Topic: Death Stranding OT

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.

@Jaz007 What chapter did you make it to?

It’s true that when you go to the snowy mountains, it gets really tough and the gameplay can drag for some people. I didn’t really think so, but I could see how the slower pace and increased difficulty could make people want to give up. But the game trickles in new traversal mechanics and it really just keeps you having to strategize every step of the way. It’s a combination of action-stealth combat, third person shooting, strategy game, open world with side questing, world building and simulation, and story driven. The online part of the game is just fantastic as well and also quite unique, although it’s inspired by Dark Souls and ... Minecraft? No, Animal Crossing? No, I don’t know — whatever other game has other people able to build structures that populate your game.

Anyways, I try not to gush too much about it, but I can’t help myself. I’m pretty sure my next play session will be my last with it, so I’m saving it for when I have a big chunk of time so that I can play through to the end unimpeded with time to relish the conclusion. Unfortunately, that won’t happen probably for a while since I have a trip this week away from home.

@Th3solution I'm just past or at the end of the snowy mountians. I thought it was great for the game. It's a pain and it should be. It drags on and tortures (I got past the worst of it") for a while, but it really makes you feel apprehensive as you don't have BB to help you. You have to slowly go through an area just feeling uncomfortable. It really helps you appreciate BB that much and makes him feel like a vital partner. It might bother some people, but since there's an artistic and narrative purpose to it I'm fully in support of it. There's a big difference between painfully bad (or a dip in quality) and meaningful through pain gameplay and story.

@Jaz007 Totally agree. After doing the snowy mountains the early part of the game seems so easy too. I can’t believe I worried about crossing a little stream in the first section. It’s almost humorous to go back and see the ladders and bridges that were placed over simple little streams and gullies that are so easy to just walk across compared to the snow filled canyons and deep crevasses of the second half of the game.

So it sounds like you made it not too far from the end yourself. If you’ve made it through that part, you are sort of on the downhill ... well, sort of. I won’t spoil anything but you should really pick it back up. It would also be interesting to see if you have a bunch of likes on your structures that have been sitting around. Or maybe most of them have been destroyed by timefall by now.

Finished off a few days ago, after picking it up in the Days of Play sale. I didn't find the snow sections too bad at all, even on hard. I just took a load of PCCs with me when I left Heartman's and set up zip lines. I could get all the way around the geologist, paleontologist, and Heartman door to door on zip lines. To get to the mountaineer you just had to hammer it up the hill on a motorbike. BTs can't catch you on vehicles. .

I think things can be made easier depending on what you've unlocked at the non-story preppers. I had the rain cover from the Collector, and had already found the roboticist and unlocked lvl 3 terrain skeletons from the non-snowy side. Without those it would have been much much harder..

For about the first 30/40 hours it was a 10/10, but the last sections dropped it to an 8 I think. Those last missions where you have to run all the way back across the map, half of it with no equipment, and do the exact same endless boss fight against Unger for the third time, were just a bit of a kick in the balls.

Oh yes they can! I've been caught on the motorcycle or in the truck plenty of times.

Sorry, misspoke slightly. As long as you don't drive straight into them, you can drive past them quickly, even making a noise. Just have to be careful. That always worked for me anyway.