re: Death Stranding Discussion Thread (Official)

I'm starting in like an hour. Idk why I think walking around with cargo is going to be fun. But I'm in haha

I played about 2 hours last night. I don’t really know what to make of it so far. I don’t hate it and I like what I have experienced so far. Story seems very intriguing but just so out there so far. I’m basically gonna keep playing because I want to know more.

The walking isn’t bad as of now because the world has been beautiful and soundtrack great. What seemed like a far walk actually went pretty quick.

I’m going in quite blind to it all also. I’m treating it more like an experience than I am a game and have no complaints. But like I said...two hours in.

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All the trailers made it seem like you'd be running from Mads Mikkelsen and crazy arse enemies.. so no huh?

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i mean yeah, you get to that later

they're not gonna throw everything from you at the jump

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So everyone's complaining because they just haven't gotten far enough in the game yet?

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I'd imagine so. I doubt they would unveil epic setpiece moments like what we've seen in trailers within the first few hours

I've seen estimates of 45-60 hours to complete. I don't know how deliveries work, if a lot of them are just side quests or you need most of them to finish the game, but it's not a short game.

have you seen the whiz animation.

larry david would be envious of that stream

I'm trying to play through Odyssey right now, but a part of me wants to start Origins over again. Bayek is a far better protagonist than the 2 in Odyssey and Egypt clicked more with me for some reason.

Does it have that historical mode? If so, ima buy that one too. frick the gameplay. Just lemme walk through a virtual Greek city and learn about their day to day life.

Straight up, VR is the future to learning about the past. frick reading about the battle of Thermopylae. Experience it. frick learning about Lincoln’s assassination, sit in the booth next to him. frick reading about the horrors of communism and racism. Sit in the cattle car, go through selection, and enjoy the shower.

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Does it have that historical mode?

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LINK

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Odyssey’s Discovery Tour brings back voice actors from Odyssey proper to act as pseudo-tour guides. I say “pseudo” because they don’t actually walk in front of you and gesture to points of interest. Nothing so complex or dynamic. They do introduce each tour though, with Herodotus generally the purveyor of myths and legendary battles, Pericles your guide to Greece’s great cities, and so forth.

Once you’ve finished your self-guided tour, they then show back up to quiz you on what you learned. These are simple, three-question affairs and there’s no penalty for failure. The contrary, actually. Choosing a wrong answer prompts your guide to explain the concept in question, i.e. “No, Icarus was well-known for flying too close to the sun, not for slaying the Minotaur.” It’s sometimes more interesting to fail.

Having the quizzes come from established Assassin’s Creed characters also prevents it from feeling too dry, and I’d love to see this concept expanded on in the next Discovery Tour—whenever that might be. Let the characters drive the storytelling. Stop handing off the tours to a professorial voice over and instead let Herodotus wax on about the Peloponnesian War in character, maybe even add his own thoughts to the mix. Sure, you want it to be educational, but that doesn’t mean it can’t have a little more spark.

Tours are only the start of Discovery Tour this time though. The second improvement? Tiered points of interest.

The most involved, the aforementioned tours, function much the same as last time. Each revolves around a theme, say Winemaking. A golden line leads you from station to station, focusing on a nearby object or location and offering fully-voiced background information. Here, a tub for mashing grapes. There, an amphora. The narrations seem a bit more detailed than the ones in Origins, but the concept is similar.

When the narration’s finished, provided you want to learn more, you can call up additional non-voiced info at the press of a button—maybe an explanation of Greek army composition or the backstory for a Spartan general named in the voice over. And that info is accompanied by a reference image as well, like a shot of the modern-day Parthenon ruins, a relevant marble bust, or ancient coinage.

Origins was somewhat limited though in that everything had to fit one of the 75 themed tours. Odyssey scales back the number of tours to 30, but compensates by adding hundreds of “Discovery Points.” As you wander the world you’ll spot purple beacons which, when activated, essentially act as standalone tour markers—or like historical plaques in the real-world. There’s no voice over, but some of the most interesting information in Odyssey is hidden in these one-off points, details on Minos’s “Kretan Holes,” Greek siege instruments, the Acropolis’s olive tree, and so forth.

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