliff you can give the camera a quick 180 before hopping Sam off of it. i found that one jerk that put zipline right on top golden BT funnier. I think BT cant get you on zipline, but boy its a jump scare. Dark Off fucked around with this message at 17:26 on Feb 13, 2021 |
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Feb 13, 2021 12:33
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I went slightly south of those ruined buildings, smack bang through the middle of the BT zone on a little outcrop, you really don't want to get off there! Out of all the structures I've built so far I think the zip I put outside mountain knot is the only one that's got any likes, I came back to it after a day and it had suddenly had 1000+ likes. I'm currently trying to build zips to get to the photographer, scrambling over that huge rear end mountain to the west of the doctor. I got to the top and I'm 18 Metres out of range. 
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Feb 13, 2021 12:34
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Dark Off posted:i found that one jerk that put zipline riht on top golden BT funnier. They super duper can, I've had that same thing happen. There's a special animation for yanking you off of it and everything. Gold BTs may not be able to because that wouldn't really be fair.
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Feb 13, 2021 12:50
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I think this really sums up my feelings about Death Stranding's story (big spoilers all through) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taf3F3f3_0Q I don't know if the game understands that it's doing this, and is deliberately undermining the UCA's assertion of its own legitimacy, or whether it actually wants you to side with the UCA and their project.
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Feb 14, 2021 00:16
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They seem to have missed a huge conceit of the ending, which is that Sam is not portrayed as strange or irrational for wanting to abandon the Chiral Network and go back off the grid. He's told by his government to dispose of Lou and he makes his OWN decision instead, and it's portrayed as the right one. In fact, very few of the preppers are painted in a bad light. Even the Elder eventually explains why he is so callous and unwilling and skeptical of the government. He joins, and he eventually learns that it's not as bad as he thought from a surveillance and control point of view, but that doesn't make the UCA or the Chiral Network ethical. Of course you're not supposed to side with the UCA, they use human babies connected through the Event Horizon warp to their biological comatose mothers to power the internet. Right now they don't have much of a choice as in humanity will not survive guaranteed without it, but it was the research into this technology that caused the problem to begin with. It's supposed to push ethical quandaries on the player, to make you question what exactly the cargo you're carrying actually is. They don't push in your face that you've been helping the UCA continue their child slavery business until the very last delivery in the entire game being literally a BB pod, at which point you can no longer ignore the reality that you are complicit. Sam is complicit, even though he was forced into it. The game leaves it up to YOU to decide who should be forgiven for forcing him to do this and who shouldn't. Some people stop at Bridget, others place the blame on Die Hardman, and some Amelie. But they take imo very obvious steps to show you that you absolutely should not trust the UCA with this power, especially Die Hardman. Sam resists the cuff link and what it represents from the very beginning of the game to the very end. edit: Especially because the UCA is corrupt from moment one. Deadman explains that Die Hardman was "out of town" when Capital Knot was destroyed and after Bridget passes away hey what do you know, the guy who is the director of this government-affiliated organization is ready to open up a contract with the government again just like old times! And funnily enough, he was already the recently-deceased president's second in command! Weird how that works! With Bridget gone, Die Hardman is free to essentially tell anyone who works for BRIDGES to do anything and he INSTANTLY does to Sam, no hesitation, in the same cutscene where his mom just keeled over. CJacobs fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Feb 14, 2021 |
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Feb 14, 2021 00:46
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CJacobs posted:, they use human babies connected through the Event Horizon warp to their biological comatose mothers to power the internet. This is an amazing sentence
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Feb 14, 2021 01:11
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All of that was broadly my read too, I didn't read all of the lore entries so I don't know if it's explicitly spelled out but my understanding was that the BB experiments somehow caused the death stranding? Or that it was something to do with BB research that did it? At the least the BB program seems to be going on at a point where the government is totally happy to keep killing people, which suggests they don't know that it causes voidouts? And Sam seems to... fix the death stranding at the end by taking lou out of the pod because there's the full colour rainbow and he's standing out in the rain at the end? Basically the whole thing feels like bridget broke the universe by buggering about with Sam's life or something. I dunno it's a bit confusing. But either way, yeah the government is super lovely from the get go and I absolutely do not think they are good, and given that bridget literally created the homo demens, the main thing the UCA is supposedly fighting against and their justification for why it's them or extinction, I really don't understand how you're supposed to not view it as the UCA manufacturing their own reason for being? Like Bridget, Hardman, all of them are just in it for themselves, they're literally the people who caused all of the problems they purport to be the solution to. The issue I sort of have is that the game expends a huge amount of words to try to justify that, and while that makes perfect sense in universe because it is exactly what the UCA and the UCA aligned characters would do, the problem is that if all of that exists to demonstrate that the UCA is nothing but a propaganda machine to perpetuate the power of the US government and the literal architects of the catastrophe that killed nearly everyone, the question then becomes what... is the point of the game? Narratively? Because 90% of the narrative is just completely straight "the UCA is doing the right thing even when it does all the horrible poo poo it does" and while you can absolutely take Sam's side and treat it with the entirely deserved skepticism he does, it is rather hard to shake the feeling that isn't what the game intends. Because you can do that with a lot of media, is the thing, Sam's perspective is, I think, a very outsider one in the structure of the story, he's the player character, sure, but the overwhelming volume of narrative presence in the game felt, at least to me, to be centered in the pro-UCA side of things. The game appears to want you to think all of the people involved are good people doing the right thing as best they can, it certainly appears to be spending a lot of effort to make you sympathise with them and their cause. So I don't disagree with HxT that the game... is a bit of a propaganda piece in that respect, that what it mostly does is simply display arguments in support of this position, that you can look at it and find it absolutely repellant is obvious, as clearly we're doing that, but if it comes down to what the intended reading of the work is, and perhaps what the likely reading of the work is, I struggle to pin that down. Is it creating all of this in-universe propaganda in the hope that you, the player, will see it as that and reject it, or is it just so perfectly recreating its ideal vision of the world that it is susceptible to exactly the same criticisms as real life? I suppose in a sense it doesn't matter, the author is dead etc, if I want to I can enjoy the game as a very good demonstration of the utter bankruptcy of the politics of many of its characters, but I absolutely can not figure out if I am simply looking at a politically bad story and enjoying it because I disagree with it utterly, or whether I am looking at a story that wants me to disagree with it? And I guess that confusion is surprisingly itchy in my brain and I can't stop scratching it.
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Feb 14, 2021 01:22
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I think that's a fair assessment because the UCA being ethically garbage does muddy the fact that what they're doing really legitimately is a noble thing. They're in a position of power, but only really Die Hardman actively abuses it, and it's only because he has an ulterior motive. Fragile Express co-operates with BRIDGES but the former are independent contractors, they make deliveries in the post-apocalypse but it's not like they're doing much besides maintaining the still-collapsing society. In uniting the Chiral Network, BRIDGES is at least doing something about the problem. Several preppers connect to the Chiral Network without connecting to the UCA until you do more deliveries to them and learn why they're hesitant. And I think that's mostly what you're supposed to take away from them. Regardless of Die Hardman's abuse of power, I think the message through BRIDGES is that an inability to do something the 100% right and just way does not excuse you from your obligation to consider it as an option. You don't have to like the idea, condone it, OR participate in it, but you do have to consider it as an option. Sam's place in it then goes to show that this idea is nice on paper, but power means you can be forced to do all of those things, and that's when the bad implications begin.
CJacobs fucked around with this message at 01:45 on Feb 14, 2021 |
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Feb 14, 2021 01:37
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How does taking a huge break from the game affect stuff you've built? When I finally get back to the game, will I get just a mega chunk of likes, then none after as my roads and structures have long since deteriorated?
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Feb 14, 2021 01:39
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Objects in your game, whether you built them or somebody else did, only deteriorate while you're online, so everything will be as you left it when you log on. When your objects spawn in someone else's game they start at 100% and only deteriorate while that player is online. How deteriorated they are in your game doesn't affect their condition in other peoples' games. You will get a big dump of likes since you haven't been online in however long but after that the rate of likes should return to normal.
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Feb 14, 2021 04:28
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Also, and I know this may sound like common sense but people don't really think about it, structures won't ever deteriorate if you put them in a place where it doesn't rain or at least only rarely. Watch the weather pattern on your map once you unlock that ability, check for squares where rain only comes for ~10min intervals or similar. If you wanna build a bridge or other 'permanent' thing and you're ten feet away from a spot where it rains like 50% less, may as well scoot over! The game also has these beautiful volumetric clouds so if you get up to a high place you can just look up and watch them to actually physically see the weather rolling in and out. edit: And regarding Sam's culpability in the story, here's something NOBODY ever considers. The guy has like 30 handprints on his body. Aside from _two_ other characters, he's the only repatriate in the story. How many nuclear explosion sized holes do you think he left in America before you took control of him? CJacobs fucked around with this message at 05:53 on Feb 14, 2021 |
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Feb 14, 2021 05:31
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Good to know. Oh baby, I'm firin' this back up when my new computer parts come in. It runs great and looks incredible on a 970, truly better than it has any business doing, but I'm obviously making tradeoffs. Gonna finally finish off the story and or getting all the SSSSSSsssss
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Feb 14, 2021 05:57
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OwlFancier posted:All of that was broadly my read too, I didn't read all of the lore entries so I don't know if it's explicitly spelled out but my understanding was that the BB experiments somehow caused the death stranding? Or that it was something to do with BB research that did it? At the least the BB program seems to be going on at a point where the government is totally happy to keep killing people, which suggests they don't know that it causes voidouts? And Sam seems to... fix the death stranding at the end by taking lou out of the pod because there's the full colour rainbow and he's standing out in the rain at the end? Basically the whole thing feels like bridget broke the universe by buggering about with Sam's life or something. I dunno it's a bit confusing. yeah their coma wombs were making hell full
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Feb 14, 2021 08:34
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Having completed this with a ton of sidequests under my belt I'm really tempted to do a story only run through ignoring roads etc. For a lot of the sidequest orders roads and ziplines are basically required but it seems like the main story is almost all network expansion with minimal backtracking, making roads a bit pointless. On the subject of sidequests I never managed to get the First Prepper to join the UCA. Do I just need to keep an eye out for lost cargo to fill in that first star or is there somewhere that will give me deliveries for there?
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Feb 14, 2021 08:48
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Party Boat posted:On the subject of sidequests I never managed to get the First Prepper to join the UCA. Do I just need to keep an eye out for lost cargo to fill in that first star or is there somewhere that will give me deliveries for there? I think I just trekked around his compount and found enough "randomly" spawned cargo to him to get him over the line.
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Feb 14, 2021 09:14
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Party Boat posted:On the subject of sidequests I never managed to get the First Prepper to join the UCA. Do I just need to keep an eye out for lost cargo to fill in that first star or is there somewhere that will give me deliveries for there? I think he had a couple of deliveries from Retired Porter and Mountaineer but yeah, it’s easier to find stuff laying around addressed to him.
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Feb 14, 2021 09:27
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Cool, I'll do a bit of mountaineering with a sticky gun
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Feb 14, 2021 10:11
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Party Boat posted:Cool, I'll do a bit of mountaineering with a sticky gun I never even thought of doing this and I feel like a god drat idiot for manually walking and/or surfboarding to every single package I've wanted to scoop up from the snow. Oh my god I'm so impossibly stupid. edit: I cannot believe how dumb I feel right now. You unlock the order to go get the Sticky Gun schematic right as you're coming back from Mountain Knot for the first time, too. That has to be what the item is MADE for. You go over the pass to the Roboticist on the way out after your first visit and see all the cargo that's a pain in the rear end to go scoop up and say "I wish there was a better way!" and voila you are provided one. CJacobs fucked around with this message at 11:14 on Feb 14, 2021 |
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Feb 14, 2021 11:11
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CJacobs posted:I never even thought of doing this and I feel like a god drat idiot for manually walking and/or surfboarding to every single package I've wanted to scoop up from the snow. Oh my god I'm so impossibly stupid. I loved (and used) the sticky gun so much I unironically went looking for more PC games that had something like that. Sadly Sony has a stranglehold on the various spidersman, and I've already played JC2 and some of 3 
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Feb 14, 2021 14:18
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CJacobs posted:Also, and I know this may sound like common sense but people don't really think about it, structures won't ever deteriorate if you put them in a place where it doesn't rain or at least only rarely. Watch the weather pattern on your map once you unlock that ability, check for squares where rain only comes for ~10min intervals or similar. If you wanna build a bridge or other 'permanent' thing and you're ten feet away from a spot where it rains like 50% less, may as well scoot over! The game also has these beautiful volumetric clouds so if you get up to a high place you can just look up and watch them to actually physically see the weather rolling in and out. Holy poo poo. I didn't even know this game had real gameplay clouds. I never look up.
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Feb 14, 2021 14:21
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Thundercracker posted:Holy poo poo. I didn't even know this game had real gameplay clouds. I never look up. Check this out, this happens while you're walking back from the wind farm, but hardly anyone is actually pointing the camera high enough to see it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecpz_PUUYO8&t=18s Any time you connect the Chiral Network in an area, go outside and look up immediately after and you can watch the 'chiral clouds' people keep talkin about in the mid-game actually physically rolling in. But also, the weather radar on your map corresponds to these volumetric clouds which determine where the rain actually really is in the game world! Decima is nuts, man! CJacobs fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Feb 14, 2021 |
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Feb 14, 2021 17:01
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I stopped playing a few weeks ago just before heading out for Heartman's lab, after finishing All The Roads I wonder how many have crumbled away. I don't feel too compelled to open the game though, having been partly warned about the late-to-endgame I can kind of imagine what's coming and, well, 
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Feb 14, 2021 17:09
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Structure degradation is tied to game(world) time, so I wouldn’t be concerned.
Mierenneuker fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Feb 14, 2021 |
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Feb 14, 2021 17:16
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Ciaphas posted:I stopped playing a few weeks ago just before heading out for Heartman's lab, after finishing All The Roads Wafflecopper posted:Objects in your game, whether you built them or somebody else did, only deteriorate while you're online, so everything will be as you left it when you log on.
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Feb 14, 2021 19:47
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Ciaphas posted:I stopped playing a few weeks ago just before heading out for Heartman's lab, after finishing All The Roads None of them, roads are super tough plus nothing decays while you aren’t playing.
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Feb 14, 2021 19:48
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