No Soul, No Beach | Death Stranding, Part II (Ep. 149) - Pixel Project Radio: A Video Game Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:19):
Welcome back to Pixel Project Radio. This is part two
of our Death Stranding analysis, going through looking forward to
talking through the rest of this game. I'm joined again
by Nick and Will from the Friday night game cast.
How's it going, guys, going well, it's going well.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Thanks for having us back on here. Look part two, baby,
let's get into it.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
Well's up, Ricky, it's happy to be back. I'm happy
to continue talking about this game with you. This is
gonna be exciting.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
Yeah, I'm looking forward to it too. Before we dive
into the story, I wanted to talk about some stuff
up front. As I was editing this last episode, I
had a moment, well, I had a couple of moments
where I realized that I was sounding much more negative
than I had remembered feeling. I mean, get me wrong.
I do think the first three episodes of this game,

(01:03):
especially after the prologue, start to drag a little bit
in terms of the pacing, and they are quite long,
or at least they feel quite long. So I was
definitely having I was definitely feeling a bit of the tedium,
but I was surprised at how negative I was coming
off whenever I was editing, so upfront. I wanted to say,
I am having a much better time with this. I

(01:26):
don't think neither of you are playing this game again
for this show, right, Yeah, I.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
Was playing through it again. Oh you were, Yeah, so
I was because it's my first time playing the Director's cut.
I've played it previously when it came out, yeah, nineteen version,
but I wanted to see what new things they added
on for the Director's cut, and it's been pretty cool
so far. Some of the new editions have been nice.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
That's right. You did say that I forgot about that.

Speaker 3 (01:48):
Yeah, and I definitely jumped in for the first time
for the show, but it finished it just a little
bit earlier than the data for a recording.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
I did want to say, I despite the writing, which
I do still think is quite clumsy, I am having
a good time. I'm having a better time now that
I'm farther into the game. We had mentioned a bit before,
and I think this was a point you made, Nick
about the maximalism of the UI being kind of overwhelming. Yeah, yeah,
I do agree with you. I will say though, it

(02:16):
was kind of nice to have reminders when I needed
them about you know, how strands work in terms of
the combat, I mean, how weather happens, the enemy pans.
Having these reminders was kind of nice. It was still
overwhelming seeing everything on the screen at all times, but

(02:37):
I don't know, I liked having reminders now and then
so I didn't have to keep everything in you know,
my working memory, long term memory, you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (02:45):
Yeah, I think that part of it is definitely more
of the design between it, behind the UI. This game,
I feel like, just really asks the player to do
a lot more in terms of tailor to their individual needs.
And I think for a game like dest Stranding, in
the length and the breath of it, to pay on
how you want to play it, that's certainly warranted in
a large in a large part of like you know,

(03:05):
you want to go in and you want to filter
for specific icons or community uh, you know, built structures
if you want to use that during like your traversal sequence.
How however you want to look at it. I think
definitely it's it's just the ribbon whenever there are tips
on screen, absorbs like a third of the bottom of
the screen, and I'm just kind of like, okay, especially

(03:25):
by the time we're you know, with fragile or even
you know in episode four, as we'll get to later today,
you know, but I felt personally comfortable enough where I
was like, Okay, I didn't necessarily need to know anything
unless I went in and looked it up. So the
game does a decent job of, you know, kind of
naturally organically providing those tips whenever it is relevant to

(03:46):
what Sam is doing in the open world. But I
just I just felt like it's a large part of it,
even when you weren't, you know, in the menus, when
you were in the open world there there were a
large part of times, especially going in and out, where
I'm just like kind of inundated with the UI, and
I thought it was a lot as opposed to being
in the wilds.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
So yeah, And I know part of the conversation too,
is because we're so early in the game at the
time of talking. But I think when there's not as
many things going on, it does seem like a lot
of you know, kind of fluff in the UI, or
you're getting tons of tips and tricks about stuff happening
a little bit too much. But like you said, Rick,
as you get more things like the weather forecast, for example,

(04:26):
happens later on the games like episode you know three,
end of episode two or something like that. Things like that.
As it continues to give you more objects and parts
of the world to keep track of, that's when it's like, oh,
I appreciate you know, the UI or I appreciate the
tips more because I was like, oh, I would have
forgot about that. I would have forgot I can use
my strand to tie down pieces of my gear so
it doesn't fall off when I'm doing these sick jumps,

(04:47):
you know, doing three sixty hops off of a crater.
But yeah, it's things like that that I'm like, Okay,
I appreciate it being there for later on, you know,
episode four or five, six and onward.

Speaker 1 (04:56):
Totally totally. I you know, I never paid attention to
the weather forecasts.

Speaker 2 (05:02):
He said, the heck this time fall, I don't care.

Speaker 3 (05:05):
Well, they're not particularly useful, right because like it'll start
raining and then you can either sit there at the
time fall shelter and then like keep pressing the button
to like wait it out, or alternatively you can look
at it. But it's just whenever you pull it up
and you have to press like R three or L three.
I can't remember which to you know, cycle through the
map to see when that time fall is happening. It's
not like it gives you an actual forecast for however

(05:26):
long because it's gonna take. It just shows you a
block of like blue over the screen, which I'm like, Okay, this,
this is good, But I would I prefer it when
I'm just in the shelter and I just hit the
button to have Sam keep on sleeping and then he
wakes up and saying, oh, still coming down out there.

Speaker 1 (05:41):
Yeah. I didn't get much use out of it, Honestly,
I just kind of That's been the theme of the
game for me is I've just been sort of roughing
it and taking things as it comes. Yeah, before we started,
I wanted to talk a little bit more about the
game as a whole, in terms of the writing and
in terms of the ideas behind it. I was just
reading some stuff since our last episode and thinking about it,

(06:02):
and I thought it would be interesting to talk about.
I did find a translated interview from Kojima. I don't remember.
I think it's a Dutch website or a Swedish maybe,
but I didn't have the time to read through all
of it. I'm going to put it in the episode description.
But Kojima, it turns out, you know, when we think

(06:23):
when we talk about games, I think a lot of
the time in games criticism on podcasts especially, we tend
to talk about games as autonomous works, existing sort of
within and of themselves, maybe within the artists ouverra, but
not really in terms of where they exist in the culture.

(06:44):
And that's all well and good there. I don't think
there's anything inherently wrong with that, but it's a different
style of criticism. And indeed, with Death Stranding, it turns
out Kojima was directly inspired by Donald Trump and Brexit.
There's a quo from Kajima where he said, via games Radar,
he said, President Trump right now is building a wall.

(07:05):
Then you have Brexit, where the UK is trying to leave.
There are lots of walls and people thinking only about
themselves in the world. And that sort of ties into
his idea and the themes of this game of loneliness and
connecting with other people. And I was thinking about that too,
in terms of the rope and the stick. You know,
that's sort of the allegory he opens the game with.

(07:26):
But I don't know, I find that there's some inconsistency
in this For example, you know, if we think about
the stick, what does that mean. The stick fends away
the evils, defends away the other, right, it keeps us safe.
It is a sort of tool. It's a weapon. Games
have given us sticks, swords, staffs, weapons since they've existed.

(07:46):
This game doesn't give you that tool on purpose until
it does, until it says, okay, well now you need
it to fight these vts in these mules. It wants
you to focus on the rope, that is, to unite things,
to bring things to you, to embrace in that togetherness,
until it doesn't want you to bring everything in. You know,

(08:08):
Kojima wants other players' structures to assist other users on
the network. You can pick up their deliveries, you can
make use of their roads. But he intentionally didn't bring
in the void outs that happen in games, in other
players' games. If that happens in yours, it's not going
to be in somebody else's game. And of course there
are pragmatic reasons to that, right, but it does add

(08:32):
a sort of friction to what he's trying to do.
And I've been thinking about that a lot. The inconsistencies
and the overall thesis. And it seems to me, and
I apologize for sort of dancing around this point as
I'm trying to get it into my crosshairs, but it
seems to me Kojima has feelings about a lot of
this stuff, and he's not necessarily trying to make an

(08:53):
academic argument and an in depth exploration of what it
means to be the intricacies of what it means to
be lonely in the social media age. I mean, let's
think about how likes in this game we're explicitly put
there so other players can feel connected to others. There's
a whole conversation about whether or not that's deleterious or

(09:16):
beneficial to a society in this new digital age, whether
likes are replacing human connection. That's a whole conversation that's
sidestepped here and implicitly sort of puts Kojima on the
side of not it's good. Actually, I don't think that
was his intention, and I think, you know, he's not
trying to do an exploration of these things at an

(09:36):
academic level. That doesn't mean we can't talk about it,
but I think if we're going to continue with the
theme that I try to do on the show of
steel Manning Arguments and steel Manning Games as far as
we can within reason. I think Kojima just feels a
lot of things about the culture and whether or not
he thinks about them as deeply as some of us,

(09:58):
or maybe not as deeply as some of us. He's
putting his feelings and ideas out there into the works
that he's creating, and he's showing us the ideal that
he wants, not saying that he wants the death stranding
to happen. Obviously maybe he does, I don't know, but
he wants a society where to gatherness and helping others

(10:18):
is important. Is it as in depth of an exploration
of it as you could get. Absolutely not. It's quite
shallow in many ways. But he's showing us that that's
what is important to him. And again I think it's
important to point out the frictions, the inconsistencies where it
doesn't go nearly as deep as I think would be interesting.
But at the end of the day, this isn't an

(10:40):
academic exploration from Kojima. It's just him putting his feelings
into his work and saying, please enjoy it. This is
what I've been feeling. Maybe it resonates with you. That's
where I kind of feel like his work, or at
least death Stranding is existing. I don't know, am I
onto something here or am I just kind of unfocused rambling.

Speaker 2 (11:01):
And it sounds like you're you're pretty much picking up
effectively what it is. I mean, just kind of going
off your points there too. You know, at the end
of the day, especially here with Pixel Project Radio. I mean,
we know that video games are art. Not every video
game is high art, but to some degree, all video
games are art. And as we've talked about on this
last episode, and if you're tapped into video games or

(11:25):
the you know, culture in general, you know you hear
how Yo Kojima, you hear you know, artists, you hear masterpiece.
You know you you hear him at the kind of
the top of his game when it comes to making
these video games, and maybe not necessarily, like you said, Rick,
doing the most academic, you know, research esque version of them,
but making some that are generally very fun to play

(11:45):
and hold up very well over time, which is something
that I would also staple onto. Deth Stranding one as
it stands. But that's the big thing is he for
his career that I've seen so far, and not knowing
the man personally, I think he does do that. He
takes things that he feels that he's interested in, that
he wants other people to talk about and dissect, and
he puts it out there in a video game form,

(12:07):
something that's digestible for most people. But as we've seen
with his last No des straining too and I feel
like we talked about on the last episode, but I
can't recall. You know, he will go out of his
way to change something if he feels like it's too edible,
if he feels like it's too easily digested by people,
because he wants you know, not necessarily just like us. I
don't want to put us on a pedestal necessarily, but

(12:28):
he wants people to break down his games, to have
these really in depth dissective research topics and conversations in
three hour long podcasts and dissertations about his work, because
maybe he's also trying to get down to the bottom
of how he feels, how he feels, why he feels
that way, and ultimately what the answer may be if

(12:50):
there is an answer, and that's kind of what I'm
picking up from there and what I was listening to
you talking about this here. I'm like, I think you're
really not dancing around it, You're pretty much tap dancing
on it. I think he's doing it for this for
us to kind of dissect and break down, because he
either wants to also know the answer or he's just
as most great artists do. You feel a certain way,
you put it out there, and then you let the
academics decide what it means. But ultimately, once you put

(13:13):
your art out there into the world, it means a
little bit something different to everybody.

Speaker 1 (13:17):
Well, first of all, I'm much too rotund to be
tap dancing on anything, so let's just clear that up.
I like what you said, though, and Nick, I apologize.
I don't mean to step in front of you. So
I do like what you said, though. The Kojima wants
these discussions to happen, and I think that's important too.
I forget what episode we said this on or where
I said this, even I might have just said it
in my personal life, but literature is a sort of

(13:40):
social activity, and I think Kojima views games as that
as well. And films too. I mean, films in many
respects are a social activity as well. I mean, from
the most obvious representation being the movie theater seeing it
with other folks, to the discussions that come out of it,
either in amateur groups and film critics, whatever. It's a
social activity and that's how we progress our understanding and

(14:02):
our appreciation and our tastes. I'm reading right now, I'm reading, well,
it's a textbook on literary criticism in literary theory, because
I want to be better at that kind of thing,
and I want to bring that a game to this podcast.
That's kind of the bare minimum that I see, Like,
if I'm not doing that, what's the point of doing this?

(14:23):
And Norman Holland, who is a literary theorist, said this
about interpretation. He says, quote, interpretation is a function of identity.
All of us, as we read, use the literary work
to symbolize and finally to replicate ourselves end quote. And
that's that kind of what we were talking about in Greece,
where interpretation is a sort of co creation with the author.

(14:46):
The end result the criticisms that we bring, the interpretations
that we bring, says as much about us as it
does about the work itself. It's that kind of thing.
And now that does potentially open us up to a
sort of hyper soolypsism where we say, well, you know,
it doesn't matter what the game says and what the

(15:06):
author says, it's all about how we feel man, And
it's like, well, no, that's that can be problematic too.
We're kind of stuck in that between that rock and
that hard place of like that that solypsism then over
reliance on the self and the hyper subjectivity. Like Terry
Eagleton is another theorist that that opine that like, if

(15:28):
it's not hyper subjective, if it's not up to us
to decide it, then that means the meaning is quote
buried in the work like a wisdom tooth waiting to
be extracted. And I don't think that's quite right either.
I mean, I think it's somewhere in the middle, as
so many things in life are. But that's what makes
this important, right, is that it is a little bit
of both. Kojima had an idea, Kojima's team had an idea,

(15:50):
and they put it into the game. But every bit
as important, every bit as important as that is us
bringing ourselves to it, and we co create that beautiful
winter inportation that we put out for tens of tens
of people to listen to on this show.

Speaker 3 (16:05):
Yeah. No, I mean so the idea of like hyper subjectivity, right,
and William kind of brought up the nature of subjectivity
on our Expedition thirty three podcasts and why you know,
it's really important to kind of view that piece of
literature that we're a piece of, rather you know, that
video game, that that work of art from an individualist perspective,

(16:28):
because of how personal of a story it is. And
I think that that's if it please correct me if
I'm wrong, Well, I'm not trying to to know take
take what you were taking, you know, speaking out of context.
I think the thing for me with with Kojima is that,
similar to what you were saying, Rick, I respect the
heart of everything that he's going into this with. Obviously
his direct influences of like how you know, potentially you

(16:50):
know or most likely negative Trump's influence and effect on
you know, the populist movements not only in America but
on you know, governments around the world, combined with you
know know all other other types of like far right
movements that kind of lean towards isolation, self isolation, like isolationist,
you know, foreign foreign policy, the idea that we're living

(17:14):
in this hyper connected age, but we're continuing to retreat
it to ourselves. There is a legitimate conversation to be
had there, and I think that he attempts to have
that conversation and death Stranding. I think for me, where
it fails is that he's trying to have too many
conversations and he's and he has too many esthetics that
are competing in or tones that are competing in his writing.

(17:35):
He wants to be ironic, he wants to be he
wants to be campy, but then he also wants to
be super serious. And I think some people would say
it's a credit to the game that he's blending all
three of these things, and the presentation of death stranding
when you're engaging with these you know, with the story
of what's happening is Sam and Annie and these other
characters that we're meeting on the way. My interpretation is

(17:55):
that it just he needs a better editor. He if
he wants to get across what he's getting at, he
needs somebody to rein him in and tell him no
way more often than he's been told in the past.
And this is again, and I don't know if I
went as hard into this in the initial episode, but
this is my problem with auturism. It is the conflation
of a creator's ability and will to create a piece

(18:17):
of work and attribute it to their own, single, focused,
artistic vision. It is a it's a great asset when
you have the ability to work collaboratively on the team
to distill that focused vision, but then it can also
be a detriment to itself when you're in charge of
so much of the planning and the writing for a
large game like this.

Speaker 1 (18:36):
You know, that's interesting that you see some irony in here.
This game seems to me to be extraordinarily earnest, almost
to a fault at times. But I want to steal
man Kojima a little bit. And I bet this is
more what Will is feeling. If I had to guess
not to speak for him, because he's here, he can
do that himself. But he does try to do a lot,

(18:58):
and he maybe doesn't go as in depth or extrapolate
into some of the more interesting conversations, but I think
it's because he's just kind of the mouthpiece of the
common man. He's kind of just like all of us.
He's not an academic, he's I mean, he admittedly does
have a lot of refined taste because he, you know,
grew up just watching I was reading a story about

(19:20):
him and how his family would like, his parents would
give him money to go to the theaters like every day,
and they're like, but you've got to come home and
talk about the themes and the narrative of the movie
with us, and like, first of all, amazing parenting. Like
un ironically, I think that's really awesome. I agree, But
you know, he's he's obviously got a refined taste, but
he is, he's kind of the mouthpiece of the everyman.
If you think about it, and I think there's something

(19:43):
to be said about that, you know you, you think
about I was thinking about it today in terms of music,
you know you, and and speaking as somebody that has
played this and been in the audience for this, you
hear some musicians that are really playing for other musicians
and two other musicians. It is extraordinarily impressive and interesting

(20:03):
and erudite, and you love it and you respect it.
But to the average listener, it doesn't really do a
whole lot. There's that balance, those scales are off kilter.
Whereas Kojima here is kind of being the musician that
everybody can appreciate. You know, He's maybe not being the
most technical, He's not doing the most interesting reharmonizations, try

(20:24):
to own substitutions, harmonic language. He's not playing quote out there,
but he is playing in a way that I think
everybody can resonate with. So and again, I'm not even
necessarily saying this is how I feel personally, but I'm
trying to, you know, bring the best out of him.
Is that, Yes, some of this stuff falls a little

(20:44):
flat to us because we are expecting a little bit more.
But in this situation, we're kind of like the musicians.
Whereas he's saying it with so much earnestness and heart
and at times campiness and at times you know, over
the top cheesiness that I think it's resonating with a
lot of people that are there and can can relate
to what he's saying. Does that does that make any

(21:06):
kind of sense at all?

Speaker 3 (21:07):
Yeah? I get that. I definitely get that. My I
think where I get hung up and is exactly what
you were saying, Rick is that I do expect a
lot more from Kojima, this being my first Kojima game.
Obviously I'm understanding. I'm picking up what people are putting
down about how it's self aware campiness. It's like it's
it's purposeful or intentive, like this is what he does

(21:28):
all the time, and I get that. And so this
is a thing where it's an established esthetic and established
framework for a lot of people who are his fans.
And these are the same folks who claim that Death
Stranding is his best work yet, and the same folks
who continue to say Death Stranding too is an even
better representation of his best work yet.

Speaker 4 (21:45):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (21:45):
I think that just for me, it's it's been tough
to kind of really sign on board because of what
I personally look for as a player, and as as
somebody who enjoys world open worlds like this or works
like this, I appreciate it for its individuality. Again, and
to what you were saying earlier, Rick is like, I
don't mean to come across as like overly negative or

(22:07):
disparaging of Death Stranding by any means, because I think
it's an incredibly unique and amazing game. I just I
struggle to see sometimes where Kojima draws the line in
between like wanting to be overtly like himself, wanting to
really pack his own ideas into the experience, and like

(22:28):
when he wants the user, when he wants the actual
audience to engage with the work. I think that that's
where maybe some of his writing has a shortfall for me.

Speaker 1 (22:37):
I don't want to speak over will will you?

Speaker 2 (22:40):
No, No, you're good. I said, as far as you
mentioned before, when like, you know, not stepping on my
toes or speaking for me. Now, you were pretty much
on board as far as what I was saying. That's
why I was comfortable being like let them fight. I
was in my King Kong God d.

Speaker 3 (22:53):
Lama and I've been You've already heard all of this
from me before. Will I've been in my Pepe Sylvia mode,
like screaming at the wall, pointing at the the lines
connecting the dots. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:02):
Look, I'm just happy that Rick is on board the
Kojima train. Now it's not you know, just me defending
Kajima going to v one like now.

Speaker 1 (23:09):
Well, well, I mean, look, I did come off as
too negative in the last episode. Perhaps I'm now over compensating.
I do have problems with how this is told, but
I think now I've just kind of accepted what Kojima
is and you know, this isn't I think I was
approaching it hoping to get a more literary, academic style

(23:32):
of observation and exploration of things like loneliness and the
modern age. I was expecting a disco elysium, and that's
never what Kojima said that he was, you know, so
that was honestly on me. That doesn't mean we can't
critique it, of course, but I am I am more.
I am having a better time now. And of course

(23:52):
I mean, like I said, those first three episodes they
do kind of plod along a bit. It really picks
up once you start getting to episode four, it really
goes and to that end, why don't why don't we
get into the story and put some of this into
context and talk about some of the cool stuff that happens.

(24:34):
So picking up on episode two, this is we talked
about the room last time. This is where we're introduced
to the room. Yeah, I don't know. There's a funny
moment where Sam is showering and Hartman starts speaking to
him and he's like, it doesn't don't. Don't we have
any privacy here? And he's like, what does he say?
Oh no, except for taking a shower and going into

(24:55):
the toilet. That is it's pretty good. Gotta laugh out
at me.

Speaker 3 (24:58):
Yeah, it's good. I like the room. I like the
design of the room. I think this is probably one
of the coolest little home Base UI elements that I've
seen in a really long time, and it's presented a
really unique way.

Speaker 2 (25:09):
Even a little appreciate all the little touches around there.
I think we had talked about it a little bit too,
where I want to say it was you Rick, I
want to say you can correct me, of course, with
like the pointing that uh yeah and sometimes yeah, yeah,
I remember that one. He's just like, you know, it's
not really too bad, except for when he like points
you know, behind him, and he's like he's gesturing me
to look, and it was like, you kind of pissed
me off there, saying but I appreciate like the little

(25:32):
touches around and yeah, I like moving around the room.
There's a couple of points there, especially when you're later
in the game, where I'm just like, I'd like to
kind of skip, you know, the whole like transition sections,
and just like, all right, I gotta go drink. I
gotta drink three bridges energy drinks and get the hell
out of here. So let me skip through this faster.
But there's a couple of things like that.

Speaker 3 (25:49):
Only three, Only three. Listen, don't don't disparage the Friday
night caffeine boy's name. Well, you're drinking all of those
caffeine drinks, but three is to.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
Get the max boost. After that, you're just doing it
for the love of the game.

Speaker 3 (26:00):
Exactly, exactly, just like in real life.

Speaker 1 (26:04):
Shortly after here, Hartman, if you'll remember last time, Sam
cremated his mother, Elizabeth, right, Bridget, Bridget, Bridget Strap, Elizabeth.
Who's that? I was watching mad Men. I was googling
Elizabeth Moss. That's how I got there. Amazing, amazing show.
But yes, he cremated Bridget. The death of the mother.
We talked about that. I didn't go into it as

(26:26):
much as I should have. That's on me.

Speaker 2 (26:28):
Whatever.

Speaker 1 (26:29):
Hartman introduces the new Face and Hope of America. It's
amily the woman in Red from your dreams. This is
Sam's sister, or at least that's how it's set up.
This is a tense reunion. It's very terse. We get
the feeling that maybe there's there's some difficulties in the
family there, and it's implied by Omily that Sam had
left them. She says at one point, we never forgot

(26:52):
about you, Sam. You ran away, you cut us off.
And this is the first time they've seen each other
in the last ten years. It's also our first I
think explicit reference to the beach where Omily says.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
Been ten years since you saw each other, right, and
in all that time she hasn't age.

Speaker 4 (27:08):
Today he knows why my body's still on the beach.
I don't get to grow.

Speaker 1 (27:14):
Older, which at that time, what they hell does that mean?
I don't think we know.

Speaker 2 (27:19):
Yeah, no, I don't think they've gone into it too
far yet. So yeah, you're just like on the beach.
And was like, okay, this is some more Kojima wackiness.
Like I'm always like, he'll explain it eventually. That's like
my throwaway line for the first probably ten hours of
this game. It's like, oh, he'll explain it later.

Speaker 1 (27:35):
What happened with Omily? Hartman explains here with a little map,
a little interactive map thing. Omily put together an expedition
of Bridges members and went west. How many years ago
was it? Ten years ago, six years ago, ten years ago?

Speaker 2 (27:48):
I don't want to say. I want to say six
years ago because I know they hadn't met up for
a while, Like you said that, ten years and then
between then is when they actually did the expedition out
there with the first Bridges group.

Speaker 1 (27:57):
They're going west looking for survivors in the post pocket
to landscape, connecting everybody and convincing folks to join the UCA,
which stands.

Speaker 2 (28:04):
For the Cities of America.

Speaker 1 (28:08):
Thank you. Yes, I did not write that down and
I couldn't.

Speaker 2 (28:11):
I thought it was I was like, yes, I'm gonna
pass this one.

Speaker 3 (28:14):
I need you, I need you to play the bridget
strand theme music cuts in cycle something.

Speaker 1 (28:20):
Right there, they reached Edgenot City, which is you can
think of that as being like near California. It's all
the way on the West coast. Omily got kidnapped and
her team was wiped out. She is being kept as
like a political prisoner of sorts by a group called
the Homo Demons.

Speaker 2 (28:36):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (28:39):
We're abandoning all subtlety homo demons. Of course that Latin
that's like mad men. Mad not as in the amazing
show that I'm watching, but mad is in like deranged,
out of one's mind, unwell mentally, you know. Yeah. And
of course it's a pun because they call them demons,
because these are terrorists whose sole motivation is to just
blow shit up and cause fucking havoc. It's that comic

(29:02):
book villain kind of like I just want to blow
shit up because I'm evil when they twist their mustache,
you know.

Speaker 2 (29:06):
Seriously. Yeah, Like the whole thing is causing void outs,
which is introducing you know, humans to a BT to
you know, effectively have a nuke go off. So I'm like,
can you imagine, you know, just real life somebody just
being like, yeah, we're just gonna set off nukes in
random cities.

Speaker 1 (29:21):
Why because which is what happened to us earlier. That is,
it's more or less confirmed here because of how these
homo demons look. And Sam kind of puts it together
too that one of them caused the void out that
took out the city earlier that we got caught in.

Speaker 3 (29:38):
Yeah, I think it's it's interesting, you know, we would
come here like obviously the representation of the Homo daemons
like it's it is uh real interesting, and we're gonna
we're gonna touch on a character coming up here. I
won't no future spoilers while we're going through this segment
of the show, but yeah, I mean it's it's an
interesting way to kind of instill or establish the antagonists

(29:59):
of this game, or like the actual bad guys of
this game. It's I mean, I find their character design
really cool. I'll say that as much.

Speaker 1 (30:06):
They do look very sweet.

Speaker 3 (30:08):
Yeah, I think that's that's probably one of the strong
strong points that they have here with those character designs.
It's awesome.

Speaker 1 (30:13):
Although I will point this out later, but I laughed
out loud when one of them takes off a face
mask and there's another face mask underneath of it. That
was so absurd.

Speaker 2 (30:22):
Classic. That's a classic right there.

Speaker 1 (30:25):
This is also setting up this through line here that
you know is related to Kojima's comments on Trump and Brexit,
that there are plenty of folks that do not care
for the UCA, do not want to be united, they
want to go through a loan.

Speaker 2 (30:39):
You know.

Speaker 1 (30:39):
It's this hyper individualism that Nick, I think you mentioned
a little earlier. That is kind of synonymous with current
day capitalism, right, the prevailing wisdom that you know, you
are what you make of yourself. It's all up to
you pull yourself up by the bootstraps whatever you'd like.

(30:59):
You know, your success is entirely your own. And that
leads to this rational individualism. And that's what Kojima is
sort of rallying against here. And you know, to his credit,
even though it's ham fisted, sometimes I do agree. I
think that that has been largely deleterious on society. But
any who's Sam's job now is tasked to go west.

(31:22):
He doesn't really want to. At first. He's one of
those folks. He's like, you know, this isn't worth it.
You know, this is just going to cause more problems.
Sam kind of takes the approach, at least it seems here,
if you can't fix it all, why do anything, you know,
like it's just going to cause more problems. And you know,
we learn eventually that Sam's Sam thinks that getting rid

(31:44):
of the bets is kind of the first step, but
he agrees, He reluctantly agrees. That's another thing that I
noticed not to do. Another tangent I'm now like playing
them up through like chapter nine. At the time of recording,
Sam's kind of a nothing character. Yeah, there's not much
to this guy.

Speaker 2 (32:01):
And it's definitely one of those I feel like kojimas
set it up purposely, especially at the beginning, and of
course as the story progresses you find out more. But
the biggest thing you know about him are most I
should say you know about him is that he's an
iconic porter. You know, everyone knows him by name, the Sam,
the man who delivers. He has ties to the president there.
But outside of that, like you said, he's not super emotive.

(32:23):
He doesn't have too many crazy strong feelings about things
outside of not wanting to really get involved with the UCA.
He's very much of a loner. But that puts him
in that same kind of grouping as you know, like
the Clint east Woods. You know, a man with no name.
You know he's Hey, this guy has a reputation and
he doesn't talk a lot, and what are we going
to learn from there? So that's kind of on brand

(32:44):
with what I would think Kojim would set up. I
feel like Solid Snake is very similar, especially when you
first get introduced to him. You just know he's a
legendary war fighter, and you know, talks off, the talks off,
the carry a big stick. And then of course you
learn more as the twenty five hundred games that he's
in slowly he comes.

Speaker 1 (33:02):
Out twenty five hundred solid, not.

Speaker 2 (33:06):
Including his Smash Bros.

Speaker 1 (33:07):
Visits of course, psychomantics. Yeah, yeah, you're right. So that's
that's kind of our job. Now we're gonna head west,
connecting way points along the way. There are a lot
of little micro stories that happen throughout here that we're
not gonna touch on. Like all of them. Some of
them are sweet, some of them are superfluous. But I
will say I had a really great time doing these

(33:28):
deliveries and connections. I think it's fun. I think the
game is fun. We should say too. Sam is still
seeing the visions anytime he connects to his BB. He's
still seeing that man, Matt, That Mad's Mickelson Man. We're
gonna find out more about him soon. Sam is still
seeing dreams with Omily as well. Not gonna point this
out every time because there are quite a few instances

(33:49):
of this, But last episode I had mentioned that Kojima
and his team really want you to see how clever
they are. You know, they're really self conscious that you
might miss some of what they're laying down, which, like
I think those of us that you know, like like
we were saying a few minutes ago, that look for
this stuff. It's a little obvious to us, but maybe
to the average player not so much. But they will

(34:12):
lay it out very very plainly a lot, and the
dialogue is kind of clumsy. For example, there's a dream
with Omilie and she kind of lays out the symbolism
behind the word strand. She says, it's a funny word strand.

Speaker 4 (34:27):
A strand is part of a row per bond, while
stranding means being washed up on the shore, and being
stranded is when you can't go home. I'm stranded now,
Sam here on the shore of the Pacific.

Speaker 1 (34:44):
It's you know, it's it's a little clumsy, it's a
little obvious, but you know it's for somebody. Somebody heard
that and they kind of had a light bulb moment.

Speaker 2 (34:54):
You know, she's stranded on a strand waiting for someone
to hand her a strand. It's like buffalo flow, Buffalo buffalo.

Speaker 1 (35:02):
I love that sentence also, and I still to this day,
do not know what this means. Emily's clothes change briefly
in this flashback, she goes from her red dress to
a sort of blue pantsuit sort of thing.

Speaker 2 (35:15):
Yeah, what's kind of explained later. It's not explicit. Well,
it's explained to a degree. It's one of those things
where because you say like you're almost done, but not quite.
Once you fully wrap the game and you kind of
understand what the deal is, going back and either playing
it or just be watching some clips it, things will
kind of click together more be like, oh, okay.

Speaker 1 (35:35):
I get it now, Okay, fair enough, I trust you
something that.

Speaker 3 (35:39):
I did want to ask you, Rick in terms of
your own interpretation. Obviously, Gred has a lot of symbolism.
Emily is most seen in the red dress. Does that
mean anything to you at least at this point in
the game.

Speaker 1 (35:51):
You know, to be perfectly honest, I mean, she's stepping
into the role of a politician. Politicians like to wear
red because it conveys confidence and power. That's honestly, as
far as I read into it, we don't really know
all too much about Omily, and in fact, at this
point in time, I'm not even convinced that who we're
speaking to at night is Omily based off of one

(36:12):
particular scene where Sam, where she just ignores him basically, So,
I don't really know, to be honest with you, I
just assumed that it was like a politician thing.

Speaker 2 (36:22):
Got not far off.

Speaker 3 (36:24):
I'm right there with you.

Speaker 1 (36:26):
Yeah, there are a lot of scenes like that where
Omily will say something that's sort of circling the themes
and the ideas pretty clearly. You're going west. Dead Man
will tell you more about your BB. This is where
they set up that. Dead Man speaks about the BB's
like their equipment and Sam looks at it like it's
a little baby. This is really really explicit. They set

(36:48):
this up really early, and it's I mean, if your
genre savvy even a little, you know where this is going. Right,
Sam is getting attached to a baby. Dead Man says, no,
it's equipment. It just looks like a baby. It's just disposable,
you know. It's it's classic sci fi.

Speaker 2 (37:04):
And I feel like this is also one of those
things too, where and it's not a spoiler, but it's
more of you got to understand that the UCA just
because you're working with them, you know, aren't necessarily the
good guys. It's not like this is good guys versus
bad guys. Although on the other side of the fence,
bad guys are you know, committing void outs and nuclear
like you know, nuclear attacks and things like that. But

(37:26):
that doesn't necessarily mean the UCA is the goodie two
shoes people. You know, they have these quite literally babies
and they're like, okay, they are their equipment because they're
born out of still mothers and all this, and they're
effectively using these kids as weapons slash shields depending on
the situation.

Speaker 3 (37:45):
Well, and it's also like kind of a comparison to
the American military or just militaries in general, Like they
got the they learned about the usage of the BB's
from the Homo damons, like they were the ones who
is to establish that technology. And it's a scientist later on,
if I'm not mistaken, please correct if I'm not wrong,
But it's a scientist that was working for the UCA
that was like, oh, this is a good idea, we

(38:06):
need to do this.

Speaker 1 (38:07):
Yes, that that does happen later, still pretty caught that. No, No,
it's it's fine, it's not it's not the biggest spoiler
I think and and like like you were both just
saying that is pretty synonymous to the I mean, at
least from our perspective. Again, we're bringing ourselves to this interpretation,
like to the American military industrial complex and how they

(38:29):
kind of, you know, scoop up the young'uns with promises
of grander. I don't know if that's not what this
is about. Let's let's keep going before we get into trouble. Yeah,
I'm pulling at my shirt collar here. M speaking of

(39:02):
bad guys. Will you were just mentioning the bad guys.
We run into one of them here pretty soon, and
it's shortly before our first boss fight. You exit after
a delivery, just an innocuous delivery. You exit. Time follows following,
the entire ground turns into a sea of inky black.
It's b T time. They're being controlled by a man.

(39:23):
It's the same man from the beginning who descended like
a demigod from heaven and caused the first void out.
He introduces himself.

Speaker 2 (39:30):
The names Higgs, the particle of God that had part
of the ate all existence.

Speaker 1 (39:39):
In my notes, I wrote, I am reminded of a
quote from av writer Will Hughes on death Stranding two,
where he says that Kojima is in a war with subtlety.

Speaker 3 (39:48):
I love that.

Speaker 2 (39:49):
I love that so much.

Speaker 1 (39:51):
What I do love like Unironically, Higgs addresses Fragile here.
Fragile's in the background. They have some kind of history,
which we're going to learn about soon. Sam sort of
smells our memories. Not Sam, Higgs sort of smells our memories.
He figures out that Bridget's dead and that Omily's filling in.
Omily is his next target, and he refers to her
as the extinction entity. Says that girl's an extinction entity.

(40:15):
We don't know what that means at this time. I
do like that because that's immediately planting something that we
learn a long long time from now.

Speaker 2 (40:23):
Yeah, it's funny too, because it's just crazy enough to think, like, oh, sorry,
not to cutch off there, but it's just when you
say something like that, especially because the way Higgs already
been talking, he's so over the top. You know, he's
your your showman character of the game so far. He
talks really interesting and he has this crazy stuff to say.
Excellent job there by Troy Baker, but yeah, him saying

(40:44):
someone's an extinction entity you kind of just write that
off as like, oh, he's just being extra, you know,
he's just going out of his way to use words
because they sound cool to him. But like you said,
you know, it kind of plants the seed that pays
off a little bit later on that blooms as the
game progresses.

Speaker 3 (40:58):
I mean, I gotta say, will to talk about great
performance by by Troy Baker. I want to love this character.
I want to like him. I want to like him.
I just and and I know, I know to the listeners,
I'm coming across as being hypercritical and just overly negative
on this, but I just really didn't interpretation. I didn't

(41:19):
like this interpretation. This feels like whenever Jared Litdo played Morbius,
and it's just like there there is no sense of subtlety.
You know, you take off the mask and there's a
mask underneath, and then he's walking around. He's like a
it's like he's a theater character, twirling his mustache like
you said earlier, Rick, and I just a man, it's
just not it's not my cup of tea. I guess

(41:40):
I won't and I won't continue to go into that.

Speaker 1 (41:43):
And you wonder how much too is a Troy Baker
decision and a voice director decision, right. I mean, somebody
the voice director could have very well said like, well,
this isn't how Kojima and his writers wrote this character.
You know, You've got to be a little over the top.
You've got to play to the people in the back
of the auditorium, otherwise I won't get it, you know
what I mean?

Speaker 3 (42:01):
Yeah, Yeah, it's just he's he's so good at I
think a lot of the other roles that Troy has done,
he's so good at it interpreted like his own, imparting
his own interpretations of characters and bringing that sense of subtlety,
you know, I mean, like his most famous role obviously
is known for that. That's what he's known for. And
it's just it's so lacking here that like, if we

(42:24):
didn't know that this was Troy Baker, I am one
hundred percent convinced that this could have been any other
voice actor. Like, I don't think he necessarily brought anything
special to the character of Higgs, which is you know,
it is what it is.

Speaker 1 (42:36):
Ouch of course, by his most famous role, you mean
Kanji from PERSONA four, correct, not that one?

Speaker 5 (42:43):
Goodness, gracious, just imagine the things that might happen to
me there.

Speaker 1 (42:47):
Who does have some subtlety to him. You might not
expect it, but no, I'm very excited. Where a little
sneak preview, we are doing the Last of Us part
two later in October, and I'm very very much looking
forward to that because kers in for a treat for
a little bit. Oh, I I know, I, Oh, okay,
I love that.

Speaker 3 (43:08):
Okay, awesome episodes come out.

Speaker 2 (43:10):
That's gonna be awesome. I'm looking forward to that one.

Speaker 1 (43:12):
So let's talk about this boss fight. Higgs summons a
giant like Kraken bet the water. The ground has turned
into like an inky tar black sea, the crack and
BT is coming up. We have to jump onto these
floating buildings and debris and fight it back with hermaeunic grenades, hermitic.

Speaker 3 (43:30):
Yeah, yeah, definitely, that's yes. Those those are I honestly
and Will, I'm curious to see your take on this overall,
but I think that these BT fights specifically are one
of the most visually impressive, stunning moments of this entire game,
Like just the idea of it, you know, combined like
the theme of fighting these entities that are beyond the

(43:52):
veil of like what our reality is, like, you know,
are we interacting with spirits that are gone dead? Like
we don't really know at this point who or what
are we interfacing with. But it's that bubbling black tar
that comes out of the ground that is you know,
essential to you know, something that's going to happen later
on in the game that we're going to figure out.
But whether or not it happens in this boss fight

(44:13):
or in boss fights later, I would say that, like, visually,
it's really stunning. I think some people have issues with
it from a like a games mechanics standpoint, like they
might feel like it could be a little bit clunky.
For me, it works, I think specifically because at this
point in the game, we only have our hermetic grenades
and we can toss it. And it's about that that movement,
that action of navigating the battlefield, the buildings that come

(44:38):
up out of the tar that we need to scale
and climb onto in order to you know, make ourselves
less vulnerable to the BT that's on the ground. I
think it's it's really good and again, just huge shout
out to the character designers here, because these these enemies
are just insanely cool.

Speaker 2 (44:54):
Yeah, just underscoring on that. That's the best part about
these bigger fights to me, and effectively these can happen
to time you get grabbed by the goalies as far
as the bts later on the game, and they give
you something equivalent. Sometimes it's a big lion. Sometimes you know,
it's a crack in. I feel like there's at least
one or two other ones too, and there's a few
later on that are story specific. But I think the

(45:14):
whole part of jumping around out of the tar and
the platforming aspect and kind of how to get from
A to B to C without getting slapped around by
the BT is actually really cool. The fighting itself, eh,
not a big fan of really most, if not all,
the boss fights in the game, but that's generally not
why I'm here for dest straining in the first place.
It's more of just sure a reason to get past it,

(45:37):
to continue the story and continue the kind of trekking
back and forth. But especially at this point, you only
really have the grenades, so you're just like, oh oh oh,
kind of go find some more.

Speaker 1 (45:48):
It should be said too, if you run out and
will you might have to correct me if I'm wrong here,
these like manifestations of other players kind of rise up
out of the tar black sea and throw more ami
to you.

Speaker 2 (46:00):
Yeah, it is correct, So that's another cool thing about
it as well as you continue. Yeah, that happens more
often as you're doing those boss fights, if you interact
with player characters and you know, connect yourself to players
that are playing training around the same time as you.

Speaker 3 (46:14):
Is it Do you know whether or not it's affected
by the likes that you'll get on structures like the
community engagement you have.

Speaker 2 (46:19):
I feel like it's more of the ones that you give,
but I think the ones that you get also affected
as well. But yeah, like you could potentially recognize names
that like oh yeah, I got like that guy's bridge
two hours ago, and now he's throwing me you know,
a gun that shoots blood.

Speaker 1 (46:31):
So yeah, it's it's another instance of Kojima, like bringing
in the good from connecting online and not the bad.
It's fine. If anything, it's just convenient because if you
did run out and you didn't have any more, well
you're now soft locked basically, right, So I mean he
would have had to have had a workaround for this somehow.

(46:54):
This boss is pretty easy, Uh, not difficult whatsoever, which
is funny because Sam is the first person in history
to kill a BT Before we move on to the
next episode, Fragile, and the pacing will pick up after this.
I promise there is a line. This is just a
throwaway line of Hartman, not Hartman. Hardman talking about sort

(47:16):
of the history, and it's about mules and AI. I'm
just this is so interesting reading this in a twenty
twenty five lens. Here's what Hartman said. Hardman says, if
I can get it isolated the audio, I'll put it in.
Otherwise I'll just read it. He goes, damn attics chasing
a cargo high Back in the day, AI did everything.

(47:37):
Deliveries were handled by unmanned vehicles and drones. It was revolutionary,
damn near a singularity, no reason for it not to
take off, but it didn't. People didn't like it when
we took the human element out of the service industry,
so after some consideration, we put it back in, made
jobs no one really needed, and gave them the folks
who couldn't live without them, and from there it's snowballed.

(47:58):
Now we've got cults of cargo ches chasing crazies who
get off on hijacking Shiftment's jackals, always on the lookout
for the next supporter. Yeah, I am very curious how
Kojima and his team feel about this, specifically this lore
set up now in twenty twenty five, when Ai and
you know, the more rabid fan base, those like fascistic, adjacent,

(48:21):
drooling lackeys that champion this kind of thing are one
out to kind of change our lives for the for
the worst, but two specifically making Kojima and his industry
much more at risk. I'm really curious to know what
they thought of it, because there's no way in twenty
sixteen or twenty fifteen, when this was being written. In

(48:42):
twenty fifteen, sixteen seventeen, I mean again, Kojima is not
tapped into a secret society anymore than the rest of
us are. He didn't know this was coming, and I'm
so curious to hear how he feels about this or
if this is in Death Straining two.

Speaker 3 (48:56):
I imagine it's got to be, because even they explored
this actually pretty blatantly. As you go later on in
the game and you unlock you know, the autonomous drones
that start with delivery, And I think that's probably what
you know, set up that level of lore that's like
integrated in there, which is really interesting and it kind
of like helps you as the player develop or something

(49:16):
like that. I agree with you. I think it is fascinating. Again,
you know, he the great Kojima prede chair. Who would
have thought somebody would have a conversation about AI in
twenty twenty, right.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
In more like twenty ten twenty before that. I'm trying
to think when a metal Gear Solid like two came out,
that's why meddle Gear Solid two and three. They really
got crazy in AI. So oh really the fact that, yeah,
we're getting into this now too, and it's just you know,
it's the classic Kojina is a prophet.

Speaker 1 (49:42):
He's a prophet.

Speaker 2 (49:43):
He's here from the future to tell us about what's
gonna happen.

Speaker 1 (49:46):
Well, I think that's that's a bit dramatic, I mean
very much. I know, I know some folks get into
historyonics about it, but like I mean, people have been
talking about AI for a long time, and that was
before the nefarious side of it, a nefarious side of
the capitalists who wield it reared their heads in real life. Right.
I mean as a conceptual idea, it's very neat, it's

(50:08):
very futuristic, and of course depiction is not endorsement. That
is a ridiculous take. Just because Kojima put this in
the game does not mean he himself believes this. But
the way Hardman speaks about it, I mean, listen to
what the language he uses. He dehumanizes first of all,
I mean he dehumanizes them as addicts, which is abhorrent,

(50:30):
but he calls them animals, jackals that are chasing the
next supporter. The way Hardman sets it up is that
AI should have been a net good for humanity, and
just because these people needed jobs, ah, we have to
give it back to him. I don't know where that's
if that's even part of the story at the end.

(50:50):
It's just such an interesting thing to see in a
game in twenty twenty five when we're kind of living
it in a sort of hell world.

Speaker 2 (50:59):
Way, just to round it way back to episode one too, Rick,
I was telling you that you know this this something
that would pop up later on that I felt like
you were kind of tapped into or a part of.
But we had mentioned how initially you were kind of
slower on the game because you were like, I just
keep stopping and picking up these packages and taking them
back and I can't like play through the story. And
I was like, damn, they turned Rick into a mule.

(51:21):
That's crazy. He's addicted to delivering the packages. He's not
going to finish the story.

Speaker 1 (51:26):
Yeah, to their credit, one thing about the mules that
is cool is the AI for them is really good.
I think, And of course that's you know, the irony
is not lost on us there. AI here means something
different than the colloquial use that we talk about in
real life twenty twenty five. The programming that they made
into the enemies, the AI in that respect is very
cool because they are relentless. They will not let you go.

(51:49):
They will track you forever looking for you.

Speaker 2 (51:53):
Yeah, you really got to come ready to fight. Like,
if you show up to a mule camp or stumble
across one by accident without a bola or or some
way to protect yourself, that's not just the strain that
you carry, generally gonna have a bad time if you
don't just take off. So I would agree there, you
don't want to put yourself in a fight with a
group of mules. Just by yourself.

Speaker 1 (52:11):
So we're going into episode three. This is the chapter
for Fragile. We've got to go across the ocean, heading
west over the lake to Lake not City. Fragile owns
Fragile and the Fragile Delivery Express Company outfit whatever. They
own a boat. That's where we're going. Fragile is gonna
team up with us, mainly because she wants to get
back at Higgs. It's unclear why she couldn't just do

(52:34):
that on her own, but I mean, hey, more the merrier, right,
that's the theme of the game, right. Fragile tells us
that in the room at one point, right, it's like,
you know, I'm not alone, I have you. Okay, there
we go, but you know we're doing that. She's still
trying to be friendly towards Sam, constantly offering him a
cryptobiote to eat. He never takes it. But we're teaming

(52:55):
up for now. We're going west with Lea Seidu.

Speaker 3 (52:59):
I will say, just as a quick not note, I
think that, yeah, Lisidot, I think that the relationship between
Fragile and Sam are probably the best performed and the
best acted, and I think arguably like the most interesting
of this core cast here in my opinion, and I
really think that's in episode number three, when you start
learning about her and like what happened to her. I

(53:21):
think it's one of the one of the selling points
for me.

Speaker 1 (53:23):
I agree that that scene is very cool. We're gonna
get to that in Like there's a couple of seconds
here Fragile where she gives us a strand or like
an id badge that's like woven with her blood because
you know, death stranding. And that's going to convince some
of the more paranoid preppers that are against the UCA.
They'll see that she's with us. They'll say, Okay, well

(53:45):
we're cool with her. I guess will join you. But
the interesting thing is a lot of folks call her
a terrorist. Yeah, because you start piecing it together, you
hear that a city got blown up by a nuke
and everybody blames for Joe. We learn about that kind
of in pieces throughout here, but actually, I mean it

(54:07):
comes up here, so I mean we might as well
just talk about the whole thing now, right.

Speaker 2 (54:10):
Yeah, I had no problem hopping into it.

Speaker 1 (54:12):
Oh one thing before we do, I found Conan before
there you go, the boy he is hilarious in here.

Speaker 6 (54:22):
He's Sam Sam Bridges, Welcome to our summer home by
the falls. Oh. I know what you're thinking, Is that
an otter on my head? Or am I just happy
to see you?

Speaker 4 (54:39):
Well?

Speaker 5 (54:40):
Both.

Speaker 1 (54:41):
I don't know what his otterhood does though. I mean
it made it sound like I could go in water quicker,
but that it makes it.

Speaker 3 (54:47):
It makes it if you're standing in water, you're having
to traverse through water, and you're wearing it, that you
won't slip and fall as easy.

Speaker 6 (54:54):
Wear it, and you two can ride the river rapids
without fear, unless you're afraid of looking too sexy.

Speaker 1 (55:03):
Okay. He said that I could like swim like an otter,
and I was like, my guy, I no, no, not
that much really still nothing?

Speaker 6 (55:11):
You know what? Fine, just go just go okay, yeah,
and make the river your friend.

Speaker 2 (55:18):
That'll be fun. I got all these packages on my back.
What do you mean swim?

Speaker 3 (55:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:24):
Let's talk about Fragile in her past. So a while back,
Higgs and Fragile were working together. They were partners of sorts,
making deliveries, keeping things going. Higgs and his guys, for
some reason, sort of hijack their security system. Began giving
Fragile in her people things like bombs and guns to

(55:44):
deliver instead of the life saving medicine. And they were
doing this without their knowledge. That's how Fragile carried a
nuke into Middle Not City. When she's explaining this, she
has a line. You know, everybody's telling you Sam that
she's a tear blah blah blah. So she tells you
the truth and she says, so there.

Speaker 3 (56:04):
You have it.

Speaker 2 (56:07):
Everything's true except for all the lies.

Speaker 1 (56:11):
Which I know what. I know what they were going for.
But my god, is that a clumsy sentence.

Speaker 2 (56:15):
This just feel like one of those great like eighties
or nineties, like almost like an Orno Schwarzenegger type of
line that you movies.

Speaker 1 (56:22):
Yeah, that's such a campy action line. Yeah, it's it's
so funny. And she tells the story in two parts,
so like that's where the first part ends. Then you
go and do more deliveries. I find conan dead man
gets locked out of the BBI records and we're like, hmm,
I wonder why. And then somebody gives you Sam a

(56:43):
special delivery for Fragile. He says, well, you know, it
just so happened to not get scanned into the system. Oh,
I guess they got it mixed up because it's too
fragile and they didn't know if it was from fragile
or from us. Whoopsie doodle, you're gonna have to take
it to or yourself. And it's so clear that this
is like a setup whenever it's happening.

Speaker 3 (57:02):
But that's what I was going to ask you both,
Like did you both not immediately clock that was Troy
Baker that walks up to you with the package.

Speaker 2 (57:09):
The sketchiest guy, not showing your face head like down
with the hat on. I'm like, what in the MCU
is this like Steve Rodgers? If you don't get your
ass over here.

Speaker 3 (57:18):
I know people who use subtlety and they're all cowards.

Speaker 1 (57:20):
Yeah. I didn't necessarily clock that it was him. I
just knew that it was a setup. Like it's so obvious,
you know, this thing just happens to escape bridges system
where that has never happened before, and you're giving it
to me specifically to give the frad Really come on, man,
and Sam just doesn't question it.

Speaker 2 (57:38):
He's like, okay, yeah, that's fine. I'm the man who
delivers you.

Speaker 1 (57:44):
You kind of have a nightmare about it. You dream
about it and you realize, oh shit, that was actually Higgs.
Fragile comes into your room at night because you know
why not, and you open it. It's a nuke. You
know he's done it again. He's doing this to me again.
So you chuck it in to a crater like a
lake nearby. You know that's the only way to get
rid of it. And this is where Fragile gives you

(58:05):
the rest of the story. And admittedly this whole flashback
is pretty cool. So what happens. Fragile got the new

(58:44):
Ken her possession. Like we mentioned before, she was going
to take it to safety, but Higgs and his men
his goons caught her before she could get it to safety.
He strips her down to her underwear Summon's Timefall. Previously,
Fragile had mentioned that he's level seven Dooms, which presume
gives him these abilities just by the way, and he
gives her an ultimatum she can either jump or carry

(59:06):
the nuke stripped through the time fall to the bottomless
pit and chuck it in now when she's when he says,
you can either jump or go through the time fall.
When when he says jump, does he mean like you
can jump and kill yourself or like jump just get
out of here and let me detonate this city. Like
what does he mean by that?

Speaker 2 (59:25):
He's meaning jump like the teleporting that she can do,
but he's like, yeah, you can just get out of here.

Speaker 1 (59:30):
Oh so like teleport out and let me love up
the city.

Speaker 3 (59:33):
Yep, something that I definitely wanted to ask you both.
I wanted to ask about, like the Doom's aspect. This
This is something that Will and I were talking about
and something that Will like mention to me like much
later on in the game, and I think, and I
wonder if it's more of a I didn't bother to
read the emails because I found the emails dreadfully uninteresting

(59:56):
as I was going through this game. And I know
that's just a me thing, and that's okay. But you know,
Will was talking about like the comparison between Fragile and
Higgs and how they're both high Dooms level users and
Fragile here, you know, as you indicate in your notes,
you know, as a level seven or she indicates that
Higgs is a level seven Dooms user and that's why
he has the abilities to control BT's and create the timefall,

(01:00:19):
all of these things that are happening at once, and
I'm just curious, did either of you pick up on
the fact that both of them are high level dooms users,
like naturally or was that something that you kind of
had to like look up or did you discover that
through the notes?

Speaker 1 (01:00:36):
Also, also, Ragile is a high level dooms user.

Speaker 3 (01:00:39):
That's what I understand, or at least higher level than Sam,
because this was a question that I was having as
we were going forward, is that, like, why does Sam
not have any of these abilities other than the fact
of that, like he's a repatriot and whatever that means
to us as the audience at this point in the game. Like,
I'm just curious as too, like if that if it
was apparent to you both that you know, Fragile and

(01:01:00):
Higgs were both special human beings that had these special
powers referred to as the dooms.

Speaker 2 (01:01:05):
It's not apparent like as as this moment of the
game that we're talking about here, But by the time
you finish it and probably have to honestly do some
of your own research afterwards just because of how the
game is, you figure out why certain people are high
level dooms specifically Higgs. There's a reason why Higgs is
high level dooms and it is not natural. I want
to say that Fragiles semi natural. She could have some

(01:01:27):
changes as well that kind of made her. But yeah,
she's higher level dooms of their rick as well, just
because of the teleportation and her also being able to
I don't know if she can see them. I think
she can just send spets kind of like how Sam can.
But that puts her, you know, a couple of clicks
higher than Sam as far as his overall dooms level
or her overall dooms level.

Speaker 1 (01:01:45):
Yeah, I figured she was higher than Sam since she
could do the jumping.

Speaker 2 (01:01:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:01:49):
Now, I kind of figured that there was a reason
Higgs was, you know, so powerful. They just at this
point in time where I'm at, they haven't explained it yet,
and you know, I want to go back to the
emails thing. Nick, I've kind of done a one to
eighty on this. I kind of like when games do this.
There are some other games like Final Fantasy thirteen very

(01:02:09):
famously does this, Zeno Saga does this. Yeah, I kind
of like it. I've grown to like it. I've grown
to like.

Speaker 3 (01:02:17):
It well Will and I also reviewed Pray. We talked
about how Like and I think and I don't know
if you were opposite from me on this, well, I
can't remember in terms of our conversation, but I loved
in that game how diegetically interesting it was to you know,
discover any computer interface that lets you log in and
read the emails of what was happening to the staff

(01:02:39):
at when. And I think it's just because like maybe
that's just more niche like centric towards the genre that
I like, the space sci fi stuff and you know
what goes wrong when you, you know, encounter aliens or
any crazy stuff that happens out there. So it definitely
has to do with like writing, like real in the
time moment writing. It's the same reason why I love

(01:03:00):
reading Resident Evil notes, and it's it's classic because it's
so silly. Every time you pick it up, it's like, oh,
we caged a monster and electrocuted it for eleven days.
I hope it doesn't get out. The next note you
pick up, oh we got out.

Speaker 1 (01:03:12):
And have you seen that meme online where it's like
a fake Resident Evil note And it's like we've attached
AK forty sevens to the arms of a gorilla. We've
replaced its arms with AK forty sevens. We hope it
nothing bad happens, And the next note he escaped.

Speaker 3 (01:03:26):
Yeah, it's great. It's the classic every time. But yeah,
I tried. I did try to read some of these emails,
and I was just like, Okay, I think I'm just
gonna I'm gonna vibe out. I think I'm just gonna
listen to whatever these NPCs say to me whenever I
finish my deliveries.

Speaker 1 (01:03:40):
Well, it's less the emails. It's more of the interviews
where you get like transcripts of really talking and giving
the lore. The emails are just like the fucking people
that are like saying like, hey, thanks so much for
delivering me that thing. Wow, you sure are special. A
million thumbs up. Hey have you ever wondered? Have you
ever wondered about what happened when we die? A thinking emoji? Gosh,

(01:04:02):
isn't that just so interesting? Water emoji?

Speaker 3 (01:04:06):
I love the little water emojis.

Speaker 2 (01:04:08):
I'm like, especially to thinking about it. From the modern
day interpretation, No does does Couch even know like.

Speaker 3 (01:04:14):
Why is he doing?

Speaker 4 (01:04:14):
Like?

Speaker 3 (01:04:16):
I just love it, but he's gotta know what that
means to us he has to. I refuse to believe
that he doesn't know what you're.

Speaker 2 (01:04:23):
Saying there, specifically with the email's nick. I agree the
prey emails are better because a lot of them, if
not the vast majority, are really world building and they're
written out like world building emails. I'm trying to remember
off the top of my head. I know they're good,
and I say they're not good emails, but a lot
of them aren't written like someone would really send an email,
outside of the occasional ones of somebody being snippy with

(01:04:43):
each other. But the reason why I like the emails
in this game, the interviews are better, of course, like
Rick was saying, but I also like the emails just
because of what we just said. There it's some guy
replying back to you, Oh, thanks for delivering that pizza.
I'm so excited to have my sister try some. It's
too bad that she wasn't here to get it. Man,
I had to eat it out by myself. Maybe next time.

(01:05:04):
Thumbs up, thumbs up, smiley face, And I'm like, this
is just this is a real life person sending the
world's goofiest email to me, and I'm just like, oh,
that's cute, thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:05:14):
So back to Fragile and Higgs, so he gives her
the ultimatum. You know, she's again, She's stripped down to
her underwear, guns pointed at her. You can either jump
get out of here. We can blow up this town.
Or you can grab the nuke, run through the time
Fall and dispose of it. Horrible, horrible, difficult choice. But
Higgs does something that is just deliciously sadistic. Here he

(01:05:36):
places a hood over her head in order to preserve
her pretty little face. Quote. He also says, see, I
don't much care for my own face, but yours. I
bet daddy was real proud. Then he licks her face
and he says, I want your face to be a
kind of testament, totally degrading. So this is like, I

(01:05:56):
like this kind of villain twisted to the point of
total moral depravity, forcing And let's not forget Timefall is
going to rapidly age her body, and he's keeping her
face young to sort of show not just to her
but to the world like this is these are the
scars that she bears really really cool and and he

(01:06:20):
says at the end, no matter what you do, you'll
still always be known as the terrorist lunatic that blew
up Middle Not City. Even if you save South Not,
that's already on your record. Nothing you can do will
change that. I love when a villain has you forgive
the language by the balls. I love it.

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
Yeah, she really didn't have much of a choice, I mean,
outside of like you said, is really doubling down on
being a terrorist. But we've already seen from this point
in the game that Fragile is. It's definitely one of
the better characters. She has a good moral compass, and
while she initially got into bed with Higgs before everything
kind of went crazy and he became a complete psychopath,

(01:06:57):
she still really held onto her morals, which led us
to this point here where she has to make that decision,
which we all know the decision she made, because I
think they even showed a little bit earlier with like
the little bit of an age skin.

Speaker 3 (01:07:07):
So yeah, I think that this is definitely is one
of the most or one of the more evocative moments
at this point in the game. It definitely like what
you were saying about the level of depravity and stuff
with a villain like this, I definitely made me feel uncomfortable.
So it exceeded it succeeded on that front. But yeah,
I think it's it's interesting to see where they go from.

Speaker 1 (01:07:28):
Here, and she does. She does it to be to
be clear, she opts to put the hood on and
run through the time fall to dispose of this nuke.
She is, by all accounts a hero, and Sam tells
her as much like back in real life. He says, like,
you're not a terrorist, You're a goddamn hero. I mean,
it's it's true. She in many ways gave what is

(01:07:49):
almost the ultimate sacrifice. Unfortunately, they ruin in my opinion,
and I'm sure this is amazing for some people. They
ruin it with some real campi dialogue here Higgs, like
as she's about to go, Higgs will say, like, they
can slap a sticker on you, but you'll still break
and transit like like as a play on fragile. And

(01:08:09):
then almost in response to that, immediately immediately afterwards, this
is where you know, she starts saying things like I
don't break that easy. And this is like the first
time of many she says, I'm fragile, but I'm not
that fragile, and I hate it. I hate it so much, so.

Speaker 2 (01:08:27):
It's such a fun line.

Speaker 3 (01:08:29):
Stop stop, don't do this to me.

Speaker 2 (01:08:30):
Well, I think accent. The accent really sells it for
me too. I just I just loves Lisadoe's accent, so
I'm not going to pretend to do it.

Speaker 3 (01:08:37):
But yeah, it's just.

Speaker 1 (01:08:38):
All I love it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:39):
I love that line so much. That went into the
line at the very end of the game that Nick
also hates. Those like my two favorite lines in the game.

Speaker 1 (01:08:45):
It's just like, I feel like the writing and and again,
it could be Kojima, it could be his team, it
could be both. I just they they constantly grab you
by the shirt collars and they're like do you get it?
Do you get it? Do you get it? And it's like, yes, dude,
I get it. You're doing a cool thing. Just let
me go, let me enjoy it.

Speaker 3 (01:09:04):
Here's my question, Rick, and I mean, I'm not trying
to be an apologist, but like, do you think that
there's a chance that the localizer just isn't good? Do
you think there's a chance in hell that's that's the reality.

Speaker 1 (01:09:17):
Okay, all right, I really doubt it because Kojima has
like all the money in the world. And also, I
mean something that I learned like I and you know,
this is me kind of egg on my face. I
didn't know that Kojima spoke English because he very rarely does,
but he does, like he's fluent in English. I read somewhere.
It's actually really sad. I read somewhere that he got
made fun of a few times for speaking English and

(01:09:38):
now he just like chooses not to.

Speaker 2 (01:09:40):
Oh that's it.

Speaker 3 (01:09:41):
Yeah, that is really sad. That is really sad. But
I think he also surrounds himself with excellent translators too,
so and I would I would assume because of all
the celebrities that he hangs out with, maybe he does
choose to speak to them in a more private setting potentially,
but yeah, he'll never I doubt he'll ever speak English
on stage.

Speaker 1 (01:09:58):
Yeah, I looked up a few video like he's he's
definitely done it, and his accent's not even that bad.
Like if people were making fun of him, they must
have just been cruel, I ask, Yeah, yeah, that's that's horrible.
But no, like I mean, especially in twenty twenty five,
like localization has come so so so far from like
you know, Ted Woolsey, God bless him. But you know,
things like that inserting Beavis and butt Head into Final

(01:10:21):
Fantasy six. Like these days, Kojima and Sony are gonna
have like the best translators around, you know, like kind
of no question, like like it's not even a question
like Final Fantasy whatever like at this day and age. Yeah,
it's gonna have a great script. Probably probably don't and
don't listen to the chuds on Twitter. They're gonna scream
and cry about metaphor and Unicorn Overlord. Uh, that's what

(01:10:43):
a ridiculous conversation that turned into. And it's always it's
always the people that have anime profile picks and don't
speak Japanese that get so bent out of shape about
this shit.

Speaker 2 (01:10:52):
Let him know, Rick, let him know, talk to the people.

Speaker 3 (01:10:56):
I love Unicorn Overlord. I think it is a great.

Speaker 1 (01:10:58):
Game, but no, it looks but no, I think that
they just I wouldn't be surprised if this game was
written in English like first and then translated to Japanese.

Speaker 3 (01:11:07):
Yeah, they wouldn't surprise me either.

Speaker 1 (01:11:09):
But yeah, that's Fragile's backstory. She is a hero. And
Sam finally accepts the crypto biote from her and eats
it kind of like nicely, and they don't do any
ham fisted things calling it out. They just let it happen,
and it's like, yes, this is how it should be.
This is a very sweet moment. It's very nice. Shortly thereafter,
a chiral spike occurs, a giant tornado comes out, sucks

(01:11:31):
Sam into the sky. Raining debris is everywhere, whales are
flying down, and he's transported somewhere to this like battlefield
and this is like, I mean, one of the best
things about Death Stranding is the imagery. It's just striking.
This is so far one of the coolest scenes in
the game to me. We see this inky black sea,
you know, in the trenches of a battlefield, and this

(01:11:53):
man just rises out of the tar. He's got tendrils
coming out of like umbilical cords attached to these skeleton
soldiers in soldier garb. The skeletons catch on fire, which
is just universally badass, and the man just looks forward
at the camera. He looks totally hostile. It's Mad's Michelson.
It's the guy we've been seeing in our dreams. And notably, notably,

(01:12:16):
he's got a scar on his navel, just like.

Speaker 3 (01:12:18):
Sam, which is super interesting. I think that the all
of the Younger episodes, every every instance of running into
Matt's Michelson, you're treated to some like some of the
most interesting visceral imagery in the game, particularly with where
his character is and what's actually the context of what
he's working through.

Speaker 1 (01:12:38):
Oh yeah, the next one where he's like more quote
unquote himself and like more in control. Holy shit, dude.
Like these episodes and they're very short, too short, action packed,
just the coolest imagery. What happens in this episode, episode
four is Younger. It's super short. You're just navigating to
get out of this battlefield, which I mean, this isn't
a spoiler. It's a beach. This is a beach of

(01:13:00):
some sort. You know, everybody's got their own beach. Something
that we learn about the lure of the beach beaches
is that it's like it's the afterlife, right, Like everybody's
got their own beach. This is something that I think,
I mean, I thought about this in like middle school,
so I'm assuming everybody does, because I don't think I
have ever had an original photo show. But like, you know, beaches,

(01:13:22):
everybody has their own beach when they die. It's like
a sort of purgatory of sorts, and it's influenced. It's
its look is influenced by your beliefs, your ideologies, your religion,
things like that. And this beach is a battlefield for
reasons we hear more about later. But this younger guy
is like in a web of barbed wire and he

(01:13:42):
comes out. Baby dolls are caught like flies in the
in the barbed wire web, and he is directing these
soldiers and coming at you himself, talking about getting the
BB back and trying to kill you. It's crazy. I
love it.

Speaker 2 (01:13:58):
This is I love all of it. Those those sections
with Cliff so yeah, especially that first one, like you mentioned,
come on flaming skeletons. Well I think that's also when
he does like the the shush, like the little what
you see in a lot like oh yeah before ye,
it's like and he sends them all out to fight.
I'm just like, oh, I'm getting chills. I'm getting chills
thinking about it.

Speaker 1 (01:14:18):
Yeah, it is so so cool this, I mean, this
episode ends pretty quickly, but I had fun. This is
like the first real like gun fight you get in
this game too. So does this play like Metal Gear Games?

Speaker 3 (01:14:32):
Then not terribly?

Speaker 2 (01:14:34):
I mean, it plays like a metal Gear game, if
you know, you got caught and then you got to
kind of shoot your way out. But for this one specifically,
it's a lot more of all right, you've been trekking
in the Icelandic wilderness for a couple of hours, here's
some shooty shooty bang bang, because this is before the
at least if you played through the first game before
the director's cut, and someone in the comments can tell

(01:14:55):
me if I'm wrong, but I'm like ninety percent sure.
There wasn't the firing range in the room for the
original game, so if you wanted to go try out weapons,
you had to just go out and try out weapons.
So this is really your first time if you were
playing the twenty nineteen version and be like, all right,
kind of let loose get into a gunfight.

Speaker 1 (01:15:12):
Hmmm. Interesting.

Speaker 3 (01:15:14):
Well how hard did you Did you play on the
hardest difficulty?

Speaker 2 (01:15:18):
Nah?

Speaker 3 (01:15:19):
Did you find this? Okay?

Speaker 2 (01:15:20):
I didn't remember there were like difficulty sliders in this,
and I just played through whatever the game started me on.

Speaker 3 (01:15:24):
That might have been the director's cut thing where they
had that in there, but yeah, I remember this being
pretty fun. I didn't play on the hardest difficulty. I
lowered it down easy. I'm not even gonna you know front,
you know, for our listeners. But it was more of
a time thing than anything else. But I did find this,
you know, I didn't really ever run into any hiccups,
you know, whenever I was going through this, But I

(01:15:45):
definitely felt this like was challenging. It made it definitely
gave me like a ghost recon vibes similar or maybe
you know old splinter cell vibes when I was going
through and like managing those enemies. It's good. It's good stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:15:57):
This episode ends with only like a minute having passed.
Mama will say, like, who is speaking to you via
your cuff links? You tell her what happened, and she's like, Sam,
it's only been like a second since we last talked her.
You okay, So obviously this is concerning. So you're going
to her lab to figure out what's going on. So

(01:16:39):
before we talk Mama, let's talk a couple of things
that happen in this episode that are not related to
her as a person. Kyrillium spikes keep happening, and what
we learn is that these are going to continue happening
and get worse the more we connect people to the network.
At least this is Mama's theory, and she's like, and
this could in turn eventually cause another death stranding, which immediate, immediate,

(01:17:02):
immediate red flags because we are one doing this on
behalf of Bridges slash Omily slash Hardman, and two we
were kind of strong armed into it and not really
given a choice. So if that is true, if we
are connecting things and that is causing spikes, that could
cause another death stranding, sounds like somebody wants the world
to end, and maybe hard Men or Bridges is in
on it. We don't really know, but it's interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:17:26):
I trying to remember that people will Was it the
spikes happening because of the handcuff being like overloaded or broken? So,
which is why another reason for you to go talk
to Mama so that you can try to get fixed up.
I can't remember if they brought that up at that point.

Speaker 3 (01:17:42):
That wasn't my interpretation of the chirl spikes that it was,
you know, I perceive like the kyrillium that's in the
atmosphere as a kind of like network that the UCA
has like learned somehow some way to leverage as a
source of power, and I think that when you connecting
these facilities, it's the it's the usage of that kirillium

(01:18:04):
like going back and forth that's causing that density of
spikes to happen. But there's also I think more more
narrative context that gets revealed later on as to why
these spikes keep happening as well.

Speaker 1 (01:18:15):
It's something to do with the Cupid too, And Mama
was one of the programmers for the Cupid, which is
what's connecting us to the to the network. Yeah, so
I think that's part of it too, that that's kind
of like I mean, it's not like a direct reason,
it's it's kind of like a secondary reason that fuels
the plot forward. I think I might have also just

(01:18:35):
not read the proper files, but that's one thing. Another
thing here, omilely this is something I alluded to earlier.
Omile comes to visit Sam in the night, which, by
the way, you know, it's a chiral gram. That's, you know,
something in this future chiral network internet thing is people
can like you know, appeer via a chiral gram. It's

(01:18:56):
like a like I think Star Wars episode one, you know,
where they're a peer in those like Blue images. You
know what I'm talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:19:04):
Yeah, like the little hologram. Thank you You're my only
hope obi wan Yep, yep.

Speaker 1 (01:19:08):
Yes, exactly exactly. You think after podcasting for so long,
I would be better at talking. But she comes to
visit Sam in the night and she says that, you know,
Higgs came, Higgs took me. Everybody in Edgeont City is dead.
There's vts everywhere. She can't escape, and she's like, Sam,
you've got to keep connecting. You've got to keep connecting. Now,
keep in mind what we just learned about this, that
connecting is going to cause more chiral instability, possibly a

(01:19:31):
new death stranding. Keep that in mind. Also, this is
where Sam in one of the previous flashbacks into Sam's dreams,
we saw like a young aphobex, Sam give Omily a
dream catcher, which she generally wears. He calls it a keepoo,
that's like the word for it, And he says, Omily,
where's your keepoo? And she ignores him. She just keeps talking. Sam,
You've got to connect everybody. You've got to connect us, Emily,

(01:19:52):
your keepoo? Where is it? Sam? I'm They've got me.
I'm here. There are vats everywhere where is your keepoo
Emily and she will not answer him. So one, so
this is not Omily. It's definitely not Omily. It's either
an imposter, it's a prerecorded message, or if it is OMII,
we have to assume that she does not have our

(01:20:13):
best interest at heart. I mean, it seems obvious to me.
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:20:17):
It is definitely one of those those grand mysteries of
the death Stranding game in general. As you're kind of
going through, you see that something's wrong. Obviously, Sam asking
that question and not getting answers kind of gives you
some red flags as long as you're still locked into
the overall story. So it's one of those nuggets you
like put in the back of your head. The game's
going to make me progress regardless. It's not like it's
giving you options to say yay or nay, but you're like,

(01:20:39):
there's something off, and I effectively am not that I
need to, but I am going to get to the
bottom of it just through gameplay.

Speaker 1 (01:20:46):
Right. One last thing, and Will, this is something that
you had mentioned a little bit ago. I'm pretty sure
or maybe it was both of you, but we learn
a little bit more about the BB tech Bridges or
not Bridges. Dead Man dug this up. He wasn't asked to,
and we get the impression that he shouldn't have and
he shouldn't know this. But we learned that the BB
tech was originally had by the separatists, the folks against

(01:21:09):
the UCA. Bridges ended up adopting the tech even though
they didn't understand it, because they wanted to fight back
against the separatists. You know, they were trying to steer
AVTs into our path and Bridges decided to fight fire
with fire, and dead Man thinks that our BB twenty
eight was used for this purpose and that's why he
can't find the service records. Another interesting thing is the

(01:21:30):
BB experiments around the original death stranding were approved and
funded by the US government, which is very fascinating. It
ended up that project with the BB's ended up getting
canned because the public outcry against the concern the ethics
of it all. But it ended up being continued on
the hush hush on the orders of President bridget strand

(01:21:51):
done duh.

Speaker 2 (01:21:53):
It's one of these moments where you're going through and
you're like, oh, no, that the pieces are piecing together.

Speaker 1 (01:21:58):
Government bad question mark.

Speaker 3 (01:22:02):
Yeah. Yeah, the more we find out about it, the
more that's called into question of both Brigitte and amilies,
you know, where they're where their loyalties, where their interests
actually lay in seeing the continuation of like the UCA
in the world to later greater or lesser degrees. I
think it's it's pulled off well here. But yeah, no,

(01:22:25):
it was. I thought that this is the whole the
backstory about like you know, the inception of the BB's
and like what they're using. It's it is interesting to me.
I will say tho, it's like dead Man every time
he's you know, on the scene, Like I like, I
like his character. I just the way that his writing
kind of shakes out just kind of makes me, it

(01:22:45):
makes me want to shake my screen a little bit.
But that's okay, that's okay. We're moving forward and it
kind of it gets us where we need to be.

Speaker 1 (01:22:52):
See. I like him more the more we go on
up until, like, I don't know, we're gonna hear more
about him pretty soon. Let's talk Mama for the moment.
Mama has a BT baby attached to her, So how
about that.

Speaker 2 (01:23:08):
That's the thing, Yeah, that is that is a thing.

Speaker 3 (01:23:11):
It's pretty crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:23:12):
We get a flashback. She explains what happened, which I
thought was pretty effective. I don't know about you two,
but the terrorists hit the hospital that mama was at
when she was going to give birth. She was in
for a C section. The terrorist hit, she was like
crumbled under rubble while pregnant. You don't like see her,
You just see her head under rubble. She's calling for help.

(01:23:35):
She drinks Timefall like to survive, which, like, how that
would that would presumably kill you pretty quick, right right?
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:23:44):
That's that's one of those like it's question marks because
it rapidly ages things that you would think what it
ages your insides, But it's like, I don't know, maybe
if it doesn't touch you on the outside, it doesn't.

Speaker 3 (01:23:55):
If you digest it, it doesn't matter. You know, Kujima,
what a fucking genius, you know, generational talent be or she.

Speaker 2 (01:24:02):
Just has eighty year old organs now and you know
she's walking around with like old smoker lungs.

Speaker 1 (01:24:09):
After every meal she needs a digestive.

Speaker 2 (01:24:11):
Oh goodness, ye just pop a couple of tombs in
some water and call it a day.

Speaker 1 (01:24:15):
Yeah, yeah, So she ends up giving birth in the rubble.
The baby is dead. It's like a BT baby. And
this is kind of like this is explained as we
go forward. It's kind of explained a little bit beforehand.
It kind of just depends on what files you're reading.
But BT's are kind of, oh boy, really making me

(01:24:38):
question whether or not I know this or not. They're dead,
like they are dead life forms that are kind of
crossing over into the world of the living. Is that accurate, yp,
that's correct.

Speaker 3 (01:24:49):
Yeah, that's exactly right.

Speaker 1 (01:24:51):
So when mama's baby died, she gave birth to a BT.
Why it's attached to her is unclear.

Speaker 2 (01:25:01):
It's effectively that kind of halfway point of the BB's themselves.
How they're born to the still mothers, but they have
that connection to the mother's womb by going into that
machine that you put b oh.

Speaker 1 (01:25:14):
Yeah, it's kind of an inverse of that relationship exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:25:17):
It's exactly an inverse. Instead of the you know, brain
dead mom and alive quote unquote baby, it's the dead
baby and a living mom. So it's an inverse of
that bebe that you're already kind of used to.

Speaker 1 (01:25:28):
And here's something interesting, Sam kind of recoils that this.
Sam kind of looks at her differently, and he says,
you know, because she now takes care of this, bebe
like it hinders her work and hinders her life. It's
obviously a physical manifestation of her not being able to
let go of the past, not moving on from grief.
And Sam says, and you're okay with that?

Speaker 3 (01:25:51):
I mean, you know she's gone. You want to live
your life in the shadow of the death.

Speaker 1 (01:25:57):
Her response to him, she says.

Speaker 2 (01:26:00):
You, of all people, you chose the dead over the living.

Speaker 3 (01:26:05):
Why else would you be here?

Speaker 1 (01:26:06):
What does that mean?

Speaker 3 (01:26:08):
What does it mean? Precisely?

Speaker 2 (01:26:10):
You find out later. I know I feel like I'm
saying that a million times. But that's that's how this
game unravels, unfortunately, is like, yeah, they throw out lines
and you'd be like, what the hell is even that?
And then in ten hours you'll be like, oh, okay, okay,
that's what that was.

Speaker 1 (01:26:25):
What I like about it is they drop that there
and they don't linger on it, like, they don't make
it a big like what does that mean? They just
move on, which that is good writing. Just drop that
and move on. Let the audience think about it, like
don't grab us by the shirt collar again and say
did you catch that? Yeah, they just move on.

Speaker 3 (01:26:41):
Yeah, they didn't have Norman Rita stare at the camera
and do a little wink when they were when they
were going over that.

Speaker 1 (01:26:46):
They didn't they they didn't have Norman Rita say and
this is what you mean, and Mama gives a thumbs
up and a little heart comes up and you get that.

Speaker 3 (01:26:56):
I will say though, that Mama, I think is arguably
one of my favorite characters of this cast here. I
think that she is pulled off really well, like what
you were saying with a flashback with her being under
the rubble, I think also like I think her character
is one of the most important characters to like the
thesis of the game that Kojima is trying to drive

(01:27:19):
home to us about like connectivity and like what it
means to be connected, and I think it's I think
it's a relatively interesting conversation. Like you said as well, Rick,
is that hanging onto the past, hanging on to things
that aren't necessarily healthy for us to be able to
live in the present or live in this future. And
I think that that is one of the more effective things,
especially because of the fact that like it leads to

(01:27:42):
her being able to give Sam another tool, another viscera,
like the actual act of like what her character is.
There's a lot of show and not as much tell
in this chapter with Mama and and I really appreciated
that because that was has not largely been the experience
up to this point.

Speaker 1 (01:27:58):
And if you don't mind me saying, so, Margaret Qually,
she's a pretty lady.

Speaker 2 (01:28:03):
She's so fine, lady. She's correct, fine, correct.

Speaker 1 (01:28:07):
She's so fine. Just kidding, let's get let's get back
to the story. We respect women around here. I respect
them so much. I'm too afraid of cars VR, but
I do.

Speaker 2 (01:28:17):
Like, but we're talking about Mama story. I think Mama
story was just like how we just recently talked about
a fragile story as well. Every time I get a flashback,
I know, very often. You know, flashback is you know,
the writer's you know, cowardly way of explaining story some
some something. Uh. I love all the flashbacks in this game.
Anytime you take me back a couple of years to
be like, what was this person doing to kind of

(01:28:37):
make them the way that they are? I feel like
it hits in this game every single time, and Mama's
especially being such a holding onto the past story and
then her workstation, her her laboratory that she's in is
the destroyed hospital where you know she gave birth to
the BT baby, and she's like, yeah, I'm still here,
Like effectively walking and living around your trauma is just

(01:29:00):
really intense for me. So I just really like her character.

Speaker 1 (01:29:02):
A lot, and she's got more trauma that we learn about.
Here we meet Mama's sister, Lochna. I think Kojima and
his team did something super cowardly with this, but we
meet Lockna. Mama's real name is Malingan. By the way,
Mlingan and Lochna. Lockna is very against the UCA. They
just so happened to be twins, like literally identical twins.

(01:29:25):
They just so happened to both the scientific geniuses. They
both have dooms. You'll see what I mean by this
is extremely cowardly. In a minute. Here here's what happened.
Neither Locna nor Mama can have children. Lochna's partner died
and with her eggs and his frozen sperm that they
happened to have for some reason, they put the baby
inside of Mama, who carried it to term when it

(01:29:47):
died in the accident, she couldn't bring herself and will
please correct me on this if I'm wrong or Nick,
I mean, either of you can. She couldn't bring herself
to tell Lockna about it. And now with these new
cordu us that Mama gives to Sam, Sam is going
to break the bond, the umbilical cord between Mama and

(01:30:07):
the little BT, to give Mama closure and to allow
her to move on. She asks Sam to do it.
It is Ah, It's clearly a really difficult choice for her.
It's really interesting. The way they use tears in this
game is very interesting. It kind of becomes normalized because
you learn that it's a chiral reaction. But when you
turn here and Mama like tells Sam to cut the

(01:30:30):
cord and she's crying, I don't know. I thought that
was extremely moving because I mean, you know that that's
not a chiral reaction, that's true, that's genuine, that's.

Speaker 2 (01:30:38):
Really actual tears. So now it's good. I just I
love both of those characters there, and then sar Nick
to to catch it. But just for like the more
that backstory on Malagnan and Lakna. I'm sure I butchered
Malignana a little bit there, but the backstory is interesting.
I love that they're the twins. I know you said
it's it's a cowardly based on what happens next, but
I think it just really sets it up well, specifically

(01:30:58):
because of how they talk about that twin connection. You know,
that's so common in media that we hear about. But yeah,
they could always, you know, hear each other's thoughts and
know what the other person's thinking and do all that.
But after the BT incident with the hospital, that connection
was severed. So she just has been not only separated physically,
but mentally and emotionally and spiritually from her sister since

(01:31:21):
having the baby. And that's why it's another reason why
it's so strong and such a tearful reaction from her
when the quarter is cut.

Speaker 1 (01:31:29):
It's another avenue that they're going down towards the reconnecting everybody. Right,
They're not just reconnecting society, they're reconnecting personal relationships, familial relationships.

Speaker 3 (01:31:39):
Yeah, something that I did want to ask you, Rick
in something that I haven't you know, had the opportunity
to really research myself, because that was One of the
the things that I was really curious about from an
imagery perspective, and maybe something that I'm expecting too much
or maybe reading into too much, is like the narrative
use or the thematic usage of tears in media. Is

(01:32:00):
there any archetypal symbolism behind the usage of tears, because
it's not only represented in characters Sam is crying all
the time as a reaction to being exposed to chiro matter,
like almost every single core character in every other cut scene,
the camera will shift, they'll turn their face and you'll
see a single tear like run out of the side
of their cheek, and they don't seem visibly stressed, which

(01:32:21):
is what makes Lockna or rather yeah, Lockna's experience here
so much more viseral as she's going forward, you know,
like you with what's happening and what she's asking Sam
to do, When people are experiencing these spikes of emotions,
like it really does call out. But I was curious
to see if, like there's any actual symbolism, like does
it mean something like a shifting of a shifting of

(01:32:43):
thought patterns, or a shifting of emotions overall, Because it's
also represented in Higgs like, and you see this as well,
and death stranding too, and I'd be curious to see
what that actually like means for him. But it's almost
like his face is painted like and he's permanently has
like tears coming down his face. It's curious.

Speaker 1 (01:33:00):
Well, I admit that I did not think about this,
which is, you know, I'm kind of not doing my
due diligence here. I did not meet the bear expectations.
So I'm just thinking of this on the spot, So
it's probably wrong, But we're thinking about this new society
where isolation is the norm. Kojima has taken a natural

(01:33:23):
bodily response that is associated with bouts of emotion and
has turned it into this very scientific, very cold thing.
It plays with the idea of isolation to create a
society that is really cold and really calculated and uncaring.
It's stripping the human experience out of our current world.

(01:33:48):
And I think I mean to me that it plays
with that in tandem and it creates a reality here
where tears do not represent emotion at all. They're just
something that happens as a reaction to this chiral density.
You know, we're in an isolated society. Everybody's just by
themselves and we're not. It's not a big deal, you know,
everybody for themselves. We don't have that human connection anymore,

(01:34:10):
and people just cry. It doesn't mean anything. So when
we see Mama crying and we can assume it's for real,
that it's powerful, precisely because it goes against the world
that kojimas set up. I don't know if that means anything.
I don't know if if that's a good take or not. Again,
I haven't really thought about it too deeply, but that's
that's kind of my initial read on it.

Speaker 3 (01:34:33):
Yeah, this comes from Michael stern On contemplating archetypes and
the judge and the tier, and he has to say
here is that tears are droplets of letting go. Often
the tier is what is needed in order for a
situation to break into its next level of intimacy and vulnerability.
I thought that was just interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:34:53):
Droplets of letting go is a beautiful phrase. Yeah, and
that's exactly what's happening here. I mean, Mama is making
the decision to let go. She's making the decision to
no longer hold on to this in some ways selfish,
in some ways very human idea of the past. She
is now letting go, and she lets go very literally

(01:35:14):
because this eventually kills her. Before it does, we get
into our second Boss fights with Higgs. Boss Fight with Higgs.
It's it's the same as before, except it's a lion
instead of a kraken. He just kind of shows up
and you have to fight him with Mama on your back, which,
by the way, you transport her in a body bag
for some reason.

Speaker 2 (01:35:32):
Yeah, this is like when you had your mom at
the beginning. I think that's just I suppose the proper
way to transport people slash bodies is in actually like mummified.

Speaker 1 (01:35:41):
Just like with your mom, Just like with the Chiral
Artist whenever you take her to her boyfriend.

Speaker 2 (01:35:46):
The girl Yeah, yeah, the girlfriend to the boy. That
was a fun one. I love that, And like you
can see her little face that's sticking out.

Speaker 3 (01:35:52):
If we have the technology to have people be in
these be in these little wrapped bags and get on
Sam's bad, why can't they just wear a suit and
run behind Sam.

Speaker 2 (01:36:04):
I mean they probably can, but if you get grabbed
by a BT, it's all over. They can't see bts.

Speaker 3 (01:36:09):
But that's that's his responsibility, right, you know, like you
avoid the bts with the people, right.

Speaker 2 (01:36:14):
Yeah, But the saying is, Sam, if I'm leading you
as a shepherd through BT infested territory, instead of having
you behind me or start to freak out when you
see flowers melting because of BT, is stopping around and
having you then run off in a direction and get
blown up, I'll just stick you on my back and
that way, wherever I go, you go, I go, you go.

Speaker 3 (01:36:33):
I feel like we've done this in so many other
games though, and it literally is just an AI. It's
like an NPC that's falling on And don't get me wrong,
this is unique to death stranding. You don't really do
this in almost any other game, So like shout out
to Kojima for that, But just like you know, thinking
about this realistically on like what we would be doing
in a world like this, like why are they not
They could be in their own little vehicle or something

(01:36:53):
like that, and then when a BT comes around, Sam
just deals with it.

Speaker 2 (01:36:56):
That's what I don't know, It makes sense for me.
I feel like that makes a lot of sense, especially
what you talked about there with the AI, because we've
all seen even in good games the last of us.
Other games that have like an Ai Companion, as good
as they look and as good as they do, we've
all had instances of them running through or right in
front of an enemy and the game has to ignore
them otherwise you know you're gonna get pissed off because

(01:37:19):
the computers making a mistakes. Another super common what dead rising.
Whenever you have to move characters from like one spot
of the map to the other, they all do the
stupidest thing they can think of. So if I'm in
a game where you running into a BT causes a
void out, can you imagine how pissed people would be
if Yeah, I was doing really well and then this
character stepped to the right and it got blown up.

Speaker 3 (01:37:38):
Yeah, but like you know from the from the lore
of this game though, I mean, you're traversing over miles
and miles and miles of land and not of which
all is BT territory. So like if your thing pops up,
you would think it would be a situation where it's like, okay,
this person would be would clock it and recognize, oh,
time to get on Sam's back. Let's go do this
so we can manage this situation and I can come

(01:37:58):
out safe, and it just seems like so much more
of an efficient thing for them as an individual to
like follow Sam around that way. You know, hypothetically you
could carry more cargo, whatever the case may be. I
don't know, it's just in my mind it seems it
seems interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:38:13):
What do I know?

Speaker 1 (01:38:15):
It's pretty much what I say every time we record
one of these. So you can either I don't know

(01:38:44):
if you can escape the BT. I think you have
to fight it. I'm not one hundred percent sure, but
you get around it either way. I mean, you're taking
Mama back to Lachna to reunite the two of them.
I had something really hilarious happen here where I was
driving on a trike and as you're going, Mama will
start opining about a tender backstory. She talks about being

(01:39:04):
conjoined twins with Lockna, about how so they're so close,
And as she's talking about this, my battery was running out,
and Sam would just interject every now and then with
like low on juice here, and She'll be like, you know,
and we've always had this connection, and He'll be like
getting real, low gonna run out. It came off of
being like, all right, shut up, now, shut up.

Speaker 2 (01:39:25):
Now, his social battery was running out. He's like, I
am tired of talking to you.

Speaker 1 (01:39:30):
You you take her back, you reunite them, and Mama
dies here and and here's where I said that it
gets a little cowardly, because what happens is Mama's spirit
reunites with Lockna. The two of them literally become one.
And I mean that literally, like they are the same actor.
They always have been there both scientific Geniu says, they

(01:39:52):
both have dooms when there's when you speak to Locna later,
she says things that only Mama could know. And Sam's like, Mama,
is that you? And She's like, huh, you got me, Sam.
You know now you won't have to catch Lockna up.
You know, we've joined, we're together, We've become one, you know.
And and they spoon feed you the connection angle too,
they say, quote, no point in trying to draw a

(01:40:14):
connection lingen Lochna, We're all connected, Sam. Remember that it's
it's just too much for me. And this also goes
along with like my idea that creators are afraid to
let their characters die. You know, I can't. I don't
want to spoil anything. But like certain j RPGs from
the Supernintendo where the main character dies and you can

(01:40:37):
resurrect them, it's like, really, it's just I just find
it really cowardly.

Speaker 3 (01:40:41):
I don't know, it's okay if people die, you know,
And I think that we need to get all more
a little bit more comfortable with that. I think that,
like my the biggest, the more of an issue that
I had with this fact is that what is the
narrative reason for having Mama die? Like, there's literally no
other reason than.

Speaker 1 (01:40:58):
Just like to make Gamus say the players cry, Yeah,
you know, that's that's kind of it, to make the
players cry, to make them feel something, and to do
the connection angle, yeah, you know, and to be clear
if they I think what makes it cowardly is the
fact that it's she functionally doesn't die because she is
replaced by an identical copy.

Speaker 3 (01:41:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:41:18):
And the big thing is that they the connection is
the big angle for it. And we had talked about
before they had that spiritual connection because they were originally conjoined, separated,
removed and then now this is the act of them
coming back together. So that's why I thought it was
really nice, especially like the whole they had two different
colored eyes the whole time, and then once they finally
have that merge, they get the heterochromia, so each of

(01:41:41):
them has well you know, each of their eyes are
both there on locknow now. So I always thought that
was pretty interesting. But the big thing, too, is, aside
from the connectivity part, is that these two characters. You know,
you had Mama, who is effectively with that BT the
whole time, should have died in that rubble and didn't,
but having her last just long enough to get back

(01:42:03):
to her twin, make that reunite and reuniting moment, make
that connection and then effectively dying, but like you said,
not effectively because we're all together here, you know, down here,
we all float. I thought it was sweet. It resonated
with me, but I understand where you're coming from as
far as being like, oh no, it's like we never
lost lot, never lost Mama. But it's like, really, you're

(01:42:25):
kind of getting the best of both worlds.

Speaker 1 (01:42:27):
And again, you know, just just to Steelman Kojima again,
that's what he's going for. He's not going for intellectual rigor,
he's not going for exhaustive interpretation. He wants to make
his players feel something, And I mean I don't mean
to speak for him, but as far as that, as
far as he's concerned, it seems if he does that,

(01:42:47):
then it's a success. And he has clearly done that.
You know, even me who like some of this, yeah,
doesn't work at all. I mean, the Mama scenes were
really touching, you know, I felt something so mission accomplished
for him.

Speaker 3 (01:43:03):
What did you think about their usage of the ha
and the ka in the Egyptian spiritual language that they
were going into that.

Speaker 1 (01:43:12):
I want to save that for next time, Okay, if
that's cool, partly because I completely ran out of time
and did not do the research into that that I
wanted to, but that is a good cliffhanger for next time.
I do want to open next time talking about the
Ha and the Ka and how they're incorporating it into
Death Stranding. Sounds great, but that brings us into chapter six,

(01:43:34):
Episode six, dead Man. I'm going to learn more about
dead Man over the next two chapters. This opens dead
Man takes the Bab because it's getting too attached to
this side of the world, right it's turning into it's
getting too attached to Sam. Remember, it's just a tool
according to dead Man. But now Sam is loving it
like a real baby, and it's starting to grow, it's

(01:43:55):
gaining weight, it's self actualizing, the whole nine. It's turning
into a real little baby boy or you know, baby thing.
Sam protests a little bit, but dead Man just takes
it and he says he's gonna fix it. Sam. That's
kind of stand throughout the whole game. He protests a
little bit, but then he just rolls over. This scene
is also really interesting. I laughed at this at first.
How they set this up. Dead Man walks into your shower.

Speaker 3 (01:44:18):
Oh my god, he s in the game closed scene
in the game.

Speaker 1 (01:44:22):
And he just waits for you to come up, and
then he ushers you in, gets in with you, puts
his hand like by your head, and gets up to
you like he's about to make out with you, like
get real hot and heavy, and he turns the shower on. Well,
is this supposed to be funny? This was hilarious.

Speaker 3 (01:44:37):
It was. It made me extremely uncomfortable, but I thought
it was absolutely just hilarious. I was just like, what,
girml del toro, what are you doing to poor Norman?
Readis leave that kid alone? Leave him alone?

Speaker 1 (01:44:49):
It is very intense though. He flips it on like
and they're both still fully clothed. But he does this
because this is the only way they can talk without
like the her voice is being recorded and like Hardman
potentially hearing them, you know, because that's that set up
early on. Remember, like unless Sam is showering or taking
a shit, like, they can monitor everything he's doing, like

(01:45:12):
total surveillance.

Speaker 3 (01:45:12):
State, right, Yeah, no privacy.

Speaker 1 (01:45:15):
He wants to talk to us in here, he says.
Despite the BB's being banned and discontinued after the government
experiments caused a void out, the testing continued on orders
of President Strand. She wanted to use them for the
chiral network to facilitate travel to the beach. And now
the question is what the hell is Die Hardman's part
in this. Nobody knows anything about him. Sam doesn't even

(01:45:37):
know what he looks like. This is the first time
they acknowledge his mask. He's like, you know, he's been
wearing that since I met him. Nobody knows what his
part in this is. And nobody knows why Bridges is
being so shifty and secretive about everything. So dead Man
is starting to doubt this organization.

Speaker 2 (01:45:53):
Government badment, government still bad question Mark, it's one of
the wait.

Speaker 3 (01:45:59):
A minute, are we the bed? He's yeah. I will say,
you know, something that I thought was really interesting about
this in that we didn't necessarily touch on earlier, but
like the this part of the game is particularly cool
because of first of all, what it does to the
player digetically in terms of what they kind of requires
you to do with dead Man taking the BB so

(01:46:20):
he can work on them. I'm sorry if you didn't
already cover that, Rick, but not something that I did
want to underscore and kind of highlight as a personal
favorite or like a really interesting moment for me and
of kind of like aligning with Sam and really warming
up to him as a character. Norman redisplays his character
as incredibly stoic, similar to what we were talking about
with with Troy Baker, you know, playing Higgs, like you know,

(01:46:43):
there's a conversation on whether or not you know this
was the interpretation of the actor or the actual writing itself.
Norman Readis typically does play you know, dark and quiet,
you know, strong, silent type.

Speaker 1 (01:46:53):
Yeah, he was born to play Sam Porter Bridges and
what's his face from The Walking Dead? Like I swear
he was born for these roles.

Speaker 3 (01:47:02):
Yeah, one hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (01:47:04):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:47:04):
But I one of the things that I thought was
the most powerful, and that happens naturally in something that
I love when games do this, and this has occurred
in the other games. But there is a fondness, There
is a relationship for me between Sam and the BB
throughout like this entire like all the way up through
these chapters up until chapter six, and like you start

(01:47:25):
forming an actual connection and Sam similar to what you
were saying when you were driving with Mama. He's talking
to the BB sometimes being like yeah, all right there, kid,
especially when you get in really intense stressful moments with
a BT and then you have to like use that
mechanic to suthe the BB and like rock it back
and forth, and you know, or even when you're in
the room and you tap the actual container that BB

(01:47:49):
is in and you're like, you're you're kind of worn out,
aren't you. It's like the small things that he says
to BB, like over time that make you realize that
Sam is like very attached to this child and he
does see it like a child, not piece of equipment.
And I thought that's like a it was one of
the really strong moments because it was a huge visceral
reaction that I had when Girmald del Torre was like,
I'm going to take this bb and I'm going to

(01:48:09):
augment it back to its default settings, and I'm like,
what the fuck, No, you're not. And then Sam has
that same moment with dead Man where he's like struggling
with the actual container of bibe, and I thought that
that was really well done.

Speaker 1 (01:48:22):
I do admit that that doesn't work for me because
I didn't really I'm gonna sound like a monster. I
did not really interact with the baby too much. You know,
if they got did it toso not toxoplasmosis, Gandhi, that's
the cat poop thing? What toso anemia?

Speaker 3 (01:48:38):
Something like that from the bets, you just let it,
you just let it rock out.

Speaker 1 (01:48:42):
You just I didn't. I mean I went back. If
it had that happen, I just I don't care. You know,
that's that's a me failing though, that's a Rick failing.
That's not a Kojima and team failing. That's that's a
RIC problem. Yeah, we've established that in the first episode
that these babies creep me out, don't worry Rick.

Speaker 3 (01:48:58):
Everybody knows you don't like babies.

Speaker 1 (01:49:01):
That's true. That's true.

Speaker 3 (01:49:02):
I don't k the famous baby hater.

Speaker 1 (01:49:05):
Oh my god, that's totally. That's totally why I'll never
have children. It's not because I'm a gross monster. There
was a there was a running joke that we had
early in the show where we would like just say
a random thing on the show and we would be like, yeah,
this is a pro blank podcast, you know, Yeah this
is a pro kojima podcast, or yeah, this is a
pro whatever podcast. And there is some early episode that

(01:49:27):
Mikey from the Discord always references where and it was
in context we were like, yeah, this is a pro
shaking babies podcast. And Mikey brings it up every now
and then.

Speaker 2 (01:49:38):
He won't he won't let it go.

Speaker 3 (01:49:41):
That's such a Mikey thing to key in on.

Speaker 1 (01:49:43):
Yeah, Mikey the person that regularly responds to Discord messages
from like twenty twenty two. This episode ends, We're going
to go into another episode with Clifford Unger. Episode seven
is titled Clifford. We're going back to this remote cabin
where dead Man is doing testing on lou By the way,
I love how they introduce this, Sam just calls the

(01:50:06):
beb Lou. At some point. They don't focus on it,
they don't make a big thing out of it. He
just calls him Lou. Dead Man doesn't even like acknowledge it.
He just keeps going. But it plants that seed in
your ear, you know, And now you're like, what is
what do you mean by that? And when you get
up to the cabin to get the baby back, remember
Mama told us, you know this is these kyrol spikes,

(01:50:26):
these supercells are gonna keep happening. We get up there,
wouldn't you know it? Another tornado, Another thing sucks us
into the sky. This time dead Man and Sam are
both in there with the baby and Unger is decked
out in full army gear. He's smoking a sig. He
looks cool as hell. He is ready to sit up.
He is gonna tear us up.

Speaker 2 (01:50:44):
This.

Speaker 1 (01:50:44):
I love this chapter so much. It's so good.

Speaker 3 (01:50:46):
Close enough, welcome back, solid Snake.

Speaker 2 (01:50:48):
There you go. Save that for part two.

Speaker 1 (01:50:51):
I think let's just talk about this a little bit
and we'll we'll pick up in this episode for the
final episode. We'll pick up in this chapter for the
final episode. No, these are episodes. God damn, I'm so confused.

Speaker 6 (01:51:03):
I can't do it.

Speaker 1 (01:51:04):
Good, thank you. The silence is really encouraging.

Speaker 2 (01:51:10):
Oh, he's got to cut it.

Speaker 1 (01:51:11):
This is another battle with Cliff Hungered. Uh, it's much
harder this time. I lost I think twice on this time.
You ring up dead Man. Dead Man has the BB.
Dead Man activated the BB despite like not liking them
very much, because you know he doesn't want to die.
You gotta go out. You got to go back and
get him because you know Hunger is looking for the BB.

(01:51:33):
Hunger doesn't really care about Sam or dead Man. He
wants the BB back. So you're like, you know, dead Man,
you gotta hang tight, and dead Man will just start
talking about why his life is hard, and I'm like, dude,
now is not the time, my guy.

Speaker 5 (01:51:45):
He's like, Sam, it's not easy being me, no wife,
no children, no friends, and so I sought solace, saw
a company in the dead over time. I made them
a part of me, seventy percent of who I am today.
But meaning you has opened my eyes. You're very special, Sam.

Speaker 1 (01:52:10):
And I'm just like, my guy, you have got grenades
and health fire raining down on you.

Speaker 2 (01:52:14):
Now is not the time, exactly the time, Rick, This
is when you let your soul bear when you're on
the verge of dead maybe.

Speaker 1 (01:52:21):
I mean, everybody's getting a little emotional here. Dead man
is getting emotional. He's getting attached to the baby. He
kind of doesn't want to give him back to Sam
for a second.

Speaker 6 (01:52:28):
There.

Speaker 1 (01:52:29):
It's it's really quick, but like you know, he kind
of protests a little bit, He holds onto him a
little bit, but you know, you do get him back,
you take on cliff This ends with Sam and Clifford
like scrapping fistycuff style a little bit. Sam grabs his
dog tags and Sam gets a really good look at it.

(01:52:49):
It's very clear that Sam can read it, but we
the audience can't. I love when I love when you
know movies do that. I love when they make it
clear that the audience doesn't know something, but the characters do.

Speaker 3 (01:53:00):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:53:00):
That's is that dramatic irony or is that when the
audience knows and the characters don't. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:53:05):
I feel like that's the latter. Yeah, when the audience
knows and the characters don't. But yeah, levels it's like
very similar to the Tarantino when like the trunk. What's
in the trunk? Right? And is you know, all the
characters see it, but you're just left to wonder, like,
what the hell are they actually looking at?

Speaker 1 (01:53:17):
Vincent? We happy?

Speaker 2 (01:53:19):
Yeah, we happy? Oh, we happy.

Speaker 1 (01:53:22):
That's such a good movie. I haven't seen that in Ages.
Man's let's end with this, Let's end with Sam's backstory revealed.
You get back to the private room, you successfully get
out of the World War two beach. Dead Man admittedly this,
this is clumsy, as you know dialogue. He's explaining Sam's
backstory to Sam, and it's it's for the benefit of

(01:53:43):
the players. But dead Man says that he looked up
some records and it doesn't name Sam, but it's very
obvious it's Sam. Somebody from Bridges and employee from Bridges.
Their pregnant wife got caught in a void out and
the employee tried to get to her in time but couldn't.
Everybody at Bridges died. Everybody there died except for that

(01:54:04):
Bridge's employee, and dead Man says people wanted answers. The
man hit his wife's body on purpose. The only survivor
was the only suspect. He was easy to blame and
people did, and pretty soon they were blaming Bridges too.
The man felt responsible, so he left, and Sam says
didn't happen because, like you both said, he's the laconic,

(01:54:25):
rough and tough guy. He doesn't talk about his feelings
or his past. But uh dud. One thing that, oh god,
one thing that I have a question here, like do
people think that the void out was intentional? That happened there?
That's how it made it sound right like they're blaming Sam,
Like do they think it was his fault? Like what
would that accomplish?

Speaker 2 (01:54:42):
Yeah, generally void outs in a city because it's gotten
to the point where people know what's going on. And
we saw at the beginning with the whole corpse patrol.
You know, somebody dies, kills himself, what have you. It's
almost like a second nature. Okay, get the corps disposal
out here, will take him out. So if something does
that like that does happen in a city, generally someone
thinks that it's done on purpose. Not that necessarily a

(01:55:03):
dead person wanted to do it, but it could even
be like, hey, there's some terrorists out here causing trouble
and doing issues.

Speaker 1 (01:55:09):
Okay, Okay, that that was the only part that confused
me a little bit, like like, yeah, I feel for
Sam and you know, by the way, that's why Sam
is so attached to this Beebe. Sam was going to
name his unborn son Lou. That's why he calls Bebe Lou.
And I love that they let that slip, like just
and they didn't even call it. Like when this team

(01:55:30):
wants to do good writing, you know, and good what
does that even mean? What does it mean? When Rick
Firestone of Nowhere.

Speaker 3 (01:55:38):
Means a lot to me? It means a lot to me, Rick.

Speaker 1 (01:55:40):
Yeah, it means a lot to you and like four
people that listen to this show, but you know, you
know what I mean, right, Like like who's to say
what's good and what's not? Like when this team wants
to do something subtle, they can. It's just they really
like deploying the like cheesy action movie like nineties grab
you by the shirt collar like that, that kind of dialogue.

(01:56:01):
They love to do it, but they can. They are
capable of doing really cool moments like that when he
just says Lou and dead Man keeps going and the
player is like, hold on what he said? What now?
And then you you learn here Oh, he's facing horrific
trauma because his unborn son and his wife died, Like,

(01:56:21):
oh holy shit. Actually, that's why he left everybody. That's
why he walked away, because he couldn't bear to confront
that horrible truth and everything reminded him of them.

Speaker 2 (01:56:32):
And just as a clear up there, it's a his
daughter was the unborn daughters Louise. Lou is just short
for Louise.

Speaker 1 (01:56:38):
Do not think that they clarify that as far as
I am in the game.

Speaker 2 (01:56:41):
Actually, ye, I think it's up to that point because
he mentions that a little bit there. I don't think
they say it.

Speaker 3 (01:56:46):
They say it at the very end of this game.
Will I'm like ninety percent sure they don't reveal the
full name until the end of the game, Okay, I.

Speaker 1 (01:56:54):
Mean, I mean the gender of the baby doesn't matter.
I mean, the baby was going to be born, and
the baby was going to be name lou The point is,
like Sam had progeny that he was going to unleash
onto the earth. He was going to be a papa,
you know, Papa Sam Nick. This is twenty twenty five.
We don't gender is not that important.

Speaker 2 (01:57:13):
Man.

Speaker 3 (01:57:14):
Well, you're right, I'm zero for three zero for three.

Speaker 1 (01:57:20):
I'm just kidding, buddy, I'm just kidding. I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 (01:57:22):
I didn't mean to handle in the group chat. People
are going to post about me in the venting in
shack posting channel.

Speaker 1 (01:57:30):
No, I can't let you get canceled. Then, who's going
to send me a funny Japanese women on Instagram?

Speaker 2 (01:57:36):
Real? Well, my first time I heard about this, hold on,
hold on.

Speaker 3 (01:57:42):
There are a lot of Japanese comedians, and only Rick
is able to share in this, in this algorithmic surprise
that I get to delight in.

Speaker 1 (01:57:50):
That's true. I wwwww every time. It's a little joke
for our Japanese speaking friends. Anyway, Wow, what a way
to end this episode. But that's what we'll pick up
next time. We'll finish up. We're gonna learn about dead
Man's past. We're gonna learn about Hartman and his hilarious
shtick of giving a thumbs up to the camera, looking

(01:58:12):
at the camera and giving a big like like score
on the screen, which you know, I for as much
as I poo poo some of the writing that cracked
me up, Like I was laughing out loud by the
time that scene was over. We'll pick up there next
time we'll get to the end of the game. The
game really takes off from here, and I again, I

(01:58:33):
want to reiterate, I'm having a much better time. I'm
having a really good time. I think I will replay
this game when Death Stranding two comes to PC, I
will replay this part one on PC. Then I'll probably
forget about Death Stranding two, even though I bought it,
and then in like a year's time, I'll then i'll
play it. But yeah, no, I'm having a good time.
I'm really glad that you guys agreed to do this

(01:58:54):
with me.

Speaker 3 (01:58:54):
Take care. I am curious though, Like, is there any
reason why you would prefer to way for a PC
as opposed to just playing on your PlayStation.

Speaker 1 (01:59:01):
No, mainly just because, like, if I'm gonna replay it,
I want to give it some time, and you know,
I don't want to dive into Death Straining too right now.
And if I do it on PC, then I'm gonna
like do a really really long play through where I like,
do as much building as possible, do as much deliveries
as possible, Like I'm gonna really go hard with it.

Speaker 3 (01:59:22):
Yeah that checks out.

Speaker 1 (01:59:23):
But yeah, that's where we'll pick up next time. Thank
you folks for sticking around and listening, and thank you
Will and Nick for sticking around and talking this. This
has been a lot of fun. I hope you guys
are having as much fun as I am, like as
good of a time as I am going through this.
I know I'm asking a lot of time from the
two of you, so it really it really means a
lot that you guys are willing to do this and

(01:59:43):
hang and chat so so much. This has been really,
really exciting, really fun.

Speaker 3 (01:59:48):
Yeah, no worries at all.

Speaker 4 (01:59:49):
Rick.

Speaker 3 (01:59:50):
Anytime I get to shake a baby alongside next of you,
I'm having a great day.

Speaker 1 (01:59:57):
So listeners probably heard about you two last time Friday
night game cast. Anything new on that front since we spoke.

Speaker 3 (02:00:06):
Last Yeah, absolutely absolutely. We actually just published this past Friday,
our episode collaboration that we did with No Small Games.
We reviewed Coffee Talk episodes one and two, and that
is on all podcasting services as of right now. I
actually need to go in and do a little bit
of work. There's there was a little bit of mix
up in the in the edit there, but most of

(02:00:26):
the most of the episode is great, So I recommend
everybody go wherever you get your podcast and go check
that out and you can find us over on Blue
Sky at FGC pod.

Speaker 1 (02:00:37):
Yeah, shout out to No Small Games Emily and Kate.
If you're a fan of those two fine ladies, stick
around till October. They'll be uh, they'll be around here,
you know.

Speaker 3 (02:00:47):
Fantastic. That's exciting.

Speaker 1 (02:00:49):
Will would you do you have anything to add on
the Friday Night game cast line?

Speaker 3 (02:00:54):
Now?

Speaker 2 (02:00:54):
On the gamecast line, I think Nick really hit it.
We had that recent episode which was a blast, So
hopefully people go get a chance to listen to that
good old coffee talk one and two. But aside from that,
you know, we got a couple of other things lined
up in the chamber here, so definitely be on the
lookout for a couple of bang bangs that you hear
before the year's out.

Speaker 1 (02:01:11):
Awesome. I can't wait, and I hope the listeners check
it out too. You can find links to Friday Night
game Cast in the episode description. You can find them
on the Blue Sky on Instagram all that good stuff.
You can find links to our stuff as well. Come
hang out in the discord. That's a lot of fun
talk about the episodes. It doesn't really happen all that often,

(02:01:32):
but you can. You can just hang out with the community.
It's a good time. You can find us on Blue Sky, Instagram, TikTok,
and YouTube and if you're so inclined, a rating and
a review would be terrific as well. I don't check
every single place, but I do check Spotify and podcast
Addict and Apple podcasts. So if you'd be so inclined,
that helps us get into al Gore's rhythm and more

(02:01:54):
folks discover us. So would be pretty cool if you did.
You know the words of Matthew McConn Yeah, And on
that note, thank you again. Will thank you again, Nick,
Thank you again listeners for sticking around. This has been
fun and we will strand the last strand of our
strand type podcast next week with the final installment. Till then,

(02:02:18):
I am Rick, I am your no excuse me, I
am Rick Podman, I am your host. As always, we'll
catch you next time. Signing off for now, keep on
keeping on

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No Soul, No Beach | Death Stranding, Part II (Ep. 149)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}No Soul, No Beach | Death Stranding, Part II (Ep. 149)