Biggest problem with Death Stranding's plot

[Night FM]

The biggest problem with the plot is the whole concept that, whenever a human dies, the corpse becomes a BT and can trigger a voidout.

It's not very believable that other porters or MULES would never accidentally die during an excursion, or that no one in a city with thousands of people would ever die a natural death without it being detected until it's too late. Let alone the "preppers" who live out in the wilderness dying without anyone being there to find their body.

So you'd probably be seeing a lot more voidouts happening without any reliable way to anticipate them until after the fact.

[Alexander]

Depends. Voidouts happen only when another human encounters a BT, so a dead prepper just creates yet another BT that will quietly float in the shelter, not hurting anyone. BT areas in the game are stable, and, therefore, could be known to both mules and local porters well enough to prevent incidents. Cities could be techno-totalitarian antiutopias with 24/7 surveilance over everyone, which allows to dispose of the corpses quickly.

The bigger question for me is how the cities and preppers support themselves without moving huge amount of resources over the country. The amount too huge to be moved by porters traveling on foot.

[Wingnut Mcmoomoo]

Alexander lähetti viestin:

Depends. Voidouts happen only when another human encounters a BT, so a dead prepper just creates yet another BT that will quietly float in the shelter, not hurting anyone. BT areas in the game are stable, and, therefore, could be known to both mules and local porters well enough to prevent incidents. Cities could be techno-totalitarian antiutopias with 24/7 surveilance over everyone, which allows to dispose of the corpses quickly.

The bigger question for me is how the cities and preppers support themselves without moving huge amount of resources over the country. The amount too huge to be moved by porters traveling on foot.

They just print the things they need (chiral printing is like time travel so presumably they are creating some sort of debt or something but its how they are functioning) and food isn't a worry seemingly with how timefall affects plantgrowth. I assume they are also a very resource light society since so many people just kind of live isolated and alone or in small groups.

Of course we're not gonna see the specifics of their society from our point of view but its the vibe i got, I also got the vibe that there are so few people left that resources are the least concerning thing atm.

[Alexander]

Wingnut Mcmoomoo lähetti viestin:

Alexander lähetti viestin:

Depends. Voidouts happen only when another human encounters a BT, so a dead prepper just creates yet another BT that will quietly float in the shelter, not hurting anyone. BT areas in the game are stable, and, therefore, could be known to both mules and local porters well enough to prevent incidents. Cities could be techno-totalitarian antiutopias with 24/7 surveilance over everyone, which allows to dispose of the corpses quickly.

The bigger question for me is how the cities and preppers support themselves without moving huge amount of resources over the country. The amount too huge to be moved by porters traveling on foot.

They just print the things they need (chiral printing is like time travel so presumably they are creating some sort of debt or something but its how they are functioning) and food isn't a worry seemingly with how timefall affects plantgrowth. I assume they are also a very resource light society since so many people just kind of live isolated and alone or in small groups.

Of course we're not gonna see the specifics of their society from our point of view but its the vibe i got, I also got the vibe that there are so few people left that resources are the least concerning thing atm.

Unfortunately there are too many things that do not fit into this version (or any other version I can think of).

Actually the worst aspect of this is the amount of praise showered upon the protagonist. As if a couple hundred kilos of food/materials/board games/whatever I deliver into a city with 50-80 thousand of population would make much of a difference. The whole plot would be sooo much more believable if it did not try to inflate player's self-importance on every stage.

[Didjeridingo]

I think this is why we were originally SUPPOSED to see voidouts from other players' worlds. It would have solved the plot hiccup you describe.

Unfortunately the inevitable griefing that would be exploited by players is probably what nixed that concept.

[Alt0153]

Alexander lähetti viestin:

Wingnut Mcmoomoo lähetti viestin:

They just print the things they need (chiral printing is like time travel so presumably they are creating some sort of debt or something but its how they are functioning) and food isn't a worry seemingly with how timefall affects plantgrowth. I assume they are also a very resource light society since so many people just kind of live isolated and alone or in small groups.

Of course we're not gonna see the specifics of their society from our point of view but its the vibe i got, I also got the vibe that there are so few people left that resources are the least concerning thing atm.

Unfortunately there are too many things that do not fit into this version (or any other version I can think of).

Actually the worst aspect of this is the amount of praise showered upon the protagonist. As if a couple hundred kilos of food/materials/board games/whatever I deliver into a city with 50-80 thousand of population would make much of a difference. The whole plot would be sooo much more believable if it did not try to inflate player's self-importance on every stage.

you mean like every video game ever?

[Alexander]

Alt0153 lähetti viestin:

Alexander lähetti viestin:

Unfortunately there are too many things that do not fit into this version (or any other version I can think of).

Actually the worst aspect of this is the amount of praise showered upon the protagonist. As if a couple hundred kilos of food/materials/board games/whatever I deliver into a city with 50-80 thousand of population would make much of a difference. The whole plot would be sooo much more believable if it did not try to inflate player's self-importance on every stage.

you mean like every video game ever?

Yeah, like almost every video game. But DS outdoes most of them. If we counted the percentage of NPCs calling the protagonist the saviour of everything, DS's score would be much higher than average.

[Alt0153]

oh yeah sor sure some games are worse than others but after 30 years of gaming its just water off a ducks back to me i dont even notice it anymore :)

[Alexander]

Alt0153 lähetti viestin:

oh yeah sor sure some games are worse than others but after 30 years of gaming its just water off a ducks back to me i dont even notice it anymore :)

In this case it actually affects the worldbuilding. How much cities and preppers actually depend on porters? If NPCs reaction to Sam was more calm, it would be easier for me to believe in this world's insane logistics.

[Shufflecat]

Alexander lähetti viestin:

Actually the worst aspect of this is the amount of praise showered upon the protagonist. As if a couple hundred kilos of food/materials/board games/whatever I deliver into a city with 50-80 thousand of population would make much of a difference. The whole plot would be sooo much more believable if it did not try to inflate player's self-importance on every stage.

You do see other porters around. I think it's supposed to be read that Sam is getting praise not because he's the only one doing that job, but rather because he's the one doing the initial trailblazing to find or create safe routs for the greater porter population. Something only he can do because of his "returner" power.

Though that would be a lore vs gameplay split, as the average player doesn't die early often enough to sell the idea that normal people couldn't do it. Exploration has for most of human history been a high-mortality pursuit, but that hasn't stopped humanity from doing it constantly and successfully. And the existence of mules and such out in the wilds kinda establishes that humans canonically can get by out there at least well enough for exploration to be plausible. You could make the argument that humanity just doesn't have the population to waste on high-mortality pursuits anymore, but that doesn't quite hold water either: desperate populations are generally more willing to take risks, not less.

IMO the root problem is how the game establishes a history where things used to be a lot more connected after the Stranding, with human and drone couriers and such, but then things fell back apart because of... (gestures vaguely) reasons. Presumably that's how all those cut-off preppers and such were able to establish themselves out there in the first place.

It would make more sense IMO if Sam was really the very first to reconnect cities after the Stranding at all. That would require rejiggering the map though, to sell the idea that preppers and mules can only really exist near cities, with huge swaths of pure BT-occupied wilderness between.

But that would screw up gameplay. Since the main gameplay loop is hiking to do deliveries, the delivery sites need to be distributed throughout the map. Having most of the map be "empty" areas that you only engage with when making the push to a new city might seem wasteful.

[Shufflecat]

In any case, I don't think Death Stranding is meant to be realistic fiction in general. The issues discussed here aside, the general vibe and logic I get from the game is IMO that of magical realism. Magical realism as filtered through an oddball Japanese developer's exoticised perception of western culture, which probably confuses things.

Magical realism and sci fi is actually not that unusual a combo, but it's probably just underrepresented enough in popular media to where a fair number of people might not know that it's a genre that even exists. Hence people getting flustered when encountering sci-fi that's doesn't even follow the "rules" they'd expect from soft sci fi.

[Alexander]

Shufflecat lähetti viestin:

In any case, I don't think Death Stranding is meant to be realistic fiction in general. The issues discussed here aside, the general vibe and logic I get from the game is IMO that of magical realism. Magical realism as filtered through an oddball Japanese developer's exoticised perception of western culture, which probably confuses things.

Magical realism and sci fi is actually not that unusual a combo, but it's probably just underrepresented enough in popular media to where a fair number of people might not know that it's a genre that even exists. Hence people getting flustered when encountering sci-fi that's doesn't even follow the "rules" they'd expect from soft sci fi.

That's not about realism. I realized early on that DS world is a world of magic, despite the sci fi appearance. It is about internal consistency of the metaphor. The setting may be totally phantasmagorial, but if the odd-shaped gears of it fit well together, it is fun for me to explore and model it in my head. Moreover, any message the author of the setting might want to send derives its credibility from the consistency of the setting.

Unfortunately DS setting is not consistent, so the deeper message suffers from it. For example, Sam is often asked to carry such things as board games, special pens, etc. The intended message was probably something like "such things are as important for the civilization as resources or food". But the actual result is that I start to doubt that Sam's clients really value his efforts that much if they are willing to spend it on such things.

[Shufflecat]

That's a fair criticism. I in no way was trying to make a case for the game being ideally executed, even for what it's trying to do (or seems to be trying to do).