Transcript

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hello and welcome once again to the Gaming Backlog Book Club. Something interesting that I came across this week. So I was listening to a daily mix on Spotify and it was a playlist that includes a bunch of sort of low tempo electronic type music, some acoustic stuff mixed in, things like 07, Thievery Corporation, Nightmares on Wax, and all of a sudden the song Asylums by Silent Poets was in the playlist, which is that song that plays when you’re walking down the hill to Portnot City after the BT Mountain in episode two of Death Stranding. I had never heard of the band or the song before playing this game and it happens to show up in my Spotify playlist now. So that was cool.

[00:00:42] Speaker B: I’ve been enjoying the soundtrack. I’ve been enjoying the soundtrack of this game so far. I need to go onto Spotify and find the soundtrack and download some of those, add them to some playlists. I also really would like to get, probably once I finish, get the vinyl for this game. Even though I’ve looked it and some places have been sold out or they have it at, I’ve looked on Makari or other places and it’s been two times or more the price of what it was.

[00:01:09] Speaker A: It certainly seems that the majority of Death Stranding 1 merch is either sold out and exorbitantly priced on reseller markets, but I know. And what else? Whatever else But Death Stranding 2 things are all readily available.

So there’s like I wanted to or. Or buy ahead of time. Now knowing that we’ll probably like Death Stranding too.

[00:01:32] Speaker B: That’s what I was debating. I was debating should I just maybe pre order or buy the Death Stranding 2 vinyl right now? Because I was like, I know I like the first one. I know it’s available on a few sites that I’ve seen it on.

It’s like, do I just order it? I’m sure I’m going to like it and I’m definitely. I know I’m going to like the game and I’m sure I’m going to like the music. So I might just, I might go ahead here sometime this week and order that.

[00:01:55] Speaker A: Yeah, give it a shot.

Also, sometimes I listen to game soundtracks before I ever play them and then really enjoy the music. And that’s kind of a nice entry into eventually playing it once it’s off the backlog too. So worth a shot. Vinyl always sounds good and so let’s jump into it as a reminder. We go into spoilers sometimes, so if you want to avoid that, start at a previous episode. Play along and then come back to this one once you’re caught up here, we get into episode eight, which is Hartman’s episode. Some of these drop offs in this episode feel like side quests, but reveal some intriguing lore that makes them much better than the side quest as main quest in Dead Man’s episode. In my personal opinion, something like, you know, the idea that beaches have existed at every mass extinction event on the planet seems to indicate that this death stranding and any previous ones are pretty near impossible to eliminate or avoid. They just keep repeating on million year cycles.

There’s also the fact as you get along into some of these orders. Right. There’s clear indication that there have been five, the big five mass extinctions on Earth. And the sixth one is coming. The paleontologist tells you about them and funny enough, a bit before receiving his email somewhere else in this game, it tells you about those extinctions. And I actually read up on them that day. So it’s just a nice reminder that we got to take better care of the planet or we’ll have a death stranding on our hands.

[00:03:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I don’t want that. Let’s not have that.

[00:03:34] Speaker A: That’s not a good way to go. Like, clearly this is fun as a escapist entertainment experience, but we don’t want that in real life.

[00:03:42] Speaker B: No, we do not want anything like that in real life. Yeah. But as you were saying, the previous five mass extinctions before, they consider them all as death stranding.

[00:03:53] Speaker A: So.

[00:03:53] Speaker B: Yeah.

The asteroid to take out the dinosaurs, was it death stranding, which was the.

[00:03:58] Speaker A: Most recent major one before this one in the game.

[00:04:02] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, before the. Before the main one in the game.

And then obviously if we hadn’t fixed.

We’re trying to fix up the chiral network before another one happens.

[00:04:13] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah.

You never know if the desk training just destroys the chiral network that you just spent the whole game building. I hope not because.

[00:04:23] Speaker B: No, I hope not either. Spent a lot of time in this, building up roads.

[00:04:29] Speaker A: Yeah. Convincing people to not be disconnected and isolated.

It’s a tough, tough gig Sam’s got here, so.

[00:04:37] Speaker B: Yeah, it is a tough gig.

[00:04:40] Speaker A: You know, there’s a lot of trudging through snow in this episode. We get the oxygen mask, which was kind of cool. But once again, something else that uses the battery, the thermal volt heater. The thermal heater was very useful. Obviously I didn’t take it off. It’s very useful when I was in the snow. So I don’t know why I Didn’t take it off.

[00:04:58] Speaker B: Yeah, I didn’t take it off at all, but God, it drains a battery from your suit.

[00:05:04] Speaker A: Ever since it was an option, I’ve always had an extra battery attached to my backpack. So I am able to get by for the most part, but. Oh, you don’t. I suggest it.

[00:05:14] Speaker B: Yeah. I was, I was in yellow for a good amount of time, like going down for the suit. For your suit battery in the yellow. And I was like, hoping like, okay, once I get to this person and I put them on the chiral network, like, please, someone’s build a generator somewhere. I was like, or I’m gonna grab a PCC and build a generator that’s like.

[00:05:33] Speaker A: So then I can just recharge PCs for these days. But yeah, ever since we got the backpack, I mean, basically with the backpack, for the longest time I’ve had a horizontal batter, extra battery, five grenade pouches, and then five patches because there’s no space for anything else useful.

And, and I. But yeah, at this point we’re deep in snow. Right. So obviously everything that you have uses so much battery. So I have the all terrain skeleton, the power gloves, the oxygen mask, and my long range trike. All use up a bunch of batteries. So I. That extra battery on the backpack has been indispensable on my end.

[00:06:10] Speaker B: My backpack’s just been grenade pouch, grenade pouch, grenade pouch, utility pouch, grenade pouches. I just all grenades. I keep all the hermetic grenades and then the utility pouch for all the blood bags so I can hold the high capacity ones from the Doctor as well as some regular ones and high capacity.

[00:06:30] Speaker A: Okay. I have not done enough side quests to the Doctor. I didn’t know it existed.

[00:06:33] Speaker B: Oh, okay. I thought you had no go.

[00:06:36] Speaker A: Ah, maybe I did. Maybe I did and just didn’t read the description.

[00:06:39] Speaker B: I don’t think you don’t have to do. I didn’t do much to him. I think it was after dropping off.

[00:06:43] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah, you may be right. I just haven’t used it. But no, it’s. That seemed like too much. Much space to take up. That’s not a battery and a long range.

[00:06:51] Speaker B: I might have to.

[00:06:52] Speaker A: I might have to deal a battery. It’s worth it.

[00:06:54] Speaker B: But to start the episode, as you said, this is Hartman’s episode.

It’s a very unique, interesting story to start off the episode, like meeting Hartman.

[00:07:06] Speaker A: Yeah. Which we went into at the end of last episode of the podcast and.

Right. And obviously, yeah, you’re set up now with getting all the scientists back on the board so we can sort of get back and set up the chiral relay. That will have to help us cross the Tar belt, which is the end goal.

[00:07:28] Speaker B: Yeah, the end goal, I mean, is we. I think. I don’t know if we say it in the end of the last, but, I mean, Hartman’s story is pretty sad. I mean, his heart. His heart stops every 21 minutes. He’s basically dead for, I think, three minutes.

[00:07:40] Speaker A: Real time.

[00:07:42] Speaker B: Yeah, three minutes real time. But he uses those three minutes in real time to go search the beach.

[00:07:47] Speaker A: That he was on when he’s there.

[00:07:50] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

He gets like 60 deaths and resurrections per day. And I was like, that’s what it was.

[00:07:55] Speaker A: Yep. Yeah, not good. Not good. I think he’s 20 something minute break in between.

[00:08:01] Speaker B: Yeah. And he’s visited, I think, if I remember rightly, from one of the parts of the cutscene he said. He says when he comes back out of one, he’s like, okay, that was a visit. 218,550.

[00:08:14] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:08:15] Speaker B: And he’s like, still haven’t found my family. And I was like, wow, that’s. That’s crazy. This poor guy.

It’s pretty heartbreaking.

[00:08:25] Speaker A: Heartbreaking, Hartman. Yeah, it is.

[00:08:27] Speaker B: Yeah. He has a. He has a broken heart.

[00:08:32] Speaker A: They showed a bit of a cutscene of him watching his family walk away, which is even worse.

Flashback there, he describes it. So, yeah, no fun. Hopefully we meet someone in this world that’s just having a good old time.

Wonder who it’s going to be.

[00:08:49] Speaker B: Well, I mean, we met one previously back with the cosplayer. The cosplayer’s husband, AKA Conan o’. Brien.

[00:08:56] Speaker A: He’s just having a good old time.

[00:08:58] Speaker B: But, yes, hopefully there’s some more.

[00:09:00] Speaker A: Yeah. And I. Let’s see.

Gameplay wise, a lot of going through snow, it was entertaining enough. I am getting better and better at floating carrier snowboarding without crashing into rocks and flying. That. That’s entertaining enough. I didn’t expect this to be a snowboard sim on top of that, though. So you end up right before the evo devo biologists. You pick up 5, 4 cases from the tar in that area in kind of a rocky space. And so that, for me was a bit more tense than what had come previously in this one. And there were a bunch of those extra large pts, too.

It took a lot more rounds of Hematic to get through them, plus a couple of grenades to take any of those guys out. And then I tried to stealth as much as I can, but they were really dense in that area. Too.

Plus you’re walking into the tar to pick up your items. But you know, it wasn’t, it wasn’t too tough overall compared to the giant BT dogs or the bosses we’ve seen. So it was just entertaining.

[00:10:04] Speaker B: That part wasn’t too hard for me. I mean I kind of did the same thing as you. I had. It took a lot more rounds on some of those big red guys.

And then after this point I got an email saying, oh, whatever it was saying like, hey, by the way, there’s like some bigger dudes that might take more rounds or hematic grenades. I was like, oh, thanks for the warning. Like you couldn’t have told me this before I found them.

[00:10:27] Speaker A: That’s like the white, the whiteout email I got last time when I was in the middle of the whiteout. They’re a little delayed on their email sending. This chiral network was supposed to be high speed.

[00:10:37] Speaker B: High speed, yes.

They’re a little delayed still. For this one though, I had used. So I actually used it earlier and a. Like an earlier order that we did, but for that area too, I used the sticky gun.

So some of the ones that were out of the way so I wasn’t having to go through a whole bunch of BTs. I kind of. I just shoot the sticky gun, get it and throw it onto my back.

Obviously some I had to get. You have to move up because they’re all spread around all those guitar extraction device and the ammunites that we had to get.

But yeah, I just use the sticky gun nice for that, which definitely helps. And as I said, I use the sticky gun. I mean going back earlier into this episode, we have to the three people we go to, we go to the geologist, the paleontologist and then the evo dev which we were just talking about. The evo dev biologist, the bio, the geologist one. I don’t know how you explained. Mine was easy. I took a trike and I was able to drive up and over the mountain away from BTS and just drop off stuff. It was not a massively.

[00:11:39] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I took a trike through a bit of the path of the bts were and I got dragged off for a second. I was attacked by a giant BT tar squid who I shot enough and then ran out of hematic rounds and then just ran away from and continued on. So it was not too tough to get back. I actually went around the other way around the mountain on a trike and then there was a bit of a zip line that bear that I may have used I don’t even remember. Yeah, it was pretty inconsequential, that whole sequence of events.

[00:12:09] Speaker B: That. That one wasn’t too hard. As I said. Yeah, I drove. I didn’t. I knew that first path, like just the main path, like looking at it on the map, man, that’s the BT path. I know that. So I was like looking on the map and I saw a way where I just went sort of around like to the opposite side of the lake.

[00:12:24] Speaker A: Oh yeah, that’s a carpet.

[00:12:26] Speaker B: The heart shaped her.

[00:12:27] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:12:27] Speaker B: And then I went up that mountain and then down. That was much easier. The one that was more difficult for me and I had. This is the first time I died was the antimatter bomb really.

So that we had to. So after the geologist went back, I didn’t take all of it at once.

I went back. So I went back and got the anti matter.

[00:12:48] Speaker A: Yes, same I went. I knew that, that I saw that it was a fragile bomb to go to the next guy because obviously the path, the more direct path that makes the most sense is go geologist and then straight to the paleontologist with the bomb. But obviously it’s fragile. But I didn’t want to come back because you know that you have to go from there likely onwards. So I did the same thing. I went geologist, then went back to Harman, picked up the bomb and then went the other way.

[00:13:15] Speaker B: Yeah, So I picked up the bomb. I went the same route as I did to get to the geologist, but I had to ditch. It was just luckily a random trike I had found. Not one I had in the garage or anything, it was just one I found. I ditched it at the top of.

Almost the top of about midway up the big mountain because I noticed it kept beeping at me and there it became more rocky. So I didn’t want to drive over the rocks and get damaged. So I walked up the rest of it and then down the hill to the geologist. I had. There were a couple times where on the way I had got a couple beeps and I. I think by the time I finished it, 3% damage or maybe 6% damage on it. Luckily nothing that was gonna mess it up.

But before I had finished it, there were a couple times that I had to. I had to reload the. Reload the save.

I had to reload the save once because the first time I tried, I went to the geologist, I walked past him and I started. I found a little path down the mountain and I started going down the mountain and I’m holding L2 R2 to keep my balance with it.

And then he’s going down Sam. And he obviously. I don’t know how. I was caught in the. It’s in the snow and I didn’t see it. He catches a rock and just front flips over and just boom, boom, boom. And all of a sudden the bomb.

[00:14:35] Speaker A: Is like, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.

[00:14:36] Speaker B: And it just explodes. And I was like, shit.

[00:14:38] Speaker A: Does it show you a scene of it exploding?

[00:14:42] Speaker B: No, not fully. It kind of like blacks out and then it like gives you the option of the menu of reload, last save, or load.

[00:14:48] Speaker A: Okay.

[00:14:49] Speaker B: So, yeah, so I like reloaded last save and then it goes back to where I last was and he. It’s like Sam kind of getting up from a kneeling position. It’s not just starting. You like, you had just saved it.

[00:14:59] Speaker A: Interesting.

[00:15:00] Speaker B: It’s as if I did like die.

[00:15:02] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:15:03] Speaker B: And then come back.

But then I started it again and then. So what I did, I was like, well, not doing that again.

So I was like looking around and I noticed somebody at the top of the mountain had put one of the catapults that we had got earlier in the game.

[00:15:20] Speaker A: Did you catapult a bomb? That sounds like a good way to just draw it up.

[00:15:24] Speaker B: I put the antimatter bomb in the catapult and they had it back a bit from the edge. But I could see the trajectory of the arc of like the line. And it was going to shoot down the hill. And so I was able to like, sort of use the map and I placed a way marker and then I moved it and I shot it down the hill. And it. Basically what it does is it shoots it parachute. Yeah, it parachutes and then it’s. It’s going down. And then you decide when you want the parachute to come out. So if you don’t hit the button.

[00:15:55] Speaker A: Yeah, I saw that.

[00:15:55] Speaker B: It’s just gonna hit the ground.

[00:15:57] Speaker A: I haven’t used the catapult yet. I kind of assume that would be what it is because you’re not supposed to damage cargo.

But hey, there’s your big brain moment. I would not have launched an anti bomb through the air.

[00:16:09] Speaker B: I’m gonna launch it down there. I launched it. I put the parachute out. And then when you put the parachute out, you can kind of control it. It gives you a circle on the ground and you can kind of control it and move it towards that circle landing area.

I was.

[00:16:23] Speaker A: Does it give you a.

[00:16:25] Speaker B: It’s like a sort of top down.

[00:16:26] Speaker A: Third Person view of the bomb itself. Like, it goes away from Sam while you’re doing it. Okay, that’s good.

[00:16:31] Speaker B: Yes.

So I put it down on the ground. It lands. It land. It lands very softly on the ground. It doesn’t. Parachute doesn’t just go and it goes thump. It lands very softly on the ground. And then I walked down the hill, I picked up the bomb, put it back on my back, and then walked to the paleontologist and dropped it off. It was a much easier way of doing it than after I realized that the first time I died. So, yeah, the catapult is very. It is useful, especially for stuff like that.

[00:16:59] Speaker A: At one point I was hoping I could catapult myself, but that’s not an option.

I did open up the menu one time thinking maybe they threw it in here and just didn’t explain it, but. No.

[00:17:10] Speaker B: Yeah.

But then. Yeah, dropped it off the paleontologist and then did you do. Yeah, I think we then had to do one.

[00:17:18] Speaker A: That was like the easiest mission of all time, where you literally just run down into the crevice right there, grab three things and bring it back. That took three minutes.

[00:17:28] Speaker B: That was the first one where I was like, you know what? This is the perfect mission for the sticky gun, because I don’t go down.

I didn’t even go down. I went a little bit in with the oxygen mask and I just sticky gunned everything, brought it right back up to me. I was done. Yeah. As you said, like, two minutes of that.

[00:17:43] Speaker A: Yeah. It really was not kind of. It was. It was very quick, which, hey, those little breaks are good once in a while.

[00:17:49] Speaker B: But it made me realize, like, man, I should be.

Yeah, I was like, it just made me realize, man, I need to be using the sticky gun for some of these things probably more often.

[00:17:57] Speaker A: It certainly is useful.

[00:17:59] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:18:01] Speaker A: And. Right. And so. And then you end up with the. At the evo devo biologist. And so the interview file with her poses the thought that just like how every mass extinction has had a group or a few species or what have you that survived the extinction event and go on to evolve even further and thrive in the next era.

Maybe the sixth extinction of the death stranding will only be survived by those with dooms. So lucky Sam and Hartman then in that case.

[00:18:32] Speaker B: Yeah, they’re lucky. Yeah.

[00:18:34] Speaker A: Since they have lucky that we’re inhabiting Sam’s body as a main character and not someone else. That would have been an interesting approach for multiplayer, but this isn’t obviously the type of game to get multiplayer. So then you know, from there you end up having to go back to. I’ve definitely noticed the trend now, especially that in most of the longer episodes, it seems like the last order of an episode requires you to go from the second to last, walk a long distance with nothing to do to pick up the last order and go somewhere else. And that happens again here. So you have to go back to Harman’s lab to get the next assignment. So I knew this was the last required order of the episode, and so I decided, okay, I’ll take a little break before powering on. And I guess it was. I don’t know what it about it caught my attention, but because it’s listed under the orders for Sam, not just the regular standard orders, I looked back at the list and I was thinking, okay, it seems like a major pain in the ass, but some more rows have populated for me and I decided to go and do the pizza delivery, the one with the champagne that you can’t shake and have to hold in your hand the whole way that you have to pick up from the Timefall Farm and bring back to that Peter guy. So basically, things were about to ratchet up a notch. I just wanted to knock it out and spend some time doing something that was not in the snow. So I noticed also in this section with all the snow that when you use ziplines, you use the cuff to ride it, like the handcuff. And it’s only with one hand. So I assumed that, okay, let me apply some brain power here. I thought, okay, the handcuff is in the right hand. You’re riding the zip line. If you hold the champagne in the left hand, you could ride the zip line with the right.

And so because I had basically the road from Lake Knot City past the south distribution center by at least one segment and then a random kind of island piece of road further south, it was most of the way to the Timefall Farm. I thought, okay, maybe I can do something here. So I fragile jumped from the safe house, an online safe house next to Hartman’s lab, to the Timefall Farm, thought I was really smart and fabricated a bunch of PCC level twos, then proceeded to hike from the Timefall Farm to the southernmost piece of the road that was available, building zipline posts every chance I could to make a long string of zip lines. And I figured I would run the rest of the way on the roads where your battery doesn’t drain as much or sometimes it doesn’t drain at all to get to the Peter guy to deliver his pizza. So I built all these ziplines fast, traveled from the south distribution center back to the Timefall farm again, built a speed skeleton, removed all my patches and grenade pouches from my backpack so I could fit an extra battery on it. So I had two batteries, a speed skeleton, nothing else as cargo, grabbed the pizza, it was two pizzas and champagne, and ran to the first zip line.

And even though he only uses one hand to zipline, he drops whatever’s in the other hand.

So I just thought I just wasted so much time. That plan was screwed.

I kept the zip lines, but I reloaded back to the Timefall Farm because I was already at the top of the hill, set up a string of. Okay, I don’t want to spend all this time building these roads up because it’s going to take me hours and hours.

Too many materials. So I set up a string of two floating carriers so I could at least use one to skateboard down the hills when they’re available and use the other floating carrier in a in a line to carry the pieces on the other and then hold the champagne in my other hand. And so basically I hike. At this point, obviously, after all that zipline building, I was too committed. So I decided to just go through it, this whole ordeal. Anyway, I hike, slash, ran my way to that furthest south piece of the road, a really long stretch, ran for at least three or four minutes on the road while holding L2 this entire time, and got the delivery of the pizza to the dude in 12 minutes. You have 60 minutes, so it wasn’t terrible. But my index finger is all sore after holding L2 for 12 minutes.

Tedious as hell, but still an interesting kind of time trial that you’d seen in another game. And all that running sure gave me a craving for pizza too. But he didn’t invite us to share it when we got there. How rude.

After that, I rested.

[00:23:09] Speaker B: Good for you for doing that. I have not.

It was a Timefall Farm, or decided to do, because I remember that order and I’m just not going to do that.

[00:23:21] Speaker A: It was a pain. I really just wanted something that wasn’t in snow for a sec. And I saw some roads get put in there, so I figured I’d give it a shot.

And yeah, got got a little too committed. So that when my first plan, Plan A, failed, I decided to just do it anyway with plan B. Because a sunk time fallacy.

[00:23:39] Speaker B: That is interesting though, that even though you’re on the zipline and you have a hand free, that he drops it. I would have Thought he still would have.

[00:23:48] Speaker A: I would think so, too. And so it must be just a missed opportunity or something that they just didn’t think about when they were developing that particular zipline feature. Or maybe. I mean, I don’t think they deliberately would do it like that because obviously it would make sense to be able to use your freehand for something.

[00:24:05] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:24:06] Speaker A: So it must just be an oversight and the implementation of the feature. Anyway, after that, I rested at Lake Knott City in the private room and then got an email when I woke up for another delivery of pizza, this time from Mountain Knot City. Oh, well, I was already committed to delivering pizzas, so I just went full pizza mode since I had already established, long time ago my established, you know, trike route from. From Mountain Knot City to the roboticist, past the weather station. And then I. From there I knew how to get back to that southernmost Rhone south of the distribution center and still had my extra battery attached. I know you have to. When you remove something, you lose the materials from your backpack, so you had to refabricate. And I didn’t want to waste materials, so I still had my extra battery. I knew I was going to switch it out eventually to get back to main story, so I just went for it and did that whole Mountain Knot City piece of delivery too. And then finally went back to Hartman’s to pick up the final orb of the episode.

[00:25:09] Speaker B: You were in a pizza mood.

[00:25:10] Speaker A: I was in a pizza mood. And I’m still. Actually, I did not eat the pizza after that. And now that I talk about it again, I’m once again creating pizza.

[00:25:18] Speaker B: Well, there you go. There’s your dinner for tonight.

[00:25:21] Speaker A: There’s my dinner for tonight. And so you get back into Hartman’s lab and. Oh, snap. The conspiracy is still on.

[00:25:29] Speaker B: Yes, it is. What was it?

[00:25:31] Speaker A: So, yeah, we Deadman. Yeah, Dead man smuggled a hidden hologram message to Sam with Mama’s corpse and that Hartman. So Hartman decides to modify his cardiac arrest log times so that the recording turns off, so that Die Hard man can’t listen in. So that the suspicion of Die Hard man is only getting stronger.

[00:25:52] Speaker B: It’s only getting stronger. And it’s over an umbilical cord.

[00:25:56] Speaker A: Yeah, the umbilical cord that was sent over as well wasn’t Mama’s. It was President Strands.

[00:26:02] Speaker B: It was President Strands, which. Yeah, that was the twist.

[00:26:06] Speaker A: Yeah. And he mentioned that she asked Dedmon to take it without the director knowing so that you could have a conversation. So President Strand was suspicious of Die Hard man as well.

Both, you know. Hartman also mentions that both the umbilical cord and Mama’s body contain large quantities of chiralium and that the president’s cord was connected to the beach.

This just leads down millions of rabbit holes now.

Of what. What all is happening.

[00:26:37] Speaker B: Yeah, it does. I have a very strong suspicion of now, especially of Die Hardman. I don’t know. I think, coming up, just looking at. I think there’s an episode called Die Hardman coming up. And I have a feeling it’s just gonna be more conspiracies, more, I don’t know, maybe twists and turns. It’s gonna be interesting to see his side of the story because I think they know. Yeah. That he was a director.

He’s a director of.

[00:27:03] Speaker A: I don’t know, Bridges, I’m assuming at this point.

[00:27:05] Speaker B: I think it’s of Bridges.

[00:27:06] Speaker A: They haven’t. They haven’t. They’ve called him the director multiple times, but not specifically saying what.

[00:27:10] Speaker B: Of what.

[00:27:12] Speaker A: And. Right. And so he’s just getting more and more fishy.

Yeah, everything. Everything’s getting fishy.

So Hartman theorizes here that the manifestation of beaches corresponds to extinction level events, meaning that the death stranding is likely just the latest of many previous ones. We kind of spoke about it earlier, which were likely the true culprits of most of those extinctions.

This almost makes you visualize a dinosaur fighting a BT in a spin off game. So, yeah, we’re in the middle supposedly of the sixth extinction in the game world.

But he also says we shouldn’t assume everything about a death stranding is detrimental to life. Like the previously mentioned follow up to an extinction being a catalyst for the survivors evolving and living on. And in a better way, Hartman’s theory also posits that maybe Bridget and Mama were extinction entities, which are the things that maybe cause death strings in a way.

[00:28:07] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:28:08] Speaker A: Ees.

[00:28:09] Speaker B: Right.

[00:28:09] Speaker A: Ee.

And so the idea here too, that Higgs has Amelie kind of kidnapped because he believes that being Bridget’s daughter, she might also be an EE for whatever nefarious, true purpose Higgs has that we just don’t know about yet.

A lot of revelations coming out of Hartman’s episode so far in the two long scenes we’ve had with them, which is awesome. And you know, from then on, you have to go out to the chiral relay to reconnect it before you cross the tar belt. So to get from Hartman’s to the chiral relay, I basically just retraced my custom path on a long range trike that I had set up previously to get to him from the evo devo biologist. But then right before getting to her, I just hung a right and went down into the snowy valley. No b teeth. Surprisingly enough, there was some rockfall and then eventually I reached a cliff going past that previous tar pit where we collected things for her. And I legitimately felt like one of those mountain goats that can stand on practically 90 degree rock walls because I rode my trike down a sheer cliff face by finding these super narrow outcroppings that let me kind of just scoot through the valley and go to the right of it instead of going through it at all. And then from there I found a straight path to the far right that let me just ride all the way past the mule camp to the chiral relay station.

[00:29:36] Speaker B: I didn’t go back towards the evo devo, Evo devo biologist. I went again up towards the geologist and then down to the paleontologist because I knew that route I had, I had at the top of the geologist down there. I had a zip line to go just down the hill towards the paleontologist. So it was easy. Once I got to the paleontologist, there was a safe house there.

So I picked up someone, someone had a long range truck in the safe house. So I just picked that out of the garage, an online garage, threw all the relay stuff in and then drove towards, just towards the Kyor relay. I knew I didn’t go over the mountain towards where those BTs were last time. I actually went south more and then there was another path over which was completely clear. A little bit of snow went over that and then down. And then I’m on the, I was on the left side of the river, so I needed to be on the right side. I was on the left side of the river. I was just driving down there, but I was scanning to see, like, okay, where in the river is it just yellow or blue? And I can cross because most of it was red in the middle.

But I found a small patch, small patch that was just all yellow and went across and then drove straight down. So before I went over the mountain, I had driven down past the mule camp already. I crossed over the mountain beneath. Like when I came over the mountain and down, I was literally at the edge. I got scanned and right as I got scanned, I literally hit the, hit the boundary. So I was at the edge of the mule camp already. So I didn’t, I didn’t have to do with any of that. Then I just crossed, crossed the river and then Drove down to.

To the edge, not city, to drop everything off.

[00:31:23] Speaker A: So you and I took complete opposite directions to get down there. And they both worked out just fine.

[00:31:28] Speaker B: Yeah, they both worked out fine. I had no BTs, no mules, no nothing.

[00:31:32] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, mine was BT free. And I, I knew, I heard the. It gives you a little bit of a warning sound effect. So I know to hit my Audra deck at that point to negate the ping.

So I was able to drive. It was. I wasn’t super close to it. I just like went through the very edge anyway. So. Yeah, and then you, you know, you set up the chiral relay and then you wander through a really thick set of bts because they say, we’ll just figure out something to get over to.

[00:32:08] Speaker B: Yeah. It tells you cross the tar pit to your destination. And I’m looking like, what, What?

[00:32:14] Speaker A: It’s a.

[00:32:15] Speaker B: What do you mean, cross the tar pit? It’s like, find a way across.

[00:32:17] Speaker A: What.

[00:32:17] Speaker B: What do you mean?

[00:32:18] Speaker A: Yeah, and, and, yeah, I kept. I, I went to the far right. I mean, okay, when it, when you set, when you reconnect the chiral relay gives you some of the online signs and structures and whatnot. And I saw people’s failed attempts. Right. There’s a chiral bridge there and some other things. None of that obviously was going to work when you have an ocean across. And so I.

But I did see that all of the structures followed this kind of cape like path down into a corner of the map. And so I wandered that way.

The BTS kept getting thicker and thicker. I went kind of far right over a tall wall and then started chucking hematic grenades at some BTs. And then they just kept coming, not respawning, but new ones kept showing up. And then I was just wondering, I saw a sign right at the edge behind a rock, where there was nowhere else you could go, but it had a. In it, which basically is the shelter from rain thing, which I was thinking, is there an invisible outcropping that I can hide under? Or there’s a path or a tunnel or what. What else is there? So I just kept going there. Eventually got dragged, and not fully dragged, like with the BT dogs, but I kept getting dragged, shaking people off and getting out of the tar over and over and over again.

Finally, there was no other option. I ran it ran out of ammo, and I did get dragged. But it drags you into the tar pit. And that was one hell of an accidental stumble upon the right solution to cross the tar belt.

I don’t know what your experience was there, but the things we discover at that point are.

[00:33:58] Speaker B: Before we get to that part of getting dragged, some mind going again. Once I put everything on, I drove to that little peninsula type area.

I took my truck, and so I was trying to drive past. I drove past some BTs, and I sort of got to the edge, and I kept seeing, like, they kept coming up. I drove, like, really slow, and I got to the edge of the tar pit, and I started to drive in the tar pit and realized it’s going so slow.

Okay, this can’t be right. No. No way. So I. I drove the truck back out.

[00:34:29] Speaker A: You drove into the tarp.

[00:34:30] Speaker B: I turned. I. I turned back around, back towards the bt.

[00:34:34] Speaker A: You just pulled a bt, Michael Scott driving into a.

[00:34:39] Speaker B: I turned it back, went back to the bt, infested, and then got dragged out of the truck because I hit a BT and got dragged out. And then I just started. I shook them all off, and I started just chucking hematic grenades. I cut a couple umbilical cords of some. And then I started walking across, and I. I sent you a text saying, how do you get across this tar pit? What the. Do you have to walk across this damn thing? I started walking, and I was like, this isn’t going to work.

[00:35:08] Speaker A: For context when you sent me that text, because previously you said, yeah, I’m almost done, too. And I had literally just finished the episode maybe 30 minutes before that. And so when you sent me that message and then you said, do you have to walk across the star? But I realized where you actually were, which is a little bit farther back. And so I just started laughing to myself. Oh, this is going to be a fun moment for him to randomly discover this, too.

[00:35:31] Speaker B: Yeah. I was like, what the. Am I supposed to walk across this? I started walking. Nope, that’s not going to work either.

Screw it. And I turn back around. I’m going back to the truck and grabbing it, and I’m just going to drive slow across. And I went back to the truck and just more and more BTs, and I was like, I can’t stop this. And I got in. I was trying to get into the truck, but it wasn’t really giving me the prompt. And I just ended up being grabbed and dragged in. And as you said, it’s kind of like I just found out. Oh, so this is the way that it’s supposed to go. You’re supposed to basically get dragged.

[00:36:00] Speaker A: You’re supposed to get into. You’re supposed to fail in your.

Yeah. Right. And so. Right. And then that. That lends you into. Or sends you into the next bit of the final stage of this episode. So the BT whales jumping all over the place and parkouring over city buildings was a hell of a cinematic touch after that sequence.

I definitely want to see a Kojima direct a movie. At least an action movie. It’s not going to be an Oscar winner, but it will definitely at least be entertaining.

Hell, I think they could even give him the reins and total creative freedom. You’d have to give him total creative freedom to make it weird like he wants it to be, to do something really wild and in like an alternate universe Godzilla movie or something with Kaiju or something along those lines. Because I think he would crush it at a movie like that. Almost like a Michael Bay, but less explosions.

[00:36:52] Speaker B: While we are getting this as a movie.

[00:36:54] Speaker A: Yeah, we’re getting this as a movie. That is a good point. So I don’t think he’ll be directing it, but I think he should get it, get his hand at some point and.

[00:37:01] Speaker B: No, I’m sure he’ll be. I’m hoping he’ll be like an executive producer or something, where he’s sure he’s got his hand all in it, obviously.

[00:37:08] Speaker A: To make sure it’s all correct and right. As you. Once you get dragged in and you start running across buildings, Freaking Die Hard man calls us all nonchalantly, saying, with people like you, there’s hope for us yet. Yeah, that’s not suspicious at all. Why are you all calm about this?

[00:37:25] Speaker B: We’re literally running calm like, bro, I’m trying to parkour over these buildings right now. Will you please shut up?

I’m trying to get through this and not get destroyed by a BT whale jumping out of the sky and landing on top of me.

[00:37:38] Speaker A: Yeah, right. And so it’s a set piece that looks like it’s either a boss fight or set up as a boss fight. But obviously it’s just a sprint and jump and climb until you get to the end, which was. Was totally fine by me after a bit of the grueling experience before that. So you get through, you run into Amelie, she doesn’t say anything, and you get close enough, you end up getting drowned. But wake up back on a beach and Higgs is there. He took his mask off.

He also mentioned I’m not the only one to wear a mask. Your boss, that woman, I couldn’t remember at the time, and I actually still remember which woman is he referring to that wears a mask in this game.

[00:38:19] Speaker B: The only Thing I can think of is he means Lochne. Lochne.

[00:38:22] Speaker A: Yeah. She wears a hood above over her face for a few seconds. But I don’t. Maybe that is something they’ll tell us about later. Or maybe he’s talking about a metaphorical mask and someone’s really disguising themselves as something else.

[00:38:34] Speaker B: As someone else. Who they actually are. Yeah.

[00:38:37] Speaker A: So that’s a curiosity that I have because he did specifically say those two people. But is Higgs giving us more detail around more reasons to be suspicious of Die Hardman? Probably.

[00:38:50] Speaker B: Higgs. Higgs is off the charts in this. He is a weird, freaky dude.

[00:38:59] Speaker A: Weird, weird, weird. Like licks everyone. Timefall.

[00:39:03] Speaker B: He licks everyone. He licks the Timefall and the Taravia. Okay.

[00:39:08] Speaker A: That. That’s a very.

Must have been very entertaining to play that character.

[00:39:14] Speaker B: The only thought I had when he was doing that. Did they mocap. This was Troy Baker. Actually Norman Reedus in the studio or was done after this. Edited after.

That’s just very weird. But funny.

But yeah, now, yeah, we got more backstory on Higgs and now we’re on episode nine.

Title.

[00:39:40] Speaker A: Episode nine is about Higgs. So, I mean, I think he’s definitely seems to be. Conspiracies and weird backstories and all that aside, he seems to be the most out there, unusual, wild kind of character that I want to learn more about. So getting excited.

[00:39:57] Speaker B: It’s. It’s actually kind of like. Because you see, obviously going through this whole world, you have Sam, who’s just very much an introvert with just himself, not with anybody else. And then you have a character like Higgs who is just a full extrovert out there. And it’s kind of refreshing when you see him and you get cutscenes with him because you don’t know where it’s going to go. And it’s really fun. And when they do make this into a movie, I don’t know who they’ll have. If they had Troy Baker still play as Higgs in this, he’d be, I think, phenomenal. But. But I think it will be so fun to see this in an actual movie. Wise these characters.

[00:40:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, considering so many of them are actually full TV and film actors, it would be awesome if they got them to all play their characters again. You know, you can’t ever guarantee that because of filming schedules and all those types of things, but it would be awesome to just have them play themselves.

[00:40:52] Speaker B: It would be great.

Yeah, it would be great. I’d be. I’d be going to opening night of that if it’s all everybody.

[00:41:02] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure.

[00:41:04] Speaker B: Also for when they do the anime, hopefully they just keep everybody into their voices.

[00:41:09] Speaker A: Yeah. At least that should be easy enough because I know a lot of voice acting jobs are typically pretty short a couple days. So hey, it’s been Episode eight was had some slow moments, it had some major revelation moments, and it had a giant set piece of to cap it off. So I think things are just accelerating.

It’s going to be fun getting to the end and so while we had originally planned to break up the remaining episodes of Death Stranding into three more episodes of the Gaming Backlog Book Club, we’ve evaluated a bit. After Crossing the Tar Belt and finishing Episode eight, we did a little bit of light spoiler free research and we’ve decided that the rest of the push to the end of the story is actually fast paced enough that we’re going to finish the game this week. I don’t think any of us wants to do an episode at a time and slowly inch our way forwards when things are really ramping up. So depending on your playstyle and chosen difficulty level, your playtime may vary, but supposedly at least a couple hours are actually just cutscenes that unveil more story and the ending altogether. We expect to be playing this week between approximately four and eight hours to reach the end credits. If you can’t quite wrap it up by the time the final episode of our season one on Death Stranding comes out, of course give it a listen whenever you do finish and we’ll keep the conversation going on Discord.

So focus on reaching the end credits for this week if you want breaks between episodes to better budget your time.

Episode 9 has three required orders from 63 to 65. Episode 10 has just one required order, number 66. Episode 11 also has one number 67, episode 12 2, which is just order 68. Episode 13 is also just an order 69 and episode 14 has the final required order number 70 to finish the story.

By the way, episode 15 does exist, but it’s just the post story endgame that allows you to keep living in the world and continue side quests exploring, raising prepper star levels, building roads and structures, etc. So we won’t be chatting about it here. We’re just going to get to the end of the story and you can be here in the end game as long as you want.

We did also get our discord up and running properly, so you should be able to apply to become a member or join automatically by clicking the link to Discord from our link tree link in our Instagram profile.

[00:43:35] Speaker B: Yeah, I’m very excited to finish this story, not to finish this game, to just get on and then just keep going until the end. I think this was a good choice by us to decide not to cut some of the episodes up, but now to start episode nine and then just go to the end. I think it’s going to be just a roller coaster of a ride to the end. It’s going to be a lot of fun, a lot of good gameplay, a lot of good story.

[00:44:03] Speaker A: Jump into your midnight to 5am play session.

[00:44:07] Speaker B: Yep, yep. You’ll look on the app. You’ll still see me on at 5am still playing. No be too early.

[00:44:15] Speaker A: Well, let’s see what happens.

[00:44:17] Speaker B: Let’s see what happens. And thank you everybody and looking forward here to continuing on and finishing up this game. It’s been incredible so far and looking forward to the end. So thanks everyone for listening.

[00:44:29] Speaker A: Keep on keeping on and catch you next week.

[00:44:33] Speaker B: If you want to follow along and discuss our playthrough of Death Stranding and any future games on the Gaming Backlog Book Club Podcast, please give us a follow on your podcast platform of choice, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Pandora, Amazon Music or Pocketcast, as well as our Discord and Instagram under the same name.