I got some assistance last night from a SB user.
(Late-game optional boss fight spoiler.)
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Death Stranding 2 is like if the line āemotional landscapesā in the song JĆ³ga by Bjƶrk was a Proper Video Game
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Can someone help me analyze why you have to hit the skip button 5 times to fast travel
- Skip āentering elevatorā cutscene
- skip āwaking upā cutscene (maybe twice if you wake up in the middle of the night and go back to sleep by accident)
- Skip āfast travelā cutscene
- Skip āentering elevatorā cutscene
- Skip āexiting elevatorā cutscene
Also why is the whole game like this? Why do I have to skip 2 cutscenes (as well as 3 lines of canned dialogue and the person rustling around with the cargo) every time I make a delivery? Itās such a weird choice to have every canned cutscene broken up into 2 or 3 smaller canned cutscenes. In that vein, why does every person repeat every bit of information 3 different ways during every conversation (āSam, in other words, what Iām saying is, As you could imagine, I guess you could say itās etc etcā) Iām too impatient for this game!!
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striving for ludonarrative consonance by making the cutscenes as gruelling as the traversal
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well a little good news is you donāt have to go into your room to move the magellan, you can do it from anywhere, and you just have to be standing in the hangar spot to get pulled with it (apologies if iām misunderstanding something)
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Oh that is really helpful actually! I had no idea I could move the Magellan from any map, I thought I had to do it from the special map you get from Samās room! I canāt believe I missed it (actually I can, I get a lot of information overload when playing this game). Thank you!
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Every mech/bt boss fight taking place in waist high tar = genius
Every mech/bt boss fight taking place in waist high tar and also just being a shoot the glowing weak point thing = I donāt maybe that kind of sucks
I guess I didnāt think about it much in the first game because it seemed like a boss fight was just a rare occasional thing that I forgot existed until the next one, but this time itās sticking out to me as being a huge step down from every boss being like itās own puzzle in mgs. thatās the main negative thing that keeps coming to mind about the game thinking about it after
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My main complaint with DS2 is Dollmanās exclamation every time I take damage. I wish I could turn that specific trigger off in the options.
(I donāt mind the character in general, other than some minor ambivalence about how Sam should be more lonely in his travels as scross mentioned earlier. As with most of the other characters I have no idea what real-life famous person heās based on.)
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Thatās what sat with me is everyone talked the same. There was no one who was curt, or silent. Everyone single hologram has the same sentence structure.
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I already know that the thing thatāll stick with me most is what happens when you play Dollman his favorite song and then talk to him.
you might got something else to look forward to then
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i am clearly playing much slower than most but game fucking rules. i am still in awe of it every time i play, honestly. for me this is about as good as videogames have ever been. i donāt think i share any of the gripes expressed in this thread thus farā¦ i find dollman to be absolutely great.
my biggest gripe with the game (so far) is actually just that the SSS should have allowed you to see and like your friendsā in-game photos
itās not perfect, but itās more than i could have hoped for, really. i feel inspired playing it. it might also be the prettiest game iāve yet seen
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finding an interesting contrast reading the hollow knight thread.
with hollow knight, every positive claimed is something i find nigh-intolerable:
- that sweet hollow knight OST! hate it.
- bugs aesthetic! hate it.
- adorable sound effects! hate, hate, hate.
- traversal! thin and tedious.
- world design! disgust.
- progression! god i fucking hate hollow knight, sorry yāall. i digressā¦
with DS2, reading qualms, many are about things i find inspired. the dollman stuff is a good example for me.
irritants for others to me feel like reasonable design (often good or great design) as well as being formidable thematic springboards for wide-ranging contemplation. things working within the diegesis and simultaneously acting as meta-commentaryā¦ i donāt find a lot of games employing these techniques at this level. FromSoft and Remedy andā¦ idk. there arenāt many.
to ensure continued delivery of theme, the game ultimately ensures that there is richness in the cargo names, placement, order origins & destinations, order unlock sequencing. something i find astounding in this is that engagement with the Video Game is liable to inadvertently press oneās nose against the glass of the Art (god i still hate that word). the game is delivering information via cargo like dark souls does via item descriptions, except more tightly woven into the gestalt. itās all there, one elastic ribbon of intent. itās All Video Game and All Art at the same time. itās not shy about either. in fact, itās ecstatic about it
you may find a piece of cargo by a fellow (online) porter, dangling from some unreachable precipice. you may ponder the mystery of exactly how that cargo got to where it was, why it was abandoned. only in a game with this kind of madcap whirlwind thematic recklessness could this nano-mystery, this implied micro-story be just as important as anything in the cutscenes. everything is nothing and nothing is everything! gloriousā¦
i just want to be loud and proud and say this game fucking rules. it rules, for me, on almost every conceivable level! is anyone else seeing this shit? just me? ok
even the fucking non-bespoke music! which is likeā¦ idk. itās not great, exactly. in fact, as alluded to here, itās almost never great from a purely musical perspective. the meme is they are kojima mixtapes. just music he likes! then he puts it in the game! but while thereās surely some bit of truth to that, i think this framing is kind of silly and i donāt think we do the work justice by indulging in it to the extent that it distracts from assessing the music within the context of the work. while i donāt particularly love any of the (contemporary) music with one exception i think -
(āgive upā by low roar)
- itās just about perfect as a component of these 2 videogames. when iām writing songs, iām always thinking about serving the song. destroy the ego, serve the song - thatās the motto. the music in these games is serving them well, even if it isnāt the best possible music. it evokes a certain invisible shared motive even within its relatively wide range of artists and styles.
the stealth and combat! the stealth and fucking combat are better than MGS5 lol
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One thing that I guess is impressive is how many different ways the writers found to have characters gush about how much youāve inspired them when you reach five stars.
Speaking of which, Iāve decided that will be a natural stopping point for me with this game. Iām going to go ahead and reach five stars with all of the locations since Iām pretty close already.
Fortunately, some of the standard orders involving combat and speed made me realize I was never going to be able to get LLL on all of them if I tried, so I wonāt feel the need to attempt that.
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Is there a way to replay the fights with vana like you could cliff in the first game
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Yeah stay at a distribution center.
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oh yeah I donāt think I ever did that in this one once you get the ship. I was thinking how thereās basically no reason to in this one where in the first game that was your only method of resting. the feeling of having a home base and crew versus staying in disparate distribution centers and bunkers on the road while on a solo road trip
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underwater fight is kicking my ass. i need to be more patient but i always panic and start spraying and praying when the rpg comes out
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Last night I was driving around in the mountains somewhat snow blind with my vehicle about to fall apart and wondering whether I was going to make it to the next garage. But then I remembered that I can just summon the ship wherever to repair it and all the tension evaporated.
(The reason that didnāt immediately come to mind, I guess, is that I was doing standard deliveries and so I hadnāt been using the ship for a while.)
Itās not as if there would have been real consequences anyway but it again made me imagine a version of this game where you actually have to plan, and I like the idea of that (at least in the abstractāmaybe it would be annoying).
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i think ds2 sort of tacitly admits that balance / difficulty tuning isnāt always that fun or interesting and that everyone has different tolerances for a variety of activities in these games. maybe thatās apologism for the game lacking difficulty tuning! idk. but iād offer the same defense for Tears of the Kingdom*, at least for how i approach these games. i like that iām often largely in control of difficulty by my own choices
itās not entirely passive - it pushes you into somewhat equipment-constrained boss battles, for example - but it often doesnāt dictate how to approach any given obstacle. it is content to provide interesting options and scenarios. in turn, for those interested in challenge, it rewards a degree of self-limitation. thereās no incentive over a bit of time saved (maybe) for taking on numerous orders at once, but the higher stakes are more fun, especially when you end up running into resources limitations due to cargo considerations, amplified further when your path crisscrosses the enemy bases more frequently
i realized i donāt like driving the truck as much as walking. iām always weighing capacity and peace of mind from timefall in the truck versus way more fun and safer (less likely to whang a tree at speed) on foot. i like picking off enemies with the sniper rilfe, but sometimes i leave it at base and try to go in with just the strand. i think it really revels in the joy of choice, but i also suspect this level of choice can be a tenuous proposition for many players
i also get that this probably reads overly obvious like, you can just walk if you want to (but the game is letting me take a monorail). i do think itās worth keeping in mind that this game in particular just mostly isnāt interested in giving you a balanced challenge. even on brutal difficulty everything but some of the bosses can be bested with patience and calm.
re: calm, it has the classic MGS comedy act where the controller has so much going on, so many modalities and context dependencies that youāll inevitably have sam punch the air randomly or crouch or throw himself out of a high-speed truck - especially during high-stress moments. still the funniest shit, even when it is infuriating
surfing is the best movement, holy shit.
* honestly, the most constrained bits of TotK (shrines and combat shrines in particular) feel vestigial
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