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*slaps hood of car* We can fit SO MANY Philosphocial Discussions in This (Death Stranding Vol. 2 - Part 2)
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In this episode we covered chapters 10 and 11 which covered the BIG BAD BATTLE AGAINST HIGGS. We also find out that Higgs's real name is Peter Englert. Goood chaaange.
Games mentioned in Whaddya Playin?
- Hand of Fate: Hordes
- Forbidden Solitaire
- Warhammer 40: Dark Heresey
https://nogamesforgenocide.com
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
That's funny. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. But it makes a lot of sense. no Jonathan Nolan, no accent. Christopher Nolan, accent. That's fucking hilarious. I love that.
00:00:13
Speaker
Um... But yeah, so anyway, this is a this is a juicy bonus episode. This is we we got really into some shit here. We got really into some shit today.
00:00:25
Speaker
ah You know who else is into some shit? Who's that? Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Pixelate. My name is Kevin with Me Zoiders Phil. And today's show, we are continuing on with Death Stranding Volume 2.
00:00:40
Speaker
It's a dense book, this I'm going to say. This book is dense, man. Yeah. it's ah As Indy said, it's not the years, it's the miles. In this book, it's not the pages. It's the philosophical waxings and wanings of ah Sam Porter Bridges while he tries to figure out what America means. Right. Right.
00:01:02
Speaker
While dodging, you know, decompose dead soldiers and and shit like that occasionally. Yeah. ah Yeah. And you know where you can go to dodge decomposing dead soldiers is a wonderful little website called Patreon.com slash PixelitPod where you can give us money or not. You can just follow us for free.
00:01:25
Speaker
uh one dollar five dollars or ten dollars ten dollars gets your name read out in every episode and to that end i want to thank and you're hiding song 85 jesus loves you ruthless mudder middle of things sigma sal sang queen flatulence shilu peaks jama thick and friendly friend thank you so much for being a friend patreon.com pixlet pod do it today do
00:01:48
Speaker
I'm feeling good today. Yeah, it's been a good day. It's been a good day. You know I I had a nice soup ah April made a soup entirely of things from the garden It was the best feeling you got onion and you got uh you got a bunch of beans in that soup and uh you got a bunch of a sweet potato leaves so the the the greens from a sweet potato plant uh
00:02:23
Speaker
very much acts like spinach tastes better than spinach. Nice. Nice. good I'm going to be honest, not as I'm not a big spinach guy. I think it's kind of pungent.
00:02:34
Speaker
yeah I like spinach, but I get it. you know like I totally get it. It's one of those things that like, oh yeah, you're not at yeah i I'm not shocked that people don't always go in for it. I don't mind spinach as an additive into like...
00:02:49
Speaker
I don't know, ah something with ricotta or, you know, like a cheesy thing or whatever. ah more of cheese More cheese. than Cheese. Cheese. Cheese. But yeah.
00:03:03
Speaker
So so that's that's that. And I also saw watched ah The Backrooms finally today. How was that? ah With with The Backrooms, the the horror movie.
00:03:14
Speaker
Yeah. You never heard of it? I know. I said, how how was it? Oh, I thought said, what's that? No, no, no. i'm I'm aware of the back rooms, even just as a concept, simply because it is so the Gen Z's. It's pervasive. Yeah. It's not mine. Like, I really appreciate what they're doing there. I think that's, it's really subtle and cool and fun usually. Yeah. um But it doesn't do it for me. and It's it's yeah probably one of the first horror things that I'm like, this is a generational thing. This this isn't for me. And I'm just gonna, I'm gonna leave myself out of the discourse yeah as a result. it's
00:03:53
Speaker
It's pretty good. um It's very creepy.
00:03:59
Speaker
ah He never pronounced his name right, and I should i should look it up. ah the The main actor, the lead actor, Chiwetel Ejiofor. Good name. um he's a but Oh, yeah. Good name. He's the guy from, uh, uh, was it 12 Years a Slave? He won the Academy Award for, I think. Okay. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And also he was in Firefly, ah or no, Serenity, the movie.
00:04:29
Speaker
He was the, the, uh, the agent that was like chasing after them. Oh, yeah. Gosh, I saw that movie exactly once and I was like, great, thank you. Goodbye.
00:04:40
Speaker
ah Thanks. Thanks for doing that. ah So. ah But yeah, yeah, he was great in it. um the ah The person who the lady who plays the ah therapist is is really good.
00:04:56
Speaker
um And, you know, it's funny. So the director, Kane Parsons, um who came, he rose to fame by doing the back rooms videos on his YouTube channel, starting when he was a wee lad, um is was only 20 years old when he made. And that's like, oh, he's only 20 years old when he made the the movie. And i I watched it and I was like,
00:05:21
Speaker
Okay, so I understand the conspiracy theories as to people thinking that he didn't actually direct it. um I believe he directed it, but I i i also believe he had you know plenty of people around him sure to give help or advice.
00:05:41
Speaker
I wouldn't be surprised if it was if it was more along those lines. you know The deep DP handling on of the shot design stuff. or working with him on shot design. But in terms of directing actors, like one of the other leads is Mark Duplass, who is like, you know, directed.
00:06:01
Speaker
How many movies has he directed in the indie space? Oh, God. And also, ah ah oz Perkins was on set a lot.
00:06:13
Speaker
um Oh, well, that'll help too, won't it? Yeah, that'll help. Yeah. Well, i mean, but here's the thing, though. That's the dirty little secret, isn't it? There are plenty of filmmakers out there who wouldn't have, they wouldn't be the quote unquote geniuses that we think they are if it weren't for the people around them. ah ah George Lucas and Quentin Tarantino both come to mind immediately.
00:06:36
Speaker
Right. You know, it's it's that's film is so ah what's the word? um Collaborative. Right. the the idea of an auteur director is is kind of silly. It is. Yeah. When you think about it.
00:06:54
Speaker
And also, sorry, Mark Duplass is, does the writing and acting of the brothers. There's a, another, there's a brother. His brother is Jay Duplass, who has done a bunch of directing. Oh, okay. But either way, Yeah, Oz Perkins was known to be on set a lot. And so I'm i'm not saying, I'm not giving any credit to the the that he ah to the idea that he didn't direct it. yeah What I am saying, though, is he was he did surround himself and the producers surrounded him with the right people to help a 20-year-old doing his first feature film. Yeah, that's too young. Yeah.
00:07:38
Speaker
That's too young not to do a feature film. Yeah. Yeah. yeah and And more power to them. Good. Good. Get help. Yeah. Like, get yeah you know, get get some help. Get there's nothing fucking wrong with that. I don't see what the issue is.
00:07:51
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I always like a director who's willing to who works with people very well. And now I'm open. i'm on IMDb and I just keep seeing trailers pop up for other mommy.
00:08:03
Speaker
Oh, wow that. Oh, that looks good. I really enjoyed ah incidents in the house ah that that was based on. I read that last year when it came out and and I really, really enjoyed that. So and and I think, man, the the the trailer you sent me,
00:08:19
Speaker
ah it really does capture a lot of the mood and the spirit. Yeah. If you'll excuse the pun. Yeah. So that trailer is before the Odyssey um and it's the only horror trailer that plays before the Odyssey. Oh, God.
00:08:37
Speaker
It really fucked up that crowd who is not expecting a horror movie trailer. If you weren't expecting that, that seems kind of mean. That seems not even that seems very mean. Yeah. um So let's put the body in the marsh now that we're all warmed up.
00:08:56
Speaker
police have confirmed that the body of the man found dead in the feway marshes yesterday afternoon is that of ten dragoning the pill bused and tell me how you find them so fast warm. Okie dokie. Death Stranding, Volume 2, Chapter 10. When we last left off, ah Sam had just been dragged across the tar lake and ah somebody is welcoming him. In Chapter 10, we find out, schmuck bait, it's Higgs. What? i I swore that it was going to be so. No, it's Higgs. It's Higgs. And then I wrote theme music in the ah in the notes next to that. I don't.
00:09:37
Speaker
ah mit Maybe it would be like John Cena's theme music. Oh, that would be good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That would be good. I was thinking of like... I was thinking of like the ah Kill Bill. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That'd be good, too. Yeah, both of those work.
00:09:53
Speaker
Yeah. He tells Sam he brought him over. Yeah. Yeah. ah Brought him over the tar pit so he could finally see Amelie. And when Sam turns around, he sees that he's now on the outskirts of Edge Knot City. The final level of the game, I think. It's not um because we're in the middle of the book. Higgs then snaps his fingers and causes a torrential downpour appear over Edgenot City and then jump scares Sam like three consecutive times in a row before disappearing, causing Sam to lose his balance and fall into the tar.
00:10:24
Speaker
Higgs then takes his mask off and presses it onto Sam's face, who can't get it off because it feels like it's melting into his skin. Higgs then says there's no more need for masks and rips it off Sam, and then he taunts Sam with Amelie's kipu before vanishing again.
00:10:40
Speaker
Sam approaches Edge Knot, which is still raining. ah Edge Knot used to be Santa Maria, California in the olden days. We get some background on the nature of West Coast cities, and they they weren't like bridges built ah built cities with walls.
00:10:55
Speaker
ah They had their own revival plans, and they built their own distro systems. They wouldn't be forced to join bridges, but Sam understands that his plan of forcing Santa Maria onto the chiral network is more or less an invasion. Hmm. Sam uses on the fact that there is nowhere to go, nowhere to run and says, this is bullshit.
00:11:14
Speaker
Sam arrives at the city and enters a building. It's the American Memorial Museum. It's got marble columns and dinosaur bones. Marble columns. Marble columns. um That's a Saturday Night Live sketch. Is it Scarlett Johansson, I think? Yes. ah Yes. In one of them. I think they did more than one. yeah yeah Yeah. We got marble columns.
00:11:41
Speaker
ah That's a fucking... that was that was That was a genuinely Dadaist period for SNL. Fred Armisen just doing whatever the fuck he wants.
00:11:52
Speaker
Good for you, Fred. It was always like the was the the five minutes before ah midnight or one o'clock or something. like It was like five minutes before the show ends. There would just be this random-ass sketch that would be like...
00:12:07
Speaker
Oh, God. Let's just watch Armisen and Hader just crack themselves up. Let's do something weird. You know, fine just give it. give they We got five. but Give it to him. Just give it to him.
00:12:21
Speaker
You know, not to get off topic here, but it's funny that people like I know at the current cast of SNL is always the worst cast. Oh, of course. um Naturally.
00:12:31
Speaker
But you you think back and people were saying that about like Fred Armisen and and Bill Hader and Will Forte. And like ah all of these guys are.
00:12:44
Speaker
pretty well regarded in terms of their acting chops. Yeah. ah Not just comedically, but dramatically as well. Yeah. ah You know, and and as Will Forte is going to have a ah ah big, ah big movie out this summer that got rescued from deletion. oh Nice.
00:13:03
Speaker
ah The Coyote versus Acme ah movie that that Warner Brothers tried to delete for a tax credit. It's actually getting released. I'm going to check that out. That sounds cool.
00:13:14
Speaker
Yeah. No, a coyote is, is suing, uh, I think it's a courtroom comedy, cartoon comedy. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's great.
00:13:28
Speaker
i God damn it. People. um Let art be. Let the art be. um So he's going through the museum, mobile comms, and then he goes up and there's ah exhibits. They're all been like looted old TVs.
00:13:49
Speaker
He goes upstairs. He sees a case where the moon rock used to be. There's some print media on the presidential assassinations and he finds a Mickey Mouse costume. ah then Sam thinks about the philosophical implications of trying to stitch America back together while all of this stuff gone.
00:14:05
Speaker
The museum is a metaphor. Sam hears voices again and goes into the next into the room next door to find a bunch of mannequins dressed up as soldiers and cowboys. Suddenly, Amelie appears and all the mannequins move to the side.
00:14:19
Speaker
She tells him that she's on the beach and that Higgs will never find her there. Spoilers. She he will. Amelie says that everything Higgs has said is true about her being an extinction entity and all that and that she could end everything. But she doesn't want to do that. She wants to be more and make everyone whole. And she asked Sam to promise to stop her if it comes to it.
00:14:43
Speaker
Sam walks out of the museum in a daze and gets outside and then the museum door closes and won't reopen. And then Sam notices that the Bridges facilities facility that he was looking for was right across the street.
00:14:54
Speaker
ah um Yeah. Sam enters the Bridges facility and it has seen better days. It's been long abandoned. He uses his cupid to connect the terminal so that finally east and west are reconnected.
00:15:08
Speaker
But then he notices that the terminal is missing its shielding. That usually blocks you from seeing the the guts of the machinery. And he notices that inside is making the whole thing work is a BB.
00:15:23
Speaker
ah Sam tries to get a better look at it, but sinks back into the ground. And now he's confused and shaken. And he goes outside and he's confronted by Higgs. And this time, Amelie is with him.
00:15:34
Speaker
He thanks Sam for connecting all the chiral networks together because it'll make this next step with the extinction plans much easier. Amelie then gets Higgs' masks put on her and says, it's happening. But Sam isn't sure that she's saying it or Higgs is making her say it.
00:15:50
Speaker
Some BT tentacles pull them into the sky. Then Fragile arrives with an umbrella and references Mary Poppins. Sure. Of course. Of course she does. Of course. um She offers to take Lou to be babysat by Deadman and then take Sam to Amelie's Beach with the promise that Sam lets fragile kill Higgs.
00:16:12
Speaker
Meanwhile, at Amelie's Beach, Higgs is getting excited for his big day and he thinks about how long he's been waiting for it to happen. He thinks back to an old prepper he knew. Higgs had not gotten to him in time to deliver the man's medicine, and the guy died.
00:16:28
Speaker
He then took the body to BT territory to minimize the void out, and it was there that Higgs' dooms activated. hey Also, Higgs' real name is Peter Englert.
00:16:39
Speaker
Good change. Good change. Good change. Good change. It's a good change.
00:16:49
Speaker
Shit house.
00:16:53
Speaker
ah His ability to see BT's became well known and he was hired by a small delivery company. One day he lost he lost a partner, another one to avoid out and decided that the Egyptians were right about burial because of the beach. and So he decides to wear a mask like a pharaoh. And from that day forward, he adopts the name Higgs. this is it's like basically he he he realized oh I'm in a Hideo Kojima movie uh or game rather I've got to oh mask yeah sure let's let's let's really ham it up i gotta wear a mask I gotta change my name yeah he realized what world he was in and he was like oh got it kind of got got it we got it got it got it got it I can know I know my purpose now yeah exactly I like i got my motivation uh that's all we needed
00:17:43
Speaker
ah Sam appears on the beach. He's sprinting at Higgs and Amelie and Higgs thinks that Sam is so gross it makes him retch. This is just like apropos of nothing.
00:17:53
Speaker
Yeah. It's just like, you Sam. Like what? Yeah. Yeah, I thought I missed something like there. That's the thing with this. It's so weird and so strange and obtuse that when something happens that I don't fully understand, i kind of shrug and go, I guess you had to be there. Like you had to have played the game or something. yeah to be I'm missing something because I'm not. You had to be on the beach that day. Right. You know, there's only so much you can get with secondhand accounts like this. Exactly. It's only so far we can go.
00:18:28
Speaker
ah It's all hearsay, to be honest. Yeah. Oh, God. Yeah. Especially with Kojima. ah he So. ah Higgs puts the mask on Amelie and Amelie rises to the sky and a series of black webs erupt from her abdomen. And suddenly whales begin beaching themselves onto the beach.
00:18:48
Speaker
Higgs explains to Sam that whoever dies here dies and there's no repreach repatriation on this beach. And then Higgs shoots Sam with an assault rifle. Sure does.
00:18:59
Speaker
We flash back to when Higgs first joined Fragile's agency because merging porters together was the best way to deal with the homo demons, the BTs, and the mules.
00:19:10
Speaker
At this point, Fragile's dooms was way stronger than his. ah But Higgs's dream at the time was not to rebuild America, but to make the world ah a world that protected freedom and liberty. And I was like, oh my God, the bad guy's a libertarian. Yeah.
00:19:28
Speaker
Yeah. And that it's as I mean, they they really do make the best bad guys like that. You make the best bad guys really do. Just don't ask Higgs about the age of consent. Right. Exactly. Just leave that out of the conversation. And it or whether you need a driver's license, because what's next? A license to operate my damn toaster. Right.
00:19:54
Speaker
That's right.
00:19:58
Speaker
Oh, God, I love those freaks um on that video. I mean, I they're probably all terrible, but that's just a just the the freakiest freaks. ah ah That guy, he had a head and neck in the shape of a pizza slice.
00:20:18
Speaker
Just was wide and and went up to a point. um You know, you shouldn't make fun of somebody's immutable characteristics, but I feel like that guy, I mean, that's not making fun of him. That's more just describing. I have never fully gone with that ah yeah philosophy. I understand where it comes from and maybe I could do better, but ah No, you know, I kind of think, you know, at a certain point, all bets are off and I'm just going to go for the jugular.
00:20:48
Speaker
All bets are off. um That's a snatch reference. ah It's been a long time since saw that.
00:20:58
Speaker
you You should give it a watch. it It doesn't hold up as well as you would think, but it'll it'll hold up enough to be like, that was fun. Yeah, that makes sense. Makes sense. i Yes, Sam has been wounded by the assault rifle, ah but he's still able to get to Higgs and punch him. And they go back and forth.
00:21:18
Speaker
And Higgs tries to pull and energy from Amelie, but for some reason, she's not responding to him. We flash back again to Higgs is growing frustration with fragile and how Bridges was ruining all of his plans for a libertarian super society.
00:21:31
Speaker
Then he met Amelie who gave him a bridge baby that let him hear and see all the visions of extinction and that extinction was a foregone conclusion. At the same time, Amelie wanted to rebuild America so he knew she was hesitating.
00:21:44
Speaker
But he wouldn't hesitate anymore. He thinks about how he used Fragile to blow up the city and also when he heard about Sam Porter and how the man's use of connections was driving him insane.
00:21:55
Speaker
Then he realized that Amelie was being constrained by Sam's existence, and that if he wasn't around anymore, that she'd probably go along with his extinction plan. So he summoned the BT that killed the disposal team at Central Knot to try to kill Sam.
00:22:08
Speaker
But the Voidat didn't kill Sam. He repatriated anyway. And we also learned that Higgs calls his power not Dooms, but Sodom. ah Yeah, yeah. I was like, oh, hold on.
00:22:19
Speaker
Hold on.
00:22:22
Speaker
I like where this is going. ah It's definitely a somewhat more optimistic term, if you ask me. But that's just my opinion. Yeah.
00:22:35
Speaker
It's like, yeah. And he says something like, ah, because like that city, I'm going to burn it all down. I'm like, well, dooms also. Also. Yeah. I think he just saw an opportunity and he went with it. And that's.
00:22:49
Speaker
Yeah. That's the best kind of saw to me.
00:22:56
Speaker
Saw to you, saw to me. Yep, saw to everyone in the room. Saw to everyone in the room. We come back to the present. ah Sam and Higgs end up literally wrestling in the tar for the fate of the world, and eventually Sam gets the upper hand, and it as it becomes more and more apparent, that Amelie is no longer under whatever kind of hold that Higgs had over her and isn't feeding him any more power.
00:23:18
Speaker
Sam kicks the shit out of Higgs, but then saves him from the tar, saves him from drowning in the tar like he promised and hands him over to Fragile, who arrives and says to Higgs, best, best scene in the book. ah Hi. She says, I'm fragile, but I'm not that fragile. And i punches him in the fucking face. I was so angry.
00:23:39
Speaker
like ah God fucking damn it. Like, I'm willing to look past dead man. I'm willing to look past, you know, fucking Sodom powers. I'm willing to look past all the, and and then you go in with that line. I'm your enemy now. I'm sorry, Kojima. I'm now you're officially your enemy. It's like, hi dad. I'm fragile. um Yeah, exactly.
00:24:04
Speaker
ah Hi, son. I'm dead. Hi, fragile. Yeah. yeah So and Amelie, by the way, has discarded the gold mask. ah Higgs is bound up now with his rifle and gun. ah Fragile gives Lou back to Sam, saying that she couldn't reach dead man because the beach had grown unstable during the fight. She says her goodbye to Sam and Amelie, and she's like,
00:24:29
Speaker
really sad about it because she's like oh you know i could come with you guys and they're like no we wait and we got it from here and she's like uh okay ah yeah they you almost kind of expect her to be like i mean can i just hang out like yeah just like are we you you're not doing anything right now okay and then she starts walking away she starts walking away and then she's like Oh, did you guys say something and they're like, no, no, no. i mean, no. Oh, okay.
00:24:58
Speaker
All right. Who, who just lets a sad Leah Sado, uh, walk away like that? it it really does feel weird it's it's like it's like a two cool kids club kind of situation it's so weird it it sam's like i got my foster my my adopted sister back now i don't need you anymore right and it's not even like in a positive direction it's like you've done enough you get some rest and we'll come get you and and bubble no it's just like no no you're good
00:25:31
Speaker
We got it. We got it. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks for showing up. So, yeah. ah So then she takes Higgs away and she points the rifle at his head. We get another flashback to when Higgs and Peter Higgs slash Peter was a kid being raised by his abusive foster father. Now he killed his foster father one day while being choked out.
00:25:55
Speaker
ah Being near the dead body was what originally gave him his powers. So we already retconned the other story and within the same chapter. ah Current day, Peter wakes up alone on Amelie's beach. There's no one there. The mask, the BB, the gun are all gone. He's lost all his power and he's stranded by himself with no one to talk to.
00:26:16
Speaker
Forsaken. Like, he's just... gone um we get a brief moment from hartman's point of view where experiences the reconnection of the chiral network while he's searching beaches it caused some weird overlap and split vision stuff he believes that that we need to do some sort of reintegration of the world uh it's not going to get any less confusing uh what the more i talk about it uh so I mean, that, yeah, that's, that's what we signed up for with this. That's all there is it. That's what we signed up for. ah Back at Amelie's beach, they hear a gunshot in the distance and I'm like, so wait, did Fragile shoot him? And now he's on a beach because he's stranded. He can't.
00:26:58
Speaker
Okay. Yeah.
00:27:05
Speaker
It's like, oh, fragile just teleported him to some part of the beach where there's no one around and he's just stuck there. He's stuck. And it's like, no, maybe he she shot him and he's just now in a his own private beach. Oh, I mean, that would be pretty brutal.
00:27:23
Speaker
That'd be pretty cool. My my own private Idaho beach. There's no beaches in Idaho, right? i would say there's no lakes big enough to warrant a beach, maybe.
00:27:34
Speaker
No, just fields upon fields of of potatoes. Yeah, potatoes. Potatoes. um So Amelie asked Sam if he still believes in her and that they need to get back to the East Coast and and ah let every ah let all the knots and the preppers know that the dream of America is still alive. And she's like, also, I am an extinction entity, but I don't want to end it all.
00:28:01
Speaker
And then they see a figure off in the distance and she tells Sam to wait here while she approaches the man. And Sam can't move because like the water is basically acting like the tar and keeping in place.
00:28:14
Speaker
We're now in ah chapter 11 or episode 11 called Die Hard Man. Hard Man. Bring it on. Best soundtrack. God damn it.
00:28:26
Speaker
tiehar man boing on bump bu bu bump but bu bu bu bu but bu bu bu but um bump bu bump bump bump um best soundtrack diama ah The man Amelie is talking to is Die Hardman and he's pointing a gun at her.
00:28:43
Speaker
He says that she was supposed to make everything whole but fucked it all up. But from his point of view, it's from his point of view, so he calls her Bridget. Then he shoots her, but the bullet doesn't do anything to her.
00:28:54
Speaker
Then a bunch of skelly men appear and Die Hardman drops to his knees and Cliff arrives and demands that Die Hardman give him back his BB. But Amelie says that he's looking in the wrong place.
00:29:06
Speaker
Sam is watching this from a distance and trying to pull it all together, but he can't hear them because they're they're too far away. And the scene doesn't make any sense. Yeah. Until Cliff turns in his. It's truly a what the fuck?
00:29:18
Speaker
yeah He's like, what is going on over there? And then Cliff turns in his direction he shouts, BB. And then the Skelly soldiers make haste after Sam. And then Amelie. Question mark appears in front of him. But then there's another Amelie and there's also Die Hardman.
00:29:33
Speaker
And Amelie turns around and she has the Kipu and she tells Sam to stay back. And then Natara releases him and sends him away. And now he's in some sort of hospital setting. It's a dream, though.
00:29:45
Speaker
And Cliff is confronting Bridget about his BB. Seems like a flashback. And then Cliff puts his hand through Sam's chest and it burns him away. And then Sam awakes in a safe house. Lou is there and dead man's hologram is there.
00:29:58
Speaker
Apparently beaches had and such have been chaotic since the time on the beach, which is why dead man's hologram is currently glitching and freezing. Amelie had dropped him off at the safe house because she couldn't go all the way back to headquarters.
00:30:12
Speaker
Amelie left Sam a message that she was going to finish what Bridget had started. Deadman says that the only people who know what happened on the beach are him, Fragile and Amelie. But Sam then reveals that Die Hard Man, Cliff and Bridget were there also.
00:30:29
Speaker
Deadman then starts piecing the narrative together that Bridget and Die Hard Man scattered the people who had dooms and were scientists ah all across the country so that they would not look into what was going on with the BBs and the chiral network.
00:30:45
Speaker
Hartman comes onto the call and says that he had been teleported back to HQ with Lockney before everything got all fucky-wucky. ah He proposes that they need to need something united ah for everyone to bring all the alternate dimensions back together. a single point of belief. And that it proposes a and he proposes inauguration.
00:31:09
Speaker
He and Deadman ask Sam to get back to the East Coast, but Fragile won't be able to help because she's exhausted from teleporting Hartman and Lockney. Hartman is going to search the beaches for Amelie and Cliff, while Deadman is going to look into what the connection between Cliff and Amelie might be.
00:31:27
Speaker
Meanwhile, back at headquarters after the call, Deadman and Hartman are looking over a map and Hartman goes into cardiac arrest while he's and while he's down, Deadman thinks about the nature of the beach and then started to understand the meta level law that would unify the worlds again.
00:31:44
Speaker
It needed to be some sort of symbol or shared delusion. It didn't actually matter what it was. When Hartman wakes back up, he smiles at dead man's epiphany and then talks about the dueling evolution of Neanderthals and homo sapiens and how despite having larger brains, this is all in the book.
00:32:06
Speaker
yeah It's not making this shit up, people. yeah
00:32:16
Speaker
Despite having larger brains, Neanderthals in the book, Dead Rising, Dead strand death Stranding, not Dead Rising, Death Stranding Hideo Kojima joint. um yeah Despite having larger brains, Neanderthals died out because their tools didn't advance much since they favored smaller family units. And therefore, there was less opportunity for them to learn from each other while Homo sapiens bonded in larger settlements and then also built religion.
00:32:48
Speaker
Yeah. now And the God helped them. That's how that works. Yeah. Yeah. Yep.
00:32:56
Speaker
Then he talks about the id and eventually gets around to calling the meta-level law. He calls meta-level law is a fiction, and while a beach belongs to an individual, what unifies them all is a common fiction.
00:33:12
Speaker
They talk about some more shared things and then Hartman dies again. I mean, he really, you know, he really marks off the time. Yeah. just I mean, he's yeah, he's he's got plenty. He's he's busy. He's a busy guy. He's busy.
00:33:24
Speaker
He's busy man. ah Meanwhile, at the safe house near South Knot, Sam is fiddling with his cuff. It's been 10 days since he got back from the beach. Shit has been dicey on the trek so far, and all comms have been tricky since everything got connected. Also, there's been near constant timefall.
00:33:43
Speaker
Deadman talks to Sam about the stuff he found out about Cliff. He was a special forces operative who was involved in the original BB experiments, but he died early on. But his anger and a resentment seems to be so strong that he pulls himself back from hell and he brings hell with him.
00:34:01
Speaker
Lou isn't in particular the BB that Cliff is looking for, but it's a BB. And also all the chiral networks use BBs like Sam had figured out when he saw the one in Edge Knot.
00:34:13
Speaker
ah And then I they paste this sentence down. What kind of America was she so desperate so desperately trying to rebuild if she would go so far as sacrificing unborn babies? And now I'm back into the fucking bullshit from volume one where it's like, is this sneaky anti-abortion? Yeah. ah ah Anti-choice but propaganda. What's going on here? It's hard. It's hard not to see that. It really, really is.
00:34:42
Speaker
Yeah. yeah It's like I just wrote, hmm. And it's like, i I don't think I've heard anyone say that.
00:34:56
Speaker
Maybe I'm just not in the Death Stranding Yeah, I have. I've been doing an area. I've been doing some light video essaying to better appreciate, you know, this whole thing. And I haven't seen that as part of the discourse, but that doesn't mean shit. That doesn't.
00:35:14
Speaker
That's just me. Yeah. But yeah yeah, it's kind of hard to. Yeah. Anyway, Sam continues on and we get to the South. Not he's told by a Bridges employee named Owen Southwick.
00:35:28
Speaker
Like this guy's got a name. Why don't we why does this guy have a name?
00:35:34
Speaker
ah did he Did he win a contest or something? um that It was it as part of the Kickstarter. It was part of the Kickstarter that the elder had passed. ah sam thinks to think about ah Sam thinks about the philosophy of what the elder had called ah himself, which was a parasite, and also in the meaninglessness of war and all that jazz.
00:35:55
Speaker
Owen gives Sam a note that says, thank you, Sam, and it also has the elder's name on it, which we don't see, but we do know Owen's name. Thank you. um Deadman calls again and gives some updates. Cliff's baby was one of the first babies used in the BB experiments, and he was trying to get the BB back.
00:36:13
Speaker
Cliff's resentment is what's keeping him alive after death, and despite Bridget being dead, that resentment isn't gone. Deadman surmises that Amelie tried to stop Cliff and ended up in his hands alongside Di Hardman, and it's also why everything is shaky in the world right now.
00:36:28
Speaker
Also, Cliff ended up on Amelie's Beach not because he had a connection to Amelie, but because he has some sort of a connection to Die Hardman and because Die Hardman showed up on Amelie's Beach.
00:36:38
Speaker
That let Cliff jump to it. They talk some more about the ultimate goal is how the ultimate goal is to establish a meta-level law around Amelie's Beach and to defeat Cliff. Then the power goes out.
00:36:49
Speaker
Sam grabs Lou and goes outside, and there's a big storm coming. Cliff is coming to get them, and they get swallowed up. Okay.
00:37:00
Speaker
Phil, ah what are your thoughts so far? ah That was that was two chapters. Yeah, that was yeah that was just two chapters. It was just two chapters. Wasn't even a ton of pages, but there was just so much shit that happened in those yeah two chapters. Yeah. ah So what do you think?
00:37:17
Speaker
I think i so um ah I know I said this when we read the first half of it, but it's still it bears repeating. I am kind of fascinated with Kojima's understanding, not just of American history, um but of the implications behind ah different aspects of American history. um There is an inspiration here that comes from the Pony Express that comes from ah the railroads going out West. What
00:37:55
Speaker
what do you call it? ah Oh, fuck. that were they the they The thing they said, well, God is is giving us this land. Oh, Manifest Manifest Destiny. Thank you. ah Manifest Destiny. There's so much.
00:38:07
Speaker
It's a very, very American a story. ah And and you know, for a Japanese a game maker to kind of nail it in certain levels. I don't, I'm not a Kojima guy. I've never, I've never really had the patience for Kojima. um sure But, but you know what, like respect where respect is due. Cause, because it's, it is ah fascinating. Yeah.
00:38:38
Speaker
He's kind of it's like he's on the outside looking in at our country and kind of nailing us to the wall. You know, yeah like he's he's kind spot on. um Yeah. It gets very navel gazey with philosophy. But that's that's the that's the point. That's what that's what you paid, you know, your admission for. that this is you You know that that's like, you know, that's coming. Yeah, you know that's that's what this is. so That's part of it. And um and I I'm just genuinely impressed. ah I don't know if I'm ever going to actually try and play this game, ah but I am a little bit further down the rabbit hole than I ever anticipated. I would be sure.
00:39:18
Speaker
i think that's pretty impressive. You've got you've you've gone the extra step to watch video essays on on Death Stranding, which. I still haven't done, but, ah you know, you've actually played the game. So I played the play the game a little bit. So I think that's that's part of it. Yeah. um What about you? What do you what do you think?
00:39:38
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, i I think it's in terms of what it is, what the story and just these two chapters alone try to accomplish is is pretty awesome. And like having a big, ah I mean, if we we're putting both volumes together, this is like a big act to kind of reversal, so to speak. yeah You know what I mean? if it Yeah. Because you think about it like, oh, this is halfway through the book. but' like You can't really think about it like that. You have to think of it as a continuous story. And we only have we have a final act left of of plot ah and the the defeat of Higgs and the reveal that, oh, it's really Cliff that's behind all this. He's a he's a ghost from hell who is ah demanding his bit his BB back. um
00:40:33
Speaker
ah well And he's played by Mads Mikkelsen. ah So just think about Mads Mikkelsen saying that. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.
00:40:44
Speaker
um And, you know, he's also but he's also playing it like he's Hannibal. Yeah. Well, I mean, that he he knows what he does best. I get it. He knows what he does best. I should rewatch that.
00:40:56
Speaker
ah I watched hannnah his Hannibal. I never watched it. I watched I started to watch the pilot and I just got so distracted by a bunch of other shit. ah Yeah, because it what it just wasn't what I was expecting. I really need to give it another go, though.
00:41:12
Speaker
Give it another go. um Yeah. It's anyway. um But yeah. And then I'm also like, what is with this? This like I understand there's like the there's the one hand of the the the using the babies is kind of like, oh, this is kind of like a horrifying thing yeah to do.
00:41:36
Speaker
But it it feels like it's looking at the camera and saying, see, kids, abortion is wrong. Right. um When they so when when they're when I get to certain lines about it, I'm like,
00:41:49
Speaker
but it's kind of impossible to ignore. And so I'm ah genuinely fascinated by the fact that I've i've never heard anything about this. ah Yeah. And maybe it's just because of the way it's written in the book. Right.
00:42:03
Speaker
it It kind of stands out more. I don't know. That's possible. That's totally possible. um Yeah. It's just odd. Yeah. Todd. Todd. Todd things.
00:42:15
Speaker
ah So, Phil, i have a question for you. oo please. What are you playing? Oh, okay. Well, I've gotten some gaming done. am an hour here, an hour there playing my way through Resident Evil Requiem. Still love it.
00:42:36
Speaker
I love that mostly I'm playing Grace right now because that's my favorite part. I have i love playing Leon and and kicking some ass, but I'm here for the survival survival kind of shit. Sure, sure. And I'm having a lot of fun um with that.
00:42:51
Speaker
o I um let's see what else I played. I started playing The Incident at Galley House, which just came out. um Oh, ah Harry, a.k.a. Video Games Are Bad, um has been has been talking about that a lot.
00:43:09
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. He really likes it. It's very, very good. it's It's done by the same people who did The Root Trees Are Dead.
00:43:17
Speaker
Excuse me. And it's and it's got it's It's a similar kind of game. it's It's, you know, deduction, detective work, putting the puzzle together piece by piece, et cetera, et cetera. And it's a lot of fun because you're just in this one room. It's like the root trees are dead, but you're just in this one room and there's like, ums you've got a little machine that allows you to go back in time. It's basically the the the compass in Obra Dinn. Yeah, it's the same. Memento, the memento mori. Yes. Compass. It's it's it's exactly that. and And you've got to put the picture to it and put the name to it. and And it just requires you to pay attention to the way people talk and what they talk about. And you've got to find the settings you actually have to find. There are rooms you have to discover. And each room has like a code. It's like a two letter code. And you have to kind of guess at what that is.
00:44:18
Speaker
um you know, based on what the room is and and it's it's just.
00:44:25
Speaker
accommodating enough, but also it just difficult enough to at least for me. Sure. Yeah. yeah i'm I'm clipping along at an OK pace. um Yeah.
00:44:39
Speaker
But I'm not I'm not just like tearing through it. ah No problem. um Right. Having said that, I'll probably have it done by the time we we talk next, ah because it's it's kind of ah a lovely game to just kind of sit there and and dick around with because you're just you're kind of it's just being in a bit of a P.I., you know, you just sit there and scroll through the transcript of what they were saying, and it tells you like how many scenes there are left to unlock based on the dialogue in a certain scene. And so you go through it and go, OK, oh, they mentioned him going into this room. When could he have done that? And you and you just kind of go out there and scattershot it a little bit and just try your luck. And every time you get it right, it's cool. It's it's really neat. I love Give it like a nice little musical sting every time you get. Yeah. Yeah. A few. Right. And you get you get almost literally a do do do kind of thing. yeah it's It's fun. it's got It's got a nice style to it It's very simple, ah but very clean. ah
00:45:40
Speaker
well Well, good art direction. um Yeah. So that's pretty cool. I'm enjoying that. um I got a key ah from the developers or the publishers rather of hands of Hand of Fate Hordes.
00:46:00
Speaker
which the hand of fake games I really, really liked. I don't. Did you play the hand of fake games, Kevin? No. Let me make sure you may have. i i You may have.
00:46:12
Speaker
I'm looking at I'm looking it up to see if it's yeah. No, never played it. I've seen it before, though. Yeah. Yeah, I really enjoyed them. it's It's like one part deck builder. The first two games were one part deck builder, one part action RPG. It controls very nicely. um it it It actually kind of had a control scheme that was the perfect blend of like Ocarina of Time and um like the Arkham Asylum games.
00:46:44
Speaker
Sure. it's It just felt good to do with Hand of Fate Hordes. They've taken they kept the card playing aspect of it, but it's a survivor game.
00:46:55
Speaker
ah So you're playing your it's a bullet heaven and. Oh, OK. It's an odd choice, but it kind of works. The I think the disadvantage, one of the disadvantages it has is that at least so far for what I'm playing, you're in a much smaller space, so it can feel a little stuffier. It can feel a little ah more overwhelming than certain, you know, than some games of vampire survivors. And it actually and this is going to be an odd complaint. I think it kind of looks too good.
00:47:31
Speaker
for a bullet heaven, you know? It's like, it's just, it's nice. It's very nice. it's like It's too nice. It's too nice to look at. Why you spending so much time on the looks, you know? Right. You think you're better than me?
00:47:44
Speaker
Right. It's got kind of a Diablo three ah sort of vibe to it, and which is great. You know, lots of cool set pieces and stuff like that. um But it lacks ah the slot machine aspect of vampire survivors, which I'm starting to realize might be what ah has kept games like it and the Warhammer one that we played the demo of. um Yeah. Certain certain brain tapis are not happening, and therefore it's not it's not giving us that same yum yum yum that we got from vampire survivors. And and I think that's part of it. I mean, it gambles. Right, right. It's tapping into a terrible part of my brain. This isn't necessarily doing that, but um just like the first two games, it is ah ah progressing with you unlocking these cards and the cards ah basically push the adventure forward and you you get quests based on them. so And it's kind of like playing ah the first two games anyway. were It was like playing
00:48:51
Speaker
ah you know, a solo Dungeons and Dragons quest with a sadist. ah You know, it's like a DM who is very much against you. um Yeah. And it's got the roguelike element so you can, you know, build up over time. You lose and you come back and you lose and you come back.
00:49:08
Speaker
And this has a lot of the same aspects there um that I really enjoyed about the first two hands of fate. ah But it's ah but instead of the action RPG style, it's it's a it's a bullet heaven. um Yeah, which is yeah which is an interesting choice. And I haven't played that much of it, ah but I'm going to keep at it. And I appreciate the ah the publishers and the developers sending me a key for it because it's always lovely when you get a key period. But when you get one for ah a franchise that you.
00:49:43
Speaker
Or a franchise that you' you've known and loved before. Yeah, or i got some skin in the game on this one, so that's fun. Yeah. I think that might be it for me. Yeah, that's me. What about you, Kevin? What are you playing?
00:49:56
Speaker
The only thing that I have been playing... Did I... Okay, did I talk talk about... I beat Forbidden Solitaire. Did I talk about that last week? I don't think I did. No, you haven't beaten it yet, I don't think.
00:50:07
Speaker
Okay, yeah. So I've beaten it. um I've decided... Love the gameplay. um i I think the meta narrative, you could have just taken that out.
00:50:20
Speaker
like Yeah. Yeah. Don't need it. Just like, you like you don't, hey, yeah I'm like, listen, buddy, you don't need an excuse to let me pay play a ah Windows 95 horror solitaire game. You don't yeah need the the hat on the hat there. Because the thing is with the meta narrative of the game, is that it's made it seem like there was more to the game than there was.
00:50:45
Speaker
And there wasn't. There was just a little bit of narrative stuff around it, which i like. And it's not bad. It's just what it makes it seem like is, oh, there's there's like you're going to have to like hack the computer or you're going to have to like listen to what they're saying and then do things differently in the game. and you're like, no, no, no, no.
00:51:10
Speaker
You don't do any of that. You just keep going. And then you have one choice at the end of the game. And it's like a game over or a final boss fight um for your choices. Right. and i was like, oh, OK, that's not what I was expecting. Yeah. um yeah So it's good, though. I liked it. Yeah, it's a fun it's fun to play. But I also ah didn't pay that much attention to the narrative aspect of it. It was time. it was fun. Yeah. but
00:51:43
Speaker
Yeah, half the time i wouldn't notice that they were talking. Right. That there was and like until i I was like, oh, there's text going across the top of the screen because I'm just playing it on my Steam Deck with the sound muted. oh you know what i mean? So I didn't I didn't necessarily know the that they were there's like little audio cut scenes happening while I'm playing. I was like, oh, has this been going on the whole time? And and the same thing happened to me ah because it was it was a game that I would play while I was watching TV with my family or something. And and and and the answer is yes, it's totally been happening the entire time and it didn't really change anything. So, yeah.
00:52:25
Speaker
Yeah. It's fun so do do do ah what else? Oh, I've been playing ah Warhammer 40k Dark Heresy, ah which is out in beta for for those of you who ah can't help themselves and you buy things early.
00:52:44
Speaker
i mean, I bought it bought into the game like... but earlier this year, so I've had access to the beta for a while, just really started playing it. The investigation system is pretty cool. You have ah a big chart where you're like filling in clues and you can make It's like you'll figure some things out and you can make determinations and those determinations will connect clues differently to each other. Like, OK, well, I think this happened. And if you think that happened, it's like, all right, well, then it's these things are relevant to what your final ah answer hypothesis for the case is going to be.
00:53:27
Speaker
Yeah. um So when you first st start out, you have like ah Sort of like Rogue Trader, you have an option of where to go. um Basically, once you get through the prologue area, ah you have an option of where to go. Either ah you're just going down to a planet and it's like you can either start at the that figure out a case that's going on way down at the ah on the surface of the planet where everything sucks or you could go into the spires where everything is where the rich people live. Right. so I went down where everything sucks. And just like Rogue Trader, depending depending on which one you go to first, things will change about the other one.
00:54:08
Speaker
So it's like because you went, I went down to the the surface of the planet at first, ah things are more stable there. Like there hasn't been another flood or something like that because it's in this really muddy, mucky area. Mm-hmm.
00:54:24
Speaker
anyway it's really cool so far i'm really liking it the um uh and uh what what was i gonna say about it oh the combat the combat it seems like they got the message from rogue trader but like oh you guys are breaking the combat too easily ah okay well we're gonna fix that I have to reload combat encounters so fucking wow. Okay. Okay. They are i am on normal difficulty and I'm like, Jesus Christ. Wow. I don't know. Am I just doing it wrong? Am I just going to start over with a different build for my main character? Right. Because I
00:55:09
Speaker
i start I was like, alright, I'm gonna play Psyker, a sanctioned Psyker, and then ah one of your like first people that you get is a Psyker, and I was like, okay, well, it's kind of like kind of duplicating ah abilities here.
00:55:25
Speaker
But yeah, combat's really fucking hard. Wow. And they've gotten, I mean, it seems like people are giving them that feedback plenty. So I wouldn't be surprised if, um and I mean, it's also the beta. Like, that's the thing is some of these encounters might not even exist or they won't exist as they do right now in the final, the 1.0 release of the game.
00:55:49
Speaker
ah um so You know, it's all different. It's so funny to do that. It's yeah it's cool. Yeah. Yeah. it's It's neat. You know, being being like playing the game. It's like, yeah, it's definitely is definitely not done. um there's It's in a pretty good spot. Like...
00:56:10
Speaker
It's one of those games like where, oh, they could probably release. if it If the whole game is like this in terms of bugginess, they could probably release it um now, but I don't think they're going to.
00:56:22
Speaker
ah i think it's not till the end of the year. so Nice. That's when they did it with the last one. Yes. Yeah, they did. Rogue Trader was out in a beta for a pretty, ah pretty lengthy time. um And I feel like it might have there might have been an early access then after the beta.
00:56:44
Speaker
Oh, I forgot about that. Yeah. But anyway, yeah. So that is what I have been playing.
00:56:56
Speaker
That'll do it for tonight's episode. Thank you all so much for listening and or watching. If you can, go ahead and follow us, subscribe, like us, love us, ah and all that all that fun stuff on all the platforms. Yeah.
00:57:12
Speaker
And Jonesy lives. Jonesy lives.