big saru made some of my fav mgsv videos where he completely broke apart the ai. here’s a video where he takes on mules in a variety of ways, there’s actually a lot more combat options going against them than i realized!
4 Likes
I made that hike and around in Chapter 3
Felt like the game yelled at me for going off script.
oh big saru is great!
the asexuality data file could have been an article about the consequences of OTC ketamine instead
5 Likes
as someone who has so far adored the main gameplay system/world and increasingly recoiled from the cutscenes’ and gameplay-variant sections’ attempts to dredge up pathos via warmed over sub-tv drama misogyny and suspect implied reproductive politics distracting from the delicious yaoi or presumably placate imaginary action boy audiences with dull tone-deaf shooter boss fight sections, i have to say that i really loved the second half of chapter 9, which was extremely funny and stupid. i can’t believe one of my favorite parts was an mgs4 throwback!
i brought you a metaphor
1 Like
it’s weird how the game at it’s most mgs4 actually ends up working better without all the context that game had
3 Likes
i think there is actually more mgs4 dna in this game than it wants to admit, especially in the aforementioned shooter sections, which do the same thing of leveling autocritiques through framing themselves as military trauma nightmares and self-aware videogame boss fights respectively but end up falling flat because they’re still doing the thing they’re critiquing without really pushing back mechanically. to be fair i can totally imagine my contextual impression of those sections changing having actually finished the game, at least to some degree.
2 Likes
Ha, I did it in Chapter 5 I think, when you have to go around the mountain as part of the plot, and then back again and I was like “nah fuck this, I am going over” and it was great and cold and lonely game and it rules.
Yeah if you do it before then you can’t do anything because the plot isn’t ready for it. It was still like cool to do.
I kinda figured as much, which is why I didn’t try. Are the splinter group of mules that are actually just murder-y instead of trying to steal stuff there at that point? Those guys are assholes.
Also I really want to go back to explore the ruined skyscraper on top of the mountain.
At first glance it looks like a flat star-shaped spool for thread, and indeed it does seem to have thread wound upon it; to be sure, they are only old, broken-off bits of thread, knotted and tangled together, of the most varied sorts and colours. But it is not only a spool, for a small wooden crossbar sticks out of the middle of the star, and another small rod is joined to that at a right angle.
~
6 Likes
I did a few weird things I guess:
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I connected two or three of the mountain preppers to the Chiral network before I had official missions to do it. (The story still made me revisit them with Orders for Sam to connect them even though I had already done that).
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I beat the lion looking boss with dead Mama on my back (maybe that’s not so strange).
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I beat the game without ever being able to fabricate trucks.
2 Likes
How the heck do you trade with porters?
I walked up to one and he held out an item and I tried to bring up my cargo menu with square, but I punched him right in his face and spooked him and his buddy instead 
1 Like
i dropped an item and one of them gave me what he was holding and then picked up what i had left but it didn’t count i guess
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Couldn’t you just R2 it? I think I did.
Spoilers: Themes from early game
Fixing the tranq/murder problem by making every death a nuclear event is so fucking good. A whole game about “connections” and “community” and the zero symbolic messaging that every single death in the world whether of poor, rich, evil, saint should be a paused and considered event.
This game is dense in themes and ideas and for however many clunkers and eyerollers there is some super excellent stuff as well.
15 Likes
The Mama chapter is loaded with good and bad with such an amazing whiplash that I have no idea what to do with it, and I kinda am enjoying that.
2 Likes
The game (in it’s intended form) so quickly becomes communism. Just sharing your shit who cares whose truck that is. I’ll leave some stuff here. Better pick up this person’s shoes.
11 Likes
All it takes for us to get there is some total catastrophe and like ghosts being real.
7 Likes
secondary death stranding reading list after reading tim rogers’ list:
ghosts of my life by mark fisher
fanged noumena by nick land
be here now by ram dass
7 Likes