The Collector Prepper gives you Backpack cover (lvl 1-2), which protects cargo against the Timefall. He is in a hidden location, south, south-east of 'Distribution Center South of Lake Knot City', in the middle of the plains.
If you have misplaced the cargo for a delivery, you can go to the source location and redeploy the cargo.
Likes are XP.
Chiral crystals are just a crafting material.
After the story is complete, you can keep playing.
Analysis
Overall, I think Death Stranding is a great game, and original to its core. The gameplay is intentionally slow and the actions you're performing are the opposite of action-packed. However, great care and attention has been given to how these tasks are performed to make them nuanced and satisfying. You explore maps that are lonely and desolate, yet very beautifully rendered.
Tone
Overall, I think Death Stranding is a great game, and original to its core. The gameplay is intentionally slow and the actions you're performing are the opposite of action-packed. However, great care and attention has been given to how these tasks are performed to make them nuanced and satisfying. You explore maps that are lonely and desolate, yet very beautifully rendered.
The world of Death Stranding is nuts in a typical Kojima-like fashion, but it has a quiet melancholic tone that is unique for this game. It is also intensely surreal: babies in bottles, teleportation umbrellas, flying tar whales, floating highways with rocks floating in the air. This level of surrealism seems rare in modern games. The character drama mainly unfolds through relatively few cutscenes, many of them close to the end of the game. It doesn't work for me. Even though I think the faces in this game are rendered and animated better than anything I have seen in games so far, the characters that are portrayed don't have emotional resonance. The best example of this is Die-Hardman's emotional scene with Sam near the end of the game. He breaks down with tears dripping from his eyes in what should be a very effective acting performance. The face of Die-Hardman is incredibly well-rendered, with perfect eye movement, and even down to intricate details in the furrows of his eyebrow. However, nothing has been done in the game to make this a character the player should care about. After playing for 70 hours, this is the first time we see the character's face, as well as the first time we see him exhibit any form of emotion. The resulting feeling is awkward: we're seeing scene that *seems* like it should be very emotional, but for a character that means nothing to us. So the storytelling is not always great, but what did work for me was the quiet, underplayed bond between Sam and his Bridge Baby Lou. Lou is always there, doing cute baby things that are hard not to enjoy, and Sam clearly misses his adoptive child when he's taken away, shown in a few quiet moments where Sam forgets that Lou is gone and speaks to her, and then realizing she's gone, and goes quiet. This is effective video game storytelling, and it involves characters that have been on the screen for hours and hours. Ultimately, even though the drama doesn't always work, the story and world was fascinating enough to keep my attention securely locked through a very long game.
Something Special
Even with the caveats about the character drama, Death Stranding has a lot to enjoy. A game with this level of originality that still has high production values is rare. For this reason, Death Stranding will stand out in gaming history for years to come.
Even with the caveats about the character drama, Death Stranding has a lot to enjoy. A game with this level of originality that still has high production values is rare. For this reason, Death Stranding will stand out in gaming history for years to come.
Log entries
2019-11-06
I pre-ordered this, as I have to see this strange game for myself.
2019-11-10
OK, this is it. I am starting this controversial game, and I'm very excited. The environments look so amazing in the intro, I have trouble not just standing around and staring at waterfalls. And the vehicle and clothes designs are fascinating.
Martin played the prologue and the cremation mission, and he got caught by BTs and chased over an oily mountainside by a huge Lovecraft-looking squid-whale monster.
2019-11-14
We then returned to my save game, where I got access build power stations, charged a bike, and drove it all the way back to Capital Knot City. I then got access to blood grenades, which seems like the first weapon of real use against BTs. On my way to the port, I ran into real trouble and also got caught.
I went for an atomspheric walk in the Central Region, saw some awesome looking new environments, and discovered a few bases, that weren't open for business. It's too bad that they're not interactive when you find them randomly, it detracts from my interest in exploring.
I accidentally cut the end of the previous video. I transported the weird time hourglass girl who seems to have a lot of trouble with speaking to her boyfriend. It's delightfully weird when you're transporting a human, a mummy on your back.
I got into a brutal fight with a MULE base and after punching out everyone, I took the opportunity to steal a new truck. I also got a grabby gun and the ability to customize my backpacks.
My sneaky stealth mission with the Sticky Gun turned into a messy brawl with the MULES again. It was a fun, chaotic affair with a lot of close calls.
Sometimes good game design ideas get ruined the player second-guessing the game. In a callback to several old Metal Gear games, a guy who was clearly a terrorist shows up in a Bridges outfit and gives you a 'gift' for Fragile, which is clearly a bomb. On inspection, it's called a bomb in the inventory, and it's blinking red. So what to do?
I would like to inform Bridges, but that is not possible.
I try to recycle the bomb, hoping that would destroy it. Not possible
I then go to my destination, which triggers an immediate and very inelegant game over screen (the first one I encountered in the game).
I then try leaving the bomb on the ground and walking away. Game over.
It turns out that what I was supposed to do was to take it to the base where Fragile was and then go to sleep. Then, suddenly it dawns on Porter that he's carrying a bomb and then everything starts to make sense. Very frustrating sequence.
I finally met Mama and heard her crazy story. She was pregnant and stuck in rubble after a terrorist attack, surviving by drinking rainwater, and gave birth to a ghost baby.
Ironically, I didn't play the game about a country where everyone is stuck in quarantine in all of 2020. But tonight I wanted to take a mountain hike, and got into a lot of trouble encountering terrorists with high-level equipment during a timed mission, and getting killed. I ended up stealing my stuff back from them and running like the wind. Very intense.
To get Lockne and the mountain base on my side, I needed to bring her twin sister Mama or MÃ¥lingen, as is her real and weird name. I walked through thick snow, which is neat, and of course, when it's snowing, it's Time Snow, so it ruins my cargo. MÃ¥lingen died after cutting the umbilical cord with her ghost baby.
I'm trying to level up my relationship with The Collector to get a cover for my backpack, but it's not happening. I read somewhere that you sometimes need to sleep in the game for relationships to improve.
I went to a BT-infested area with my truck and collected some stuff. The truck got slowly destroyed by the rain, and also ran out of battery. I had to ditch it and carry a ridiculous amount of cargo over the mountains. This game has great systems for creating these moments.
I did a boss fight with a giant BT with Higgs and Amelie embedded inside. It was frustrating, yet trivial due to unlimited continues without loss of progress. After that, I went to a Beach and fought Higgs man-to-man, ending up with us punching the shit out of each other. After that, there was an incredibly cheesy sequence where I ran with Amelie along the Beach. Cliff Unger shows up, and Amelie kicks me out of the Beach. No idea what's going on.
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