Transcript

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hello and welcome back to the Gaming Backlog Book Club.

Anything you’ve been playing interesting this week, Alex?

[00:00:08] Speaker B: Yes, there have been. Other than Death Stranding, I’ve also been playing God of War, Ragnarok, Valhalla, because I never got around to the DLC when it came out.

Beat the game right when it came out, but hadn’t got around to the free Valhalla DLC that they came out with.

And so I decided to.

Since I had finished last week’s episode a little bit quicker and had some spare time, I decided to go through that and it was a lot of fun and very addicting. Great continuation of the story.

[00:00:41] Speaker A: Right. And a well executed, interesting version of a roguelike. So it was nice to. Especially for you, I think, after so much time. Really nice to revisit it and basically have a new God of War experience without needing a full game.

I played it a week or two after it was released and. And had a great time as well, obviously.

[00:01:00] Speaker B: Yeah, it was a lot of fun. I just kept finding myself being like, on, like going in. Took me a little bit to get back into what, like the controls all and everything for your action, your Blades of Chaos and like figuring all that. But once I did, every time I was like, all right, let’s do another run. Let’s do another run.

I was like, I don’t want to stop this.

Let’s just keep. Keep doing runs, keep getting up to the battles, keep getting. Making our way through Valhalla. And yeah, it was worth it. I had.

I had a lot of fun with it. It was a good time. It was a really good dlc.

It was a cool. It was a great little extra story.

So I’m glad I’ve played through that now and beat it.

[00:01:42] Speaker A: Yeah. And I guess just the message out there is if you finished God of War, Ragnarok and enjoyed it, definitely worth a play.

[00:01:48] Speaker B: Yeah, 100% definitely worth a play. Go through Valhalla.

[00:01:53] Speaker A: Even if you’re also not interested in roguelikes, usually it adds layers to the story. If you’ve especially played older God of War games, it’s a good kind of throwback as well, in many ways, so highly suggest it.

[00:02:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I’m not a big roguelike fan. Like, I don’t play him as much, but this was. I found myself, as I said, just wanting to be like, okay, let’s do another run, another one. Let’s keep going.

So, yeah, great time.

[00:02:20] Speaker A: On my end, my wife and I finished Split Fiction. It was very well executed. I think the final Few stages were super creative in terms of how they utilize the co op experience. Even more so than it takes two. And so I definitely suggest that if you have someone to play with. We’ve also been playing a little bit of Mario Kart World, which is, you know, typical Mario Kart. Good time.

Waiting around for something else to come out on Switch two.

[00:02:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I need to get into. I have my Switch two now set up fully. I need to get into Mario Kart World, try it out a bit.

[00:02:55] Speaker A: Yeah, it’s about what you’d expect. Good fun, good way to pass some time. Not extremely deep, but it’s Mario Kart. That’s all you really need when you put in Mario Kart.

[00:03:05] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.

[00:03:07] Speaker A: Perfect. Let’s jump back into death stranding, then. And just a quick reminder, we do go into spoilers a bit, as if you want to avoid that. Start at one of our previous episodes, play along, and come back to this one once you’ve caught up.

So this week we played episodes four and five, Unger and Mama. And so four was really quick, but it basically just pulls you up into a storm. You land inside of a battlefield, but there are soldiers and tanks and falling debris in the way. Some things hit you, but others don’t. I got hit by a giant beam of metal for whatever reason and got my cargo knocked off. But it’s, you know, very unusual to be set into a world with actual guns in this world where you’re trying not to kill anyone. I also realized for the. This was the first time I actually played any of this game without headphones on. So it was interesting to hear the BB crying and the splashing in the water as you walk through it. Coming through the controller speaker. So I thought that was kind of a cool implementation of that onboard controller speaker.

[00:04:10] Speaker B: Yeah, this is. I think I mentioned the previous episodes because I don’t play with headphones. I had to turn down the controller volume, the speaker volume, for the bb, because when it gets upset, it comes in loud.

[00:04:24] Speaker A: Not unlike.

[00:04:26] Speaker B: Yeah, sort of late at night. I’m not trying to wake everybody up. So, yeah, I have to turn that down. But, yeah, this was a.

This was a cool chapter. It’s like we’re basically transported into a. Like a World War I battlefield.

We have to make our way through the battlefield avoiding gunfire.

Tanks, as you said.

[00:04:44] Speaker A: Trenches.

[00:04:45] Speaker B: Yeah, trenches. And mortar blasts. I got hit by a mortar blast. Like, it knocked me off to the side and knocked my cargo off.

But, yeah, you’re also looking out for, like, they’re like BT Slash hologram, but I guess more BT looking soldiers.

[00:05:00] Speaker A: Yep.

[00:05:00] Speaker B: That roll around the battlefield.

[00:05:03] Speaker A: I have a mind and all that.

[00:05:05] Speaker B: Yeah. And there are a couple times I took, I took rounds, I took some gunfire to myself and I noticed like your health would go down a bit, but like it would sort of regenerate because I had some blood bags on me. But yeah, the first part was.

First part of this was. Yeah, it was pretty, pretty intense. Yeah, it’s completely different to what we’ve been playing, which I thought was kind of cool.

[00:05:25] Speaker A: And it was definitely entertaining to sort of wander through the trenches and with actual guns and knock these guys out with shotgun blasts and an assault rifle and all that.

[00:05:37] Speaker B: It was, yeah, it was a good fight with him. I mean, as you said, like, make it to the bunker. I realized on this like bunker, bunker, trench fight with him, with Unger, that. So I had quite a bit of like cargo with me still like that I picked up and used and it was. It is definitely more useful to not have much cargo on you because I was most of the time like I wasn’t really running through the trenches. I was crouched because if I moved up, if I was standing too much, my cargo would just hit the top of the trenches and just fall off.

[00:06:13] Speaker A: That’s what I experienced a couple episodes ago.

[00:06:16] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:06:17] Speaker A: So you end up just constantly picking up things instead of actually progressing. So. Yeah, you learn the hard way.

[00:06:23] Speaker B: Yeah. So I was just kind of going around crouching the whole way. But again, picking up like when I’d see them and using them, rifles, shotguns, blood bags, which I didn’t think like, oh, the blood bags would be. No, the blood bags were useful. I definitely would like kind of go out of my way and like maybe make multiple circles in the trenches to find some blood bags.

But yeah, but Unger, I mean, he’s able to. He summons like soldier bts and.

[00:06:49] Speaker A: And he can fabricate that BT goo out of thin air, just like Higgs. So it seems almost, you know, it seems like it was set up as a boss fight in a sense. And it reminds me a lot of some older Metal Gear Solid boss fights where it’s kind of like a cat and mouse game. Right. Obviously those games are entirely built around stealth and. And this one is partially. But you get the opportunity to kind of chase him and you’ll shoot him a couple times and he’ll go away and he’s got his minions, so it’s not just a one on one fight. And he doesn’t display any of his major powers. Against you in an attacking way. He’s really just shooting at you with guns. But it’s a fun sort of approach that’s a little bit different than the other previous giant Kraken that we fought a couple chapters before.

[00:07:35] Speaker B: This is the first time also, we’re going against lethal. They’re using lethal rounds.

[00:07:40] Speaker A: So they do real.

[00:07:41] Speaker B: The first time you’re facing. Yeah, they’re facing enemies. Yeah. Who are using. Who are doing real damage to you.

And you definitely have to be way more careful. And I found myself kind of going into the.

Definitely being a third person shooter slash, like, going into, like, sort of Call of Duty slate type mode. I was like, kind of glad I have these experiences of this. And it just helped, like, trying to sneak around a corner. Or I’d, like, shift my vision from one side of the gun to the other to see who’s. Like a route. Looking for the soldiers and then looking for.

For Unger. Because, I mean, you use the Audra deck and you can. You can find him. Obviously your Audra deck is leading you to him.

Right.

[00:08:19] Speaker A: But yeah, it was a couple circles because he kept disappearing, but it. Yeah, you end up finding where he is. And once you.

[00:08:26] Speaker B: He’s also calling out to bb. To the bb. Yes.

[00:08:29] Speaker A: And the bb. And he’s like, why are you not coming to me, bb?

And so once you beat his soldiers and finally fully knock him down, he plays dead. So that you approach with his bv. Obviously was just playing dead. So he tries to steal it from you. That’s where it cuts out. And you wake back up, and you were only in the battlefield for less than a minute in a real time. So you must have entered Unger’s dimension or beach or whatever it may be during that period. It was. This concept of a multiverse is very much a thing here.

[00:09:03] Speaker B: Yeah. Sam feels like he’s been gone for, like, hours, but in reality, you’d only be gone, like, according to Mama, just a few seconds. Like, she’s like, it’s been less than a minute since we last talked. He’s like, no, that’s not right.

[00:09:16] Speaker A: And then the mind trip starts spinning and you start wondering what the hell’s going on.

[00:09:20] Speaker B: Mm.

[00:09:23] Speaker A: And so, I mean, essentially waking up, then wraps up episode four. And I’m, you know, gotta figure there’s more to learn about Unger. He clearly grabbed her baby. Didn’t take it away from you. At least where we are now. And we get to keep moving. So it moves on to episode five about Mama, and we need to go over to her spot. She’s really not far at all from where you are, which was a nice change of pace because so many of these episode transitions push you really far away.

[00:09:55] Speaker B: Yeah. When it first came back and she’s like, come visit me in my lab. Like, before I’d even opened it, I was like, oh, man, how far do I have to go?

When I opened the map and saw she was right there, I was like, okay, that’s nice. At least she’s not far at all.

[00:10:09] Speaker A: And you could really walk there without too much of a pain. But I still took a trike.

And so you get to Mama, as she is played by Margaret Qualley, who just reached major fame with the substance after appearing in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. She’s actually the daughter of Andie MacDowell who was in Groundhog Day with Bill Murray way back when. And you know, she’s definitely having a moment both between Death Stranding and some movies that she’s been appearing in. So good for her.

A big, big question that came up immediately was, why does Mama have a BT baby? And of course you end up finding out very soon. It’s a bleak world. And this is going to mean most people have experienced some messed up stuff. But Mama’s backstory is no good at all.

[00:10:54] Speaker B: No Mama’s backstory. This was a.

This was a fun chapter, Semi difficult chapter, but really well told story chapter. I enjoyed the cutscenes, the whole backstory of Mamba. So, yeah, you meet her. Yeah, she has the BT baby. They’re still connected with the umbilical cord. Like it’s literally connected to her.

And you’re there with Sam and you go through a whole cutscene with her. Basically starts out with her taking the BB and. Or his cuffs, actually, and seeing that he was actually trapped between two different space times where like she. He wasn’t lying about the battlefield because you hear all the gunfire and then she tells you basically that your cupid needs to be updated.

[00:11:40] Speaker A: Yeah, you have a faulty cupid.

[00:11:42] Speaker B: Yeah, you have a faulty cupid. The limiter is faulty. Yeah, exactly what we’ve been spreading. And she said if it’s not updated, it, it could cause another death stranding. If we keep. Yeah, keep putting more and more network.

[00:11:54] Speaker A: Extending the network.

[00:11:55] Speaker B: Yeah, keep extending the network. But the catch is the only person that can update it because she does the hardware, but the only person who can do the software is a person called Lockney in Mountain Knot City.

And that is the next place we have to go.

[00:12:12] Speaker A: But of course you can’t just go straight through the mountain, which I get the gameplay reasons for sending you all the way around. And you have to actually connect the network, so. Sure makes sense. But you can actually hike straight up the mountain, which I ended up doing later. But, yeah, Sam is ready to move on, but she just kind of stops talking to him and walks away. And you just gotta go.

[00:12:32] Speaker B: We did find a little bit more of a backstory, I was gonna say, because it does mention why she has the bb, Right? The BTBB or bt. Bb. BT Baby. Technically, it is a baby because she was in labor and in the hospital, which is where her lab is. I think she was in the hospital when terrorists attacked and bombed it.

[00:12:56] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:12:56] Speaker B: And she basically got trapped under the rubble and she had the baby and it died while being trapped under the rubble. And therefore it became the BT was just connected to her from then on. And she was luckily saved from the rebel.

[00:13:10] Speaker A: Sad stuff.

[00:13:11] Speaker B: It was.

[00:13:13] Speaker A: She couldn’t leave because that’s where the BT baby was.

So she hasn’t left, basically since the accident. She said, I’ve never been discharged, which is even more depressing.

[00:13:23] Speaker B: She just. She built her lab in the place where. Yeah, she’s been stuck. Stuck at.

[00:13:31] Speaker A: So following from that, right, you get released back out into the world.

I don’t know if you did the.

The quick side quest to grab things from a waterfall that got picked up by that supercell storm you were in and then bring them back to Southknot. So I did. I got to the waterfall and the giant river you have to cross for that side order to bring back to South Knot. I decided, okay, here’s a river. It’s flowing pretty heavily because it’s right under a waterfall. I put on the otter hood that we got from Conan o’, Brien, figuring I would get swept up. And pretty much no matter what I tried. If you scan, there is actually a path through the deep parts that you can trudge through and take breaks to restore your stamina. And even tons of the online signs that tell you this is the right path. So it’s giving you arrows and the cheerleader sign. But I got swept up anyway, even though I followed the right path. So the otter hood is absolutely essential for crossing rivers. I found out you can actually paddle and swim. You can pick up your cargo while you’re floating and then paddle over to the shore and get out. On the way back, someone’s trike was next to a jump pad, so I used it. But it didn’t clear the river and I was glad that I still had the otter hood on and didn’t take it off because I got swept up again and had to keep going.

[00:14:44] Speaker B: That’s good to know about the otter hood. I haven’t used the otter hood yet. I had a completely different. I did something completely different to you. I saw all that water by the waterfall. I kept scanning it and kept seeing like, okay, no, this is too deep. Like it didn’t come into my mind. Like maybe using the otter hood.

I was like, no, this is too deep. I took the long way around. I went.

I guess if you were looking at it, I don’t know if it’s. I don’t know which way it is, but I’ll say just like south. I went south towards the Timefall Farmers. Like I just walked down the shoreline.

So I made it all the way from mama down to the shoreline to where you’d have to cross the river instead. Then I just walked south all the way down the shoreline to a part of what looks was a bit of the blown up hospital or blown up road that’s like sticking out of the water.

Oh, it’s like.

[00:15:44] Speaker A: I know what you’re talking about.

[00:15:46] Speaker B: Yeah, it’s like it’s way. It’s. It’s a good mount down south. And I found out that you can climb and cross there.

So I climbed up the whole thing, crossed over, then made my way back along the shore along the shoreline on the opposite side with where all the stuff was. I think the first two pieces are on the side you originally started on and the rest of it is on the other side. Right. Or was for me.

[00:16:11] Speaker A: That’s like one and three I think. But yeah.

[00:16:13] Speaker B: Yeah.

And so I walked all the way up the shoreline, picked it all up and then walked all the way back. It took me forever.

Actually. I did find on the way somebody.

No, I did find on the way somebody. No, it was while. Whilst I picked up. After I picked up everything, Someone had a trike there. So I drove a trike all the way back to.

To the big structure and then crossed and then put everything on my back and crossed over the big structure. It took forever. It took a lot of stamina and everything for me. So after I dropped it all off, I went back to South Knot and rested and restored everything. Yeah, I took you. Okay, that’s good to know with the Autoheart because I took, as I said the long way. It took me what I would have thought was going to be kind of quickish. It took me a while.

[00:17:04] Speaker A: No thank you.

[00:17:05] Speaker B: With all the walking, it took me a while.

[00:17:09] Speaker A: Also, as quick side note, that’s somewhat related here. Zip lines are sweet Mama has the zip line semi close to where her spot is. And so someone. The zip line goes actually from near there up to the top of a hill. And so I went from that top of the hill and used and set up another zip line closer to the cliff near the waterfall and then took the online climbing anchors and ladders to get down to the area where the packages are. But then I climbed back up zipline, another zip line, hopped on a motorcycle, got back to the city.

[00:17:44] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yours sounds much easier than mine. I. Yeah, the. The ziplines are awesome. Yeah, you use the zipline. I use the zipline from Mama’s lab up to the top of the mountain. And then I tried to create one.

I was in probably a different spot than you. I tried to create one down from it, but it kept saying that there were obstacles in the way. Even though I couldn’t really tell, you.

[00:18:04] Speaker A: Know what it is, though I had that show up too. But I put it anyway because I realized that the obstacle it was talking about was the hill itself. And so it was trying to connect from where I was placing it to the farther one near Mama’s, not the one that’s on the top of the hill. So you can actually set it up in like a chain, basically, and it works just fine.

[00:18:23] Speaker B: Oh, okay. So it’s good. Okay. So I’ll have to. Okay. I haven’t tried. I haven’t tried setting up anymore. I didn’t try setting up anymore. Throughout the chapter. I did have some other ones that people have put.

[00:18:34] Speaker A: Someone else put in there.

[00:18:35] Speaker B: Yeah, someone else put. But I will want to try and make some others because they’re definitely. However much I like making roads in the game, this is an easy and kind of nice way to travel further distance.

[00:18:47] Speaker A: Hilly areas. The only thing is you have to actually have already been there. But if you have that foresight, you can get cut out a decent amount of your walking around or climbing up hills. And after that, I did decide to do the next pizza delivery and also bring some side orders while I had to go all the way back to late. Not. Anyway, so I loaded up a truck with all of that cargo from Southknot and I had a big brain moment and I’m quite proud of myself. So I knew we had to go west from the distribution center for the next main quest.

And I was thinking, okay, I’ll just leave from that. That distro center south of lake knot. So I drove the truck there. Left literally all of my regular gear, like the ladders and the guns and everything that I usually carry around with me. Kept the truck with only the pizza and the side orders.

Dropped things off, including the pizza, on the way to lake knot. Ditched the truck there and then fast traveled using fragile back to the distro center to then continue the main quest. And it worked out great.

[00:19:50] Speaker B: Yeah, you did a. Yeah, that was. That’s a good. It’s a big brain idea. I. I didn’t do that. I did the pizza delivery. I didn’t do that. I just drove.

[00:19:57] Speaker A: I took a shortcut. I can tell you that.

[00:20:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I took the truck. I did side quests. I took some side quests for the craftsman for lake knot city, the pizza, and I just drove and I did. I think I stopped at the craftsman, quickly dropped that stuff off, and then dropped the pizza and then went to lake knot city, dropped all that off, and then just drove back in the end.

[00:20:20] Speaker A: That’s a valid approach. Maybe not quite as fast.

[00:20:23] Speaker B: No, it took a little longer, but, yeah, it was still. I mean, I have all. Most of the roads built up, so it wasn’t too difficult once.

[00:20:29] Speaker A: Yeah. How far do you have your roads?

[00:20:33] Speaker B: So I have a coming out of south knot city. I have the first road done.

Second road is about 3/4 done.

Same with the third road. And then the fourth road, like, up the hill.

That goes, like, up the hill. And then if you go down, it goes towards Conan and the cosplayer.

I have that row built.

So that one actually goes over some of the rocks and then down close to the riverbed.

[00:21:05] Speaker A: Wow.

[00:21:06] Speaker B: Which is quite helpful. So then I can just drive along riverbed up to another road and then distro. So it wasn’t too bad. But I only built that because once I got south knot online, A lot of them online. Like, a lot of these things were halfway, if not a little bit more for me.

[00:21:21] Speaker A: Yeah. See, no one’s contributing enough to my roads to get them close enough to just, like, finish, do the finishing touches. I want someone to get it farther and just knock it off.

[00:21:32] Speaker B: Yeah. So once I did that, like, those are the ones I knew. Like, okay, I can get those done. And then that’s it. And then I just went then to the distro center, south knot, and picked up. Picked up the materials to do our.

[00:21:45] Speaker A: Main Running out of materials in all these places because I need to put so much into getting the roads further.

So I end up exhausting all the Materials.

[00:21:55] Speaker B: If you get like. Because I have a few of them at five stars, like, it ups the materials on the amount they hold. That is up a lot.

[00:22:03] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:22:03] Speaker B: Which is kind of helpful. And also I try and take from.

If I see on my way or even it’s a little bit out of the way, like safe houses or anything like online ones, I’ll try and take a little bit from there.

[00:22:14] Speaker A: Yeah. I guess the beeline approach isn’t as productive when building roads.

[00:22:19] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:22:20] Speaker A: We’ve also talked a couple times about not having the chiral crystals run out on the floating carrier yet. I’m not sure if you’ve used the floating carrier much, but I, you know, I developed this addiction to rebuilding the roads as much as I can. So I used all of my chiral crystals contributing to rock roads and that I had zero when I tried to load up my floating carrier. And I found out what happened. So basically, as you walk off with it attached to you, the cable snaps and you just can’t use it. You can still pick it up and reuse it later, but it leaves you off with that.

[00:22:55] Speaker B: Okay. So. Yeah. So you always then do want to have some at least spiral crystals on.

[00:23:01] Speaker A: You guys if you still don’t know floating carrier. I don’t know what is the sort of minimum limit if it’s just zero? I mean, I wonder how long you can get by on one chiral crystal. But I don’t intend to experiment with it. So, I mean, I guess keep at least a handful if you do plan on using it. Otherwise, it’s all good.

[00:23:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I always try and keep.

Usually I try. I lost some because I had built some other roads too, but there’s so many like, around that I’ll just go and stop and pick up. And I usually try and keep at least 200, 300 on me.

[00:23:36] Speaker A: You have a stockpile?

Yeah, I just. I guess I just really don’t go off the beaten path enough. I pick things up as they’re somewhat near me, but not super far. Well, anyway, so I finally got killed in this game. Not as a part of the story like in the prologue. So I was going from the mountain waystation to the distribution center north of Mountain knot.

I got pinged and outnumbered by those terrorist mules. The rubber bullet assault rifle wasn’t as accurate as I was hoping it would be. And the bullet gun wasn’t fast enough. So I got killed, repatriated, and discovered that when you’re near mules, when you get killed, they steal most all of your gear and Put it in lockers and you get carried out of the area. Not sure by who exactly, but.

[00:24:21] Speaker B: Oh, well.

[00:24:22] Speaker A: So I saw where the blood transfusion was, which was the thing we needed to get over to the. To the distribution center. And I put a marker on it because I knew it was in a locker. And I snuck a decent amount of the way there from where I was respawned. But there were too many mules, so I got caught. I boloed a feud. They caught up to me, started shooting. I was taking too much damage, so I was outnumbered again and I said, eff it, and started sprinting. But there were so many mules in that encampment that there was no way I was going to be able to outrun them. So I hopped on my floating carrier and literally kick pushed like it was a floating skateboard across flat ground to get away faster. Obviously it’s significantly better going downhill, but in this moment, it was just the only option that was faster than sprinting. So I was skateboarding kind of like in Back to the Future out of the area and finally made it to the destination.

[00:25:13] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah. You had a. Wow. You had a whole experience there. That’s crazy to hear that you actually, you did die. So it’s actually, it’s interesting to know then. I haven’t still died as of yet. I actually came close in chapter four against Unger. I got down to like 80 health from a few shots.

[00:25:32] Speaker A: Yeah, just keep getting those crypto buyouts when you run.

[00:25:35] Speaker B: I had to. I had to sprint away and kind of hide around the corner. Yeah. Try and get the crypto bio to then let a blood bag kind of fill me back up.

[00:25:44] Speaker A: But yeah, I’m curious how you got your way stealth or Sam Wick through this area because there were too many guys.

[00:25:50] Speaker B: Yeah, no, there were a lot. I did. Not really. So, yeah, for the blood delivery, we’re leaving the way station north that we had just whatever we did and we dropped off materials there. That was the first thing we had to do. But we. Yeah. Making my way down there, I had a truck.

So I had every. I just had it packed in my truck.

So I’m driving the truck down and I thought, like, okay, there’s going to be a mule camp somewhere. I’m not sure where. And then as you’re coming over the hill, like, I see it down. I’m like, okay, I’m just going to try and drive like straight through this. Like, hopefully, like, I’ll try. I know the truck doesn’t have a ton of battery. But I’m just going to use, like, the speed function and hopefully speed through and tried to time it where like, their truck with people was away so then I could go.

And I was going and I was doing. I was about halfway through the camp, and one of them chucked a random electric grenade. And it literally went off as I was driving past it. It was right at the back of my truck, and it went off and it just shocked my whole truck and took out all the electrics on my truck and kicked me out. And I was like, oh, crap. Oh, crap. Okay. And I ran and found some tall grass hidden the tall grass, but they were all coming at me from the vehicle, everything. And I had a bola gun out, and I was just trying to bola people as fast as I could. I was still close to my truck.

[00:27:05] Speaker A: It takes.

[00:27:05] Speaker B: It takes a while once your truck is shocked, for the electrics for the that to wear off and for it to come back online.

So I just stayed close to it. I was just trying to bowl a people. I wasn’t able to fully knock them out, kick them, because I couldn’t get close enough because there were so many where I was just trying to bowl with somebody. Move slightly side to side to not get hit. Bowler the next person while it reloaded. Then the next. I was able to get about five or six of them bola’d. And then the truck was good. And I just got in the truck and I just hit it to just sprint to get the turbo out of it and just drove it as fast as I could out of there and then just kept going.

So I came close. I did lose some health.

I had one armor plate on. I didn’t realize also for armor plates that we got earlier, I thought if you made one, it would make a set of one of one.

[00:28:00] Speaker A: Oh, it’s like one per piece of your body.

[00:28:02] Speaker B: Yeah. You have to make two. Yeah. One is one piece.

[00:28:05] Speaker A: I haven’t tried the arbor plates because I’m just trying to maximize cargo space.

[00:28:09] Speaker B: Okay. I have two arm. Yeah. So I only did one at that point. Now I have two on me. They took some damage.

Mm.

Took some damage, but not too much. But yeah, I just. I then, as I said, got in the truck and just boosted my way out all the way to the distro center there and dropped off. Luckily, my cargo, everything inside the truck was all fine.

That’s kind of the nice thing about having the truck and not the trike there, because everything is usually unless they take the truck from me. Or something. It’s usually fine.

Yeah, like I said, I was still kind of around it and didn’t get damaged or anything.

[00:28:45] Speaker A: Well good for you.

[00:28:46] Speaker B: Yeah, I dropped, I dropped it off and yeah, and that was my experience.

I’m lucky I didn’t die. I was panicking, I was trying to. As I said it was sort of like dodging, weaving through the grass while the bowler gun would reload so then.

[00:29:01] Speaker A: I could get a little shot off.

[00:29:02] Speaker B: Yeah, it is a bit slow but yeah, I didn’t make it out.

[00:29:07] Speaker A: Something I found interesting too as we arrived at that place and I was reading through the interviews. So it looks like the babies were originally developed as a technology by the government many years ago, pre string branding and it was basically wiped away, put away and the separatist terrorists decided to use the BBS first. And so we’re using bridges is using BBS as a countermeasure to fight fire with fire and yeah, I would have expected that we were the ones to pick it up first but I guess that’s. It was the other way around.

[00:29:43] Speaker B: Yeah, it was like they, I think they started, they were doing experiments on greater Manhattan, right?

[00:29:48] Speaker A: Yeah. It sounds like there was a double crater over there.

[00:29:51] Speaker B: Yeah, it was like a double crater and the former president was killed like the one before President Strand was killed.

Yeah, that’s stranding over that void out event, right?

[00:30:02] Speaker A: Crazy. And yeah. And so we move on obviously we got to get to the official mountain, not city.

And I after my previous experience I saw the mule camp there and I was like hell no. So I grabbed the truck, went far, far right. Went way past the pathway to get up to the city and then kind of curve back around and walk through and crossed a river eventually set up a couple ladders and hid out in a cave to restore because that was when you’re holding the anti matter explosive. So if it gets too messed up you’re going to have trouble. So I use my one container spray to fix that and then finally hiked back up into, into the mountain mount city.

[00:30:44] Speaker B: Yeah, the. Yeah, the antimatter bomb was. That was interesting pickup. I mean yeah, you pick it up to. Because at Mountain City they’re having a bunch of tar is forming around them. It’s about to like swallow them whole. So they want a bomb to just take it all out so they can live long, basically live longer, taking over.

[00:31:01] Speaker A: And you can’t, you can’t jostle it too much or it’ll go off. And so I, I was in a truck in the sort of grassy wetlands there around the mule camp. And then I finally got to a place where I was past them and I was like, swee, okay, I’m going to do this quickly. And it took for.

Basically it took a couple seconds on the rocks for the message to say container badly damaged. So I had to get out and, and walk the rest of the way.

[00:31:25] Speaker B: Oh, you got badly. So mine I took. So this is the one time, because you told me in previous episode, I made a long range trike.

So I didn’t take the truck this time. I had the antimatter bomb on my back. I took a long range trike because I was looking on the map and there are no chargers, there’s no nothing on my way here.

I just want the battery to hopefully last.

And so I went through. I didn’t go far right. I went. I had somebody have built a bridge for me that kind of went.

It’s a little bit left, but it went the path through sort of the mule camp, not fully.

So I was able to just take the trike and fly through that. Luckily I didn’t get caught this time. They weren’t really close. I was kind of on the opposite. Like not the main part of it, but the end of it.

Um, and then going up the mountain wise there was one path on mine where people had put a safe house and some signs and other stuff. But I was on the other side of the mount, sort of a mountain range slash river.

And so I just sort of made my way up through BT’s.

Yeah, and I went very slow, like. Yeah, I went very slow, drove.

When it would go off, I’d get off. I throw a hermatic grenade or use the anti. I did use the anti BT gun this time. Take them out.

Kept driving, but there’s a lot of timefall going through and oh man, I’m like worried about my cargo. I did at one point, as you said, with the trike. I was trying to be very cautious of missing rocks because. Yeah, even when you’re just sort of bumping along on smooth ground, you would hear the energ bomb would beep as if something.

[00:33:10] Speaker A: Yeah, that’s the warning.

[00:33:13] Speaker B: Yeah. And then one time, unfortunately I kind of. I was going. I wasn’t luckily going too fast and I turned and I just hit my front tire into a rock. And it said container slit like damaged. I was like, no, luckily it was only like 3%.

Oh, I think the container was 6%. And then the actual cargo was. The actual bomb was like 3%. I was like no.

So I made my way up on this riverbed on the right side of this riverbed. I just kept driving all the way up. I had to slightly drive through the river on the riverbed side through Yellow depth River.

And I’m watching my battery. Please just, please don’t deplete enough where I can just make this.

And I get all the way up to a point where basically I’m stuck and I’m like, oh, and I have to cross the river. And I just kept scanning the river to see because a lot of it was blue, yellow, red. Where is a part where it’s just blue and yellow and I can maybe. And I found one and I crossed it at blue and yellow. It took my battery down quite a bit because as they say when your trikes are in water your batteries go down quite substantially.

But I was able to cross the river in that area and then just made my way up and I had just enough battery and I made my way up to Mountain Knot City.

So luckily with everything in good order, I think at the end I think I hit another random rock in the snow and I think by the end I think it was the container. Yeah, I had the container spray. So I think my container was from time fall and stuff was at maybe 30% damaged, but the actual cargo was 6% I think. So I just used a container repair spray and then dropped it off. Still got an S. So I got, I got an S for my S for awesome. So I did get a good grade.

But yeah, it wasn’t once I got through. The BTs were kind of a little bit annoying because there was quite a few of them and I was a little afraid I wasn’t going to have enough Matic or whatever gun grounds to get through it all. But it did make it.

[00:35:19] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And you finally get in there, right. And you do see all the black tar that’s slowly encroaching and it, it actually slows you down a lot if you step in it. But you meet Lochne, who you find out is Mama’s twin sister and they were conjoined twins even more. So you find out that Mama’s real name is Mullingen and Lakhn doesn’t want to be a part of the uca, but we need her to continue connecting the Chiral network. So we’re about to play family therapist.

At least Mama wasn’t against it at this point. I ended up hiking. Right. I didn’t want to go all the way back around and. And you couldn’t use Your private room because Logan doesn’t want you to be connecting. So hike up through the mountain. I ended up. That was the first time I used the. The regular assault rifle but with the hematic rounds and so I passed one bt, tried to shoot it and didn’t realize you needed more bullets to shoot it. I had, I had them, but didn’t just unload my clip. So the goo came at me and knocked my cargo off. And for a sec there I waited for it to disappear and then grab my cargo again. And then you get to the roboticist and from there I actually took a dip in the hot spring restored and then rode my floating carrier down the hill to get to back to the weather station and move on.

But you know, they introduced Timefall snow. Oh joy.

[00:36:39] Speaker B: Yeah, Timefall snow was fun. Wait, you went to a roboticist?

[00:36:45] Speaker A: Yeah, there’s a path up that way.

I don’t know if it’s the most direct line path to the weather station, but I was going towards the weather station thinking that remembering that I had set up my first safe house there and I could grab a trike and I was going to go down, going to go down the hill to the Timefall Farm because I got the email that the guy wanted a pizza from the Timefall Farm. So I went there.

It turns out you need to be able to get there really fast, but you have to hold the champagne by hand.

And there was no way I was going to get there in time. So I decided to just reload back to the weather station and do it later. Basically, I think you just need to have all your roads fully built out so that you can quickly just run the whole way.

[00:37:33] Speaker B: Oh yeah, like run in the middle of the road when it’s like energy.

[00:37:36] Speaker A: In the actual road where it recharges your skeleton or whatever you’re using. At that time that seemed to be the only viable route. I just didn’t want to try. I wanted to continue on with the story at that point. So I’ll get to that soon. But.

[00:37:52] Speaker B: I didn’t even try for that pizza delivery. I saw that, I read about it and I was like, nah, I’m good.

[00:37:57] Speaker A: Yeah, so it sounds like a tedious pain, but I. Yeah, so basically I went from, I went from Mountain Knot City up the hill a bit through the bts. You end up if you go to this certain path, I was scanning and realized or looked at the map and saw that there’s a roboticist there. So I was thinking, okay, why not? I saw a lost cargo for the Roboticist when I was walking anyway. So I figured, all right, I’ll just drop this off on the way. And it was a good place to kind of stop and rest up and connect her to the network and all that. And, um, then, yeah, I rode my snowboard floating carrier down to the weather station and then on to onto back to Mama where you get access to the cord cutter cups.

[00:38:39] Speaker B: Yeah. You do. Yes, we do. Which are really cool.

Okay. Mine was I’m just going back to mountain knot city. Okay. I need to go to the roboticist. I. That makes sense. I need to put her on the map. I need to put on the chiral network because all the roads that are up there, they have zero for me on everything.

Maybe if I add her, it might have a little bit, but not much. But yeah, I need to.

[00:39:02] Speaker A: It would be nice to have a road through the mountain.

[00:39:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I need to add her to the Carl network. So when I. When I left to go back down to mama’s lab, my trike still had, I think about, I don’t know, maybe a quarter, if maybe a little bit more battery left. So I was able to. I just drove it.

I found the direct path basically through the mountain where the actual roads would go through the mountain. I just went through that. And when it was on downhill, I didn’t even hold the trigger to do it. I just let the bike kind of slide down the snow.

Went past some porters on the way, said hi.

One of them gave me one of them. He reached out and gave me a hematic grenade. So I took that good time.

Yeah. And then went down to the weather station. And when I was at the weather station, as I said, yeah. I stopped at the safe house that I had built so I could charge up the. Charge the trike fully and get some rest for Sam. Like some stamina back up and everything.

And then make my way back to.

To mama’s lab. I think. I’m not even sure after that. I think I did some people around the road. No, I didn’t fully built a road up there because I didn’t have much material. I haven’t done the weather station that much.

[00:40:15] Speaker A: Me neither.

[00:40:16] Speaker B: I don’t have very many out of the way. Yeah Materials and everything. So a lot of people like the roads up there for me are halfway, if not a little bit more done. I’m just not.

I’ll do them at some point, but not right now. So then I just made my way back to mama’s lab. But I took a long way. I didn’t go.

Because if you go from your safe house straight down the mountain, there’s a sort of cliff edge.

So I went all the way, as if you’re going towards the Craftsman, all the way there and then.

And then to my. What would be my right. And then. So just even just above the distro, the distro center, just so I didn’t encounter too many bts. I was in Timefall, but I didn’t really encounter. I didn’t want to go through the rocks and the BTs that were probably.

[00:41:05] Speaker A: There to get to Mama’s.

[00:41:07] Speaker B: Yeah, I just took a longish way around. It was just a long way.

[00:41:11] Speaker A: I basically, I.

I pulled my big brain move again. After I bailed on the pizza delivery idea, I reloaded back into the safe house that I had built near the. Near the weather station, realizing I was probably going to have to go back up that hill, back to Mountain Knot City, because I think that was really the goal you had given to you. So I ditched all my stuff again.

I fragile, jumped over to the safe house near Mama’s, grabbed Mama. After Higgs attacks you with his giant Stranger Things Demogorgon BT dog that you have to outrun with Mama attached to your back. I found a trike just as that dog disappeared. So thank you to the anonymous player who left a bike right there. I rode to the weather station, grabbed a couple ladders and climbing anchors I had storked there, and I rode my miter, my. My trike back up the mountain, through the snow to the roboticist and onto Mountain. Mountain City. But I decided to just teleport because going all the way around just takes too much time.

[00:42:11] Speaker B: All right, so it wasn’t too much of an experience then. Yeah, because that was a big.

That was a big thing. So when we get back to Mama’s lab, that now is to deliver Mama, as you said, we get back to the lab, we learn she gives us the upgrade to the cuffs that lets us now cut the umbilical cord ords on all the bts.

I don’t know if you have yet.

[00:42:32] Speaker A: I. I tried to. Got caught and the goo got me. I didn’t lose my cargo because I was able to shake them off well. But then I just. Yeah, there was the only BT in the path I had back to Mountain Knot. So I didn’t end up trying it again. I’ll try it at some point.

[00:42:46] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I didn’t. I haven’t tried. But again, we get the. We get the upgrade and then the backstory. There in the lab that we learned more about Mama was kind of like. It was a bit heartbreaking. I was like, what? He wants us then.

Now that we have this ability to cut the cords and the umbilical cord, she’s like, please cut the umbilical cord to me and my BT baby.

I need to sever this tie now with this BT baby. And I was like.

[00:43:16] Speaker A: I figured was just, okay. It releases the baby.

It allows her to move on.

[00:43:25] Speaker B: Nope.

[00:43:25] Speaker A: And that’s all it tells you in that moment. But then. Right. Yeah.

[00:43:28] Speaker B: Obviously, it releases the baby. The baby, I guess, goes to the. I’m not really sure. I guess to the other side fully, where it’s kind of released now. It’s not a bt. It’s now full death, and it has closure. And then she tells you the whole backstory of why she has the baby. She has her twin sister, Lochni.

Her. Lockney fell in love with a Bridges employee.

Lockney, I think. What was it? Lockney. Lockney.

Lockney’s uterus couldn’t hold a baby.

Yeah. And Mama. Her eggs don’t work.

So they decided to take Lockney’s husband’s sperm because he dies in an accident. She mentions. And then put Lochni’s eggs in Mama. And then that’s the baby. So it’s sort of the baby for.

[00:44:19] Speaker A: Lochni, but unfortunately, surrogate mother is gonna have the same attachment.

[00:44:24] Speaker B: Yeah. She gets attached because unfortunately, the terrorists bombed the hotel, and while she’s in labor. It was. Yeah, it was quite deep. I didn’t expect it to get this deep with Mom. This is crazy. This is quite emotional. This is very interesting.

Very interesting backstory to Mama. Right.

[00:44:44] Speaker A: And you bring her. You run away from Higgs, you bring her back to Mountain Knot City for this heartfelt reunion. But then I didn’t see it coming because I thought you were releasing the baby back to the other side. But Mama was just going to be able to explore the world again. But no, she ends up dying on the table right after reuniting with her sister.

And her BT baby was keeping her soul attached to her body. So basically, she just had enough extra time to help move the story along and have Lochni help you fix your cupid. But now she lives on in the Chiral Network with Lochni. And one of Lochni’s eyes even changed colors to Mama’s color. So there are two people in one body is what I’m gathering from that.

[00:45:24] Speaker B: Yeah, it was. Yeah, it was crazy. It was a crazy ending to the. To the story as you said, yeah, I didn’t think she would. I thought they’d have a nice reunion, get back together, live on together.

Yeah. Didn’t think that. Yeah. Because we cut the cord of the BT baby that. Yeah, it was really still holding her soul that she basically did die in that rubble.

[00:45:46] Speaker A: Yeah, but exactly.

[00:45:47] Speaker B: The BTB kept her alive. And then when we cut it, it just, she said, gave her just enough time for us to make it. My travel up there, just to go back. My travel up there. So, yeah, we come out, we see Higgs, He. Whatever. This demigorgon lion thing. I started to run away from it as fast as I could. It knocked me over once, but I was okay. I then just got up and kept running. And then you get to a section where it goes away. Then luckily, I had some roads, so I just ran along roads for a while with her until at one point where there was a truck just left out. And I was like, oh, okay, I’ll just grab this truck.

[00:46:20] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:46:21] Speaker B: Because I. I don’t. I didn’t know originally, do I have to walk all this way with her or can I get on a vehicle with mine in the spotty bag?

[00:46:30] Speaker A: Oh, I was wondering if you could do it in a truck. Yeah, I was on a trike, so it worked just fine.

[00:46:34] Speaker B: But. So I got into a truck. I’m making my way up there, but I’m going through just below the weather station, that rocky part, and there’s a bunch of BTs around.

I’m trying to drive carefully and all that, but since this truck had been sitting in timefall, it was like, kind of almost dying.

And so I’m driving. I took out a couple. I didn’t even try to do the umbilical cord. And then one of them caught me in the truck, tried to pull me out, but I shook it off.

And then I kept going and I kind of sped, but I sped right into a bt. Like, I literally just bam, head on into it. And right when you hit it, instantly all the tar comes up. And this one pulled me out of the truck, and I started going through all the tar, and then I got my balance or whatever, get my bounce back. And then the lion demi gorgon was back.

[00:47:21] Speaker A: What?

[00:47:22] Speaker B: Yeah, it came back. It was back, so I had to run. And I was sprinting and jumping with mama on my back on all these rocks to get through. And then once you got to a certain point, it went away. All the tower went away, and the line went away. Luckily, it didn’t hit me again from that Point on.

I then decided I’m gonna have to walk all the rest of this way, all the way to Mountain Knot. And I just was starting to walk there and I was trying to get to the path where I just come back over. Okay, I’ll just take that straight path right there. I know exactly where to go. Luckily, on my way there, someone else had left a truck just sitting on rocks.

And it wasn’t stuck. So I was able to go in it, jump it off the rocks, and then I just drove that truck all the way back to Mountain Off City to drop off Mama. But when I dropped off Mama, I didn’t even think about it, that she can still have damage on her.

So I had had. I think she had 31% damage. So I still passed. I got an A, though. I didn’t get S. Or luckily I got an A. It didn’t even hit me, though. Even though I got thrown. And she’s on my back. Slams into the rocks too.

[00:48:27] Speaker A: She is cargo.

[00:48:28] Speaker B: Yeah, she is cargo.

[00:48:29] Speaker A: So. Right.

[00:48:30] Speaker B: She had about. I think I had about 30% damage on her. I still got an A.

And then.

Yeah, we have the whole.

[00:48:37] Speaker A: And I think right after. Right, right after their whole reunion and Mama dies and you reconnect the network to Mountain On City that you get a call and you find out that, yes, we were actually in a real iteration of World War I in episode four, because they had finally finished analyzing the data. So it wasn’t a simulation, it wasn’t a hallucination. You were actually there. But whether it was being recreated on Unger’s beach or how exactly you ended up there in the first place is still a mystery.

I kind of like how you can’t quit immediately as the episode ends as well, because the intro cutscene of the following episode essentially acts as a next week on type of preview from more traditional episodic format TV shows. And here we have Deadman’s episode 6 coming up this week. And the one thing I’ll note from that intro scene that I noticed is that you finally see Deadman’s face close up enough to notice the giant scar across his forehead, which makes me wonder why he got his name in the first place, outside of just being someone who studies death.

[00:49:45] Speaker B: Yeah, it’s basically. I don’t know, didn’t get a brand new brain or.

[00:49:49] Speaker A: What is it?

[00:49:51] Speaker B: Yeah, it’s just like Frankenstein’s mouth. He’s made of parts.

[00:49:54] Speaker A: Right?

[00:49:54] Speaker B: Right.

[00:49:55] Speaker A: Very, very well. Yeah, it could be.

And so episode six is similar to episode five in length and Episode seven is like episode four, so very short and a couple orders. So there are nine required orders across these episodes and we want you to complete orders 47 through 53 in episode six and then 54 and 55 in episode seven for this week.

Keep on keeping on and catch next week.

[00:50:25] Speaker B: Yep, have a good week. Enjoy Gaming 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 account under the same name. Thanks.