Welcome back to Pixel Project Radio.

This is the final installment of our conversations around Death Stranding.

Finally finish the game.

I'm joined again by Nick and Will.

Will and Nick from the Friday Night game cast, recording on a Friday evening into the night, bringing it in with the Friday Night boys on this fine Friday night.

That was a tongue twister.

I had to do twice.

How's it coming ill?

A tongue twister?

Yes, sir, Yes, sir, We're doing great over here.

Very odd brand having us on a Friday, so very nice of you.

We appreciate that as always, but it's always being here with you.

Rick.

Yeah, Rick, I'm really excited to be back and close out Death Stranding for you.

I'm excited to hear your final thoughts and see where this wraps up for everybody.

Yeah, and thank you for joining.

I try to give my thanks as much as possible, like a Catholic priest, to all of the fine folks that join me on the show.

It's really appreciated.

I really appreciate you guys.

Yes, this is the last episode for Death Stranding.

I wanted to say this upfront.

I want to you know, we generally try to go beat by beat through the story and not spoil anything.

I think for this last episode, I think we should abandon that and just put all the spoilers on the table up front.

I think it'll make talking about this easier rather than going straight through, because this game in the final third really just sort of sits you down and tells you everything.

The pacing in retrospect on this game is very bizarre, and this final part, which I confess I think is a bit of a disaster.

They kind of just tell you everything.

He essentially does what.

We do know.

He walks you through the story beats.

But I think to talk about it holistically is probably the best move, so we're not just kind of relaying everything that they're relaying to the player, You know what I mean?

Does that make sense?

Sure?

Does?

Well?

Cool, let's get into it.

So the haw and the car that plays a huge part in the final parts of the story, So let's touch on that really briefly.

The ha in the ca that's a concept from ancient Egyptian thought.

People in that time period thought of the soul as containing several different parts, the cat, the ren, etc.

You can check it out a wikipedi, That's where I'm reading from.

But the ha and the ka ha sometimes referred to as BA, those are two parts.

And in Death Stranding, what they've done is essentially relegated those terms to mean body and soul, and that plays a big role moving forward, because essentially what happens is when one's ha and K gets separated on the beach, and in real life, that's when things like repatriation happen.

That's when things like omily happen.

The extinction entity, which we'll get into as well.

And you know, I had a thought earlier today.

I'm curious to hear what you two think about this.

A key theme that Kojima wanted to put into this game is the importance of togetherness and community and helping one another, essentially being connected to your fellow humans, right, And I was thinking about this in terms of repatriation, and I'm wondering if you two have any thoughts of this.

Once I kind of started considering them together, it kind of took the wit out of that idea of kindness and altruism.

If Sam is a repatriot, he is effectively immortal, right, And I know it's a little more complicated than that.

I think he's not literally immortal.

I think there's some nuance there, but effectively he is.

And the thing about altruism and kindness and acts of service for others is what makes them special.

Is not just that we are helping our fellow man.

It's not just that we are doing a kindness for no gain to ourselves.

It's that we are doing that in conjunction with actively losing some of our time on earth.

Right.

What makes those acts of kindness special, those acts of service special, is that we are helping somebody else out for no personal gain, and in fact, we are losing some of our precious time here on Earth to do something solely for other people.

That's what makes acts of you know, self sacrifice, kindness, however you'd like to say it, so effective.

And I was thinking about this in terms of Sam being a repatriot and effectively being the only person rebuilding America in this game.

The fact that he's a mortal kind of takes some of the wind out of that sale, do you know what I mean?

The fact that he is effectively living several lifetimes means that he has all the time in the world, and that sacrifice of his mortal minutes isn't really an issue and it took.

I don't know, do you think I'm off base?

Am I thinking about this too hard?

Is this too self serving?

Or am I blowing farts?

You know?

That just might be, you know, like a take, But I don't know.

It's interesting looking at it thinking because Sam's you know, effectively immortal, like we mentioned, is that it's taking those the wind out.

It brings me back to a lot of times when people talk about somebody being, you know, a mortal, or maybe people thinking I wish I could live forever, and I feel like, very quickly as you kind of age and you realize what that would mean, it feels a lot more like a curse than it does any blessing or a boon.

So I don't know.

I look at Sam obviously as the game does paint him as a very tragic figure because of his backstory and everything.

I know.

He said, we're putting spoilers on the table, but I.

Imagine we'll probably talk more about his backstory when it makes a little bit more sense in it.

But I definitely saw Sam between him being the complete backbone of Bridges and being the one that's like physically connecting all of these different people together, being the person that's fighting nearly all the beats by himself, and then you know, fighting Higgs by himself.

In most cases, I've put him a lot more of maybe a martyr pedestal, and I feel like that's is still even kind of lined up.

Not quite religious.

Of course, you can tie religion to damn near anything, so someone could easily say this is like a religious type of game.

You know, Sam dies and comes back like Jesus.

Right.

I'm sure someone has written that blog post out there in the world somewhere.

Yeah, there's a very hip Sunday school preacher that made this pair of Well that's.

Some guaranteed guaranteed the stranding of death.

Yeah, so someone who suffers was killed for their beliefs a martyr.

You know who else was stranded on a cross?

Jesus Christ.

So you think you think that he can be seen as a martyr, even though by definition of martyr gives up their own life.

Sam functionally can't do that because he.

Gives it up you multiple times.

He can't lose it as and die for good, but he will always come back.

However, you know the scars that you know, forgive me that stigmata remains.

It's not like the explosion that happens that killed Igor or is it Victor one of the brothers, just like oh, Sam comes back and it's like nothing happened.

You know, there's a giant crater there forever, you know, the cities that were killed in void outs and destroyed and void outs don't come back.

So the scars remain, even if Sam also does, and he carries that with him the entirety of the game.

My thing is is that like with Sam, I'm not necessarily Yes, what Kojima was going for throughout the game is like this central theme is togetherness.

Like you know, we as a people are stronger together and we are like the idea of like rebuilding the you know America and the UCA is the fact that like we will continue to function even in this you know, post apocalyptic you know timeline as a more functioning society if we can work together.

And I think that is it's a true statement.

It's one of the reasons why I think Death Stranding is such a hopeful game.

But it's interesting because like, while you know, that is a core component of what Sam go through and like the function that he serves in this game.

I almost see his personal journey as a character being more central to the themes that are prevalent to him, like the idea like he cannot touch like this disconnect from other human beings, and it's that that, you know, course, over time, when he learns to trust Fragile, when he learns to you know, kind of kind of understand what was going on with the BB and Unger and everything that was involved with those characters in the story, and then ultimately being able to be closer, being able to be in contact with other humans.

Like I almost see that as well as like the you know, obviously reconciliation that he's having with Omily at the same time coalescing.

It's messy, it's not very clear, and I think that's another reason why, like I see where you're going with this Rick, where it's like some of these things, like these these voices that are going on in Kojima's head are competing for attention at the same time, and it doesn't really convey a very cogent and you know, concise story that's easily digestible.

That's something I noticed too.

I do think that Kojima had a lot of voices going on, and the result is that none of them are entirely in focus throughout this narrative, and that's that's where things get a little unclear, opaque, fuzzy, messy, however you want to think about it, and we see a lot of that in this final half of this game.

Let's let's talk about some of the stuff that we see after our second battle, which is I think, I think where we ended last time with Clifford.

This is our second dream battle, beach Battle World War two that some folks have said Kojima just kind of put into appease the metal gear solid fans.

I don't know.

I had fun with these.

After that, we're gonna learn a lot more about dead Man and Heartman.

Those are the two.

And by the way, if you're fed up with Kojima naming characters this way, get ready buckle up, because this is where we learn all about why everybody has called what they are all the way down to bridget Strand Bridge.

It makes me mad, it makes me angry.

So let's talk about dead Man.

He's the one that we learned first.

I think, do you remember in the first episode where I kind of jokingly referred to him as a Frankenstein.

Yeah, you're right.

I think I must have read something about him and just subconsciously put it into my brain and forgot about it.

Because what I thought I was like, oh, he's got the scar on his forehead, you know, kind of like Frankenstein.

It turns out that's what he is.

He's not a real living being.

He was created in a lab and supplemented with cadaver organs.

I think he says somewhere around like what's seventy eighty ninety percent of him is like salvaged parts.

Yeah, and he tells you this, He says, the truth is I'm Frankenstein's monster.

Artificial grown from bluripotent stem cells.

And when that vital spark didn't manifest, ignore my organs.

They replaced the defective ones with.

Those of the dead.

I never had a birthday.

I'm a soulless meat puppet, no ca a dead man.

You see now why I'm obsessed with it all.

That's why he's obsessed with the bridges and beach babies, beaches, all of it.

That's also why, in the middle of the battlefield he started telling Sam all of his troubles, which still makes me laugh to this day.

That's such a funny thing to do.

The thing about this is it's an interesting idea, but they don't really do a whole lot with it, do they.

It kind of begins and ends here.

Yeah, exactly.

It was.

It was one of those things where it's like, yeah, I think, like, you know, dead Man is the closest to like what Sam had as like an actual friend, if you're not counting Fragile in the storyline, and I think like he is interesting.

The you know, the voice actor is interesting.

I just feel like he was real, a real nothing burger, Like he kind of is just there as the alternative to you know, hearing die Hardman and Sam's you know, Mike piece, you know, telling him what to do at an't given moment.

I mean, he really is.

He's the guy in the chair for Sam, Like he tells them a lot of information obviously in the scene here and then a little bit later on.

You know, you get a lot of Sam's backtory through dead Man, just because Sam isn't going to look into the camera and say, you know, back in the day when I had a family, So dead Man's kind of that way through to Sam's backstory for the player character, not that it's done particularly gracefully, but it's there all the same.

Yeah, And I mean, I will say this, you know, for his part, I did enjoy kind of the intrigue that Dead Man kind of started with, like kind of alluding to the fact that letting Sam know, hey, like maybe die Hardman is not a person that could be trusted based off of the information that he's withheld from you.

And you know, of course there's that tension when he needs to take the BB and work on the BB in order to make them function in the way that they're supposed to function as quote unquote equipment.

But I just I feel like they could have done so much, They could have gone so much further, They could have done so much more with him, And who's to say that they don't, you know, the sequel to this game.

But yeah, I was I was curious as to like why kind of just it felt like his character arc like there was really no resolution for what he was going through other than the fact that he went through this crazy experience being on the beach with Sam and fighting against fighting against hunger.

Yeah, I mean, I guess that's ultimately his his resolution and is like even mentioned there and you know, like I don't have a CA, you know, there's no beach for me, but his, you know, towards the end of the game, he gets the chance to actually go on a beach, which to him was utterly impossible beforehand.

So that's kind of his transcendence through and like the closing of his story overall is that he got to experience that thing he thought he never would.

And I just appreciate too with dead Man how he is and his overall experience.

While he does still at the beginning, of course, treat the BB, you know as equipment, talks about it as equipment, tries to kind of separate it as an it versus as a true you know, baby out of the still mother's womb.

But because of how he is as his you know, kind of dead man, no CA in that post death state versus a child who's existing outside of their mother's post death state, I think he is the person that it makes the most sense that would help Sam and help BB survive and continue throughout this story versus you know, someone like Diehard Man if he was in dead Man's shoes, would are just thrown poor BB into like an incinerator, and you never would have had the kind of back half of the story that you've got.

I don't know.

I think I'm closer on the fence to where Nick is at.

I just I could see why you would say that that's his closure will, but I don't know it just outside of dead Man telling us once and that being here that he doesn't have a beach, and you know this is a personal struggle for him, It's never demonstrated in any other way.

It's just I mean, this is, at least in this game, this is a total Kojima move where he just tells you stuff and you're just supposed to accept it at face value.

And I don't know, I think this works better for some than it does for others.

I'm not trying to tell anybody that my take is the correct one.

It just it didn't work for me personally.

I think it would have been cool to explore this more dead Man specifically, not so much Hartman.

I mean, Hartman has an interesting backstory too, but I think dead Man could have been an interesting parallel to Sam's story.

But I mean, unless you count the ending where he does go on to a beach to save Sam.

It does kind of begin an end here.

There's not a lot more to him, But I wonder maybe it's in the sequel, you know.

Yeah, I think there was definitely a room for it, and hopefully they explore it and it at least, you know, I haven't seen too much of the sequels other than just like you know, a little bit of gameplay footage and a lot of like what was in the promotional you know, footage and trailers for the game and that sort of thing.

But they it seems like they're pivoting, like to focus a lot more on tar Man, you know, the the other director that Kojima is obsessed with, George Miller.

One thing I did want to ask you both in relation and I know that we're going a little long on you know, dead Man's arc, but something that I was curious on, something Will I wanted to ask you, is that the way that Giermal del Toro like was blocked and like acted in the way that he like moved about the scenes, like it seemed like really like forced in slapstick and like extra like And this goes back to the scene that we were talking about last episode when he you know, he does the Japanese shown in putting the hand against the wall and forcing Sam into the shower, and it's like super sexual and like strange.

Is this a Kojima thing?

Is this what he does with like weird characters?

Because I feel like, you know, dead Man is one hundred percent supposed to be like that weird character, but it almost like whenever anything important was seemingly supposed to happen, especially when they were on the beach and he was, you know, fighting against Clifford and you know, trying to get back to the bb and there's this like moment of tension.

But like the way that he moves around the spaces just makes him seem like a cartoon character.

I don't know, did either of you get that?

Yeah, there's definitely plenty of Kojima games previously in characters, you know, talking about some characters like Vamp and MGS three, the younger version of a Revolver.

A's a lot, you know, just lots of big character movements, like you mentioned, kind of cartoony, but you know, very much feels like a stage play.

It's like they're playing to the audience versus playing to the character that they're necessarily speaking to in the scene themselves, and that's definitely not uncommon for quite a few characters in Cojamus games.

Yeah.

Yeah, it didn't stand out as being distracting to me.

I just thought that he was, you know, playing the role an eccentric scientist.

You know, I don't know, it wasn't it wasn't offensive to my senses.

Okay, okay, that's fair.

I'll just you know, I'll take it as a as a it's just not my taste.

Thing.

Well, we'll take it at that.

The resident death stranding hater, he's mad, that's dead man.

Let's talk about Hartman.

Hartman, who, like I don't know if this is going to make sense to anybody, but I cannot stop seeing Hartman as like a mixture of John Oliver and this water Somalier guy on TikTok named Martin.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

The water I don't know about the water Somolier, but he does look like a mixture of John Oliver in that one character from Assassin's Creed one through three that was like a friend of like Desmond Miles.

He almost looks like a literal just like a four k version of that character.

Do you know who I'm talking about?

Will not off the top of my head, it's not ringing a bell.

I think.

I'm just so caught on the fact that it's an actual guy, like the director.

So I'm just like, I just see, you know, the guy who directed Drive in the un Demon.

He Hartman has a thing where his heart will stop.

He goes into cardiac arrest every twenty one minutes.

He's up and awake twenty one minutes, and then his heart attack occurs and he's out for three minutes on the beach, on his beach, I'm fairly sure.

And the thing is is he's searching for his family during this time.

What his family ended up getting taken in the void out that they had mentioned that we had heard about several times over by this point, and heart was brought back to life when the hospital's power generator kicked in, so he was ripped from the beach.

So he's spending his entire life now searching the beach for his family to be reunited.

In that way, he is a dead man as well.

And I'm glad that Kojima didn't think of that, because that would have been a lie.

In the game, but he is functionally dead as well, not literally, but his entire waking life is spent searching for his family so he can join them, so he can die.

That's kind of it.

Again, very very interesting backstory, but outside of this scene where he's telling us it, we don't get it, like that's beginning and end is here.

What are your thoughts on Heartman.

Yeah, he's pretty much the counterpoint to dead Man, so, I mean one of the quotes he has in the game is, you know, my body may be present, but my soul is on the beach.

I'm already dead.

Hartman lives but wants to die.

Dead Man kind of isn't alive but wants to live exactly.

You know, one has a soul and nobody one has a body and no soul.

And it's like the advice or so it's it's really interesting, and I like the fact that you get that kind of you know, back to back in the story park there too, so as you're playing it, you kind of put that together.

Oh look, you know, there's the two sides of the different coin.

I wanted to say Yin and yang, but I feel like that gives kind of a connotation of you know, the the darken light when it's really more of like a two size of the same coin situation.

But yeah, really tragic backstory family getting killed in the double void out which you know he's constantly able to see from his really sick house overlooking the big heart shaped crater.

So I'm like, I don't know's it's tough.

It's like you're over here, you're crying in a mansion.

I'm like, damn, I get it, but the house is kind of too lit to be sad in.

I guess this is one of the naming conventions that kind of made me grown several times over, because not only does he have a what is it a crater like that his mansion overlooks that is in the shape of a heart, he has a genetic condition that puts his heart in the shape of a heart that he shows you by asking you.

I have pictures.

I can't to see hot Ben's hot shape pot, No, you really should.

His heart is literally in the shape of a heart, and because he's always having these heart attacks and being brought back, they call him the heart Man.

Like several times over, this has explained this is too much.

It's too much, is this.

Is where we uh, you know, as as the great little Uzi vert you know, says we're lost in the sauce at this point where it's it's it's gone too far.

I yeah, I I here's the thing whereic I Actually I was just having a conversation with Will earlier when we were prepping for the show, talking about how, like, for more gameplay eccentric reasons, I really enjoyed the section of the game.

And I really as as much as I moan and complain about, you know, some of the other characters in Kojima's world building and his writing and his you know, character choices, I will say Hartman was more one of lean more on the side of being a little bit least offensive.

And I think part of that is because his story is truly tragic, and it's like, you know, they are doing the show not tell thing by you know, explaining you know, his condition, having him die in front of Sam and then get brought back in the same time.

And it's also you know, the through line of the distrust of die Hardman continues, you know, when when Hartman reveals to you that there are things that he needs to share when they're not being monitored, and there are ways that he can go about, you know, kind of you know, secretly sharing certain details about like the past with Sam.

On top of the fact that you know, diegetically through the game, you're also working with other anthropologists paleontologist stuff.

I'm not mistaken where you're finding evidence that the not if not the BT's, but at least the tar and I guess maybe the strands have existed since you know, the prehistoric era, like small for Humani came online.

Yeah, you get a lot of the lore in this section, and like, I know this is what some listeners want, but you know where this isn't really like a law based podcast.

It's not something we're going to go into.

Sure, there's a lot of it in the game though, that you can explore at your leisure.

And it's interesting that, by the way, that bit of information that Hartman wants to discuss with you, part of that is we're now considering that it's possible, Bridget and Homily we're both extinction entities.

We're toying with that now, and that raises questions.

Why was the president of America an extinction entity?

It seems a little bit counterproductive for the leader of a country.

You know.

Another angle of Hartman that's really tragic too, that I really really wish they would have done more with is you know, he talks about this persistent cycle of twenty one minutes awake, three minutes out after you know, having his heart attacks and then he gets brought back, rinse and repeat, ad infinitum.

He talks about how that's off putting to some people.

And when he and Sam for meat, he goes to you know, he does the thing where he goes to give Sam a handshake.

Sam recoils because Sam has that condition, he's got that phobia.

Hartman reads it as him being repulsed by him, because he keeps dying and being brought back to life like some kind of a freak of nature, and it stings him.

You can see it.

And he says something I don't remember exactly what he says, something like, yeah, this does shock people.

I can understand.

Glad you could make it.

Sam.

I'm sorry.

I didn't mean to allow you, but I am.

What I am.

And it's twinged with sadness every time.

And I really wish they would have done more with that.

That is such an interesting bent to his character and it's tragic.

Yeah, like you both said, so.

I wonder too it could just be a thing where I mean, obviously the game is as long as you want to make it based on delivering packages.

But I'm trying to think with like dead Man and Heartman, for them to maybe fully explore them more and do more side missions and more running around, it would bloat the back half of the game more than it kind of already is based on, you know, at the very end when you get the classic Kojima hour and a half to two hour long cut scene wrapping everything up.

So maybe that's something that, contrary to what we've kind of known about Kajima when it comes to this game, could have gotten left on the cutting room floor.

But this is a lot of parts of me that are looking at you know, dead Man, Heartman, even die hard Man later on some of these side characters where there are some some gaps and some question marks on their backstories and what they feel and what they think.

And I mean, ultimately, I just kind of have to be okay with that, just because you're not gonna know everything.

And I'm sure at this point he knew there was going to be a two, So like we already mentioned, though I'm sure some some gaps are filled in there when you go to you know, Australia in the future.

It must be nice to know that you're going to get a sequel to your you know, million million units selling game.

Right right, I you know, And it's fine.

I don't expect games or any stories to explain everything.

I think, especially in retrospect.

Why I wish that would have happened is I think, having seen the rest of the game, I think Kojima is better at the character moments then he which is strange to say based on what I've said about his writing so far.

I think he's better at that than he is at creating this really deep and intricate world.

Like the Law is very cool, but it gets immediately extremely messy when Kojima tries to tell that story.

But the character moments, especially that we get with Cliff and die Hardman throughout the rest of this game, are bordering on stellar.

They're extremely good.

Yeah, And I would attribute this to you know, obviously, you know, Will has a really really you know, strong affinity for the performances in this game, and I will say I completely agree with on that front.

I think this you know, for the rest of this game from this point forward, is going to be one of the highlights of Kojima's ability.

And I think one of his skills is directing people on set, directing people on camera.

You know, Is he a writer?

Is he not?

That's that's up for other people that are smarter than me to decide.

But what I will say is that I did really really enjoy the way that you know, something that you even mentioned at the beginning of the show, Rick about his flair for cinematography, his flair for really interesting angles.

And I think that's really showcased here in these next few episodes.

Pick Up the Baby and Cry, Pick Up the Baby and Cry because of the strand in the sky.

I when Norman Retis tells that story, the way that he says that and looks at the camera cracks me up every time.

Every time.

Yeah, yeah, this I you know, Hartman's an interesting fella.

This whole area we are still reconnecting Kyro network.

It should be said too, I think you said this, Nick, this is maybe my favorite area to play in the game.

It's very mountainous.

There's a nice mix of snow and lack of snow, it's a lot of fun.

I really had fun traversing this this it's challenging too.

Yeah, it's really challenging.

And there's there's a moment and I don't know if we had mentioned this earlier, if we're already past it, but there's a moment, essentially for story reasons, that the BB gets taken from Sam by a dead man in order to get diagnostics performed on it so it can continue functioning as a BB.

And at this point, you're you don't have the warning system that you've had up into the through the game this part in order to detect other bets that are in the area, and so Sam is kind of forced to deal with them when they emerge, or forced to kind of like look out for those subtle signs.

And I think, like and that's one of the things that I think is so interesting about this game is that when they're pairing back some of those systems, when they strip some of your tools away from you and force you as the player to like engage in more leaning towards survival horror combat with a BTS.

This game really is.

Masterful and I love that that course of gameplay, figuring out your load out figuring out what you can carry on your back, and then of course you know, in this mountainous terrain.

One of the reasons why I love it too is because I started really using ziplines super heavily and so picking out different moments and strategically setting up zip lines at the corner of mountain ranges.

I did this like multiple times.

I had like twenty zip lines set up through this area, and by the time and I completed all the side missions as a result of it, because I was able to just zoom from locational location and get those missions completed.

Damn son, I don't think I use the zip lines even once.

Oh man, you missed that to Rick, Yeah, you miss it out, but that's still okay.

Speaking of loadouts and connecting, we do end up connecting the whole chiral network.

When we get as far west as we can go.

We have you cross this sea of tar and this is a really cool moment.

Admittedly, even though they do kind of do everything short of telling you what to do on how to solve it, to cross it and to get to omily, you have to purposefully summon a BT so it does the thing where it brings up all of the buildings out of the tar and that's how you get That's a very very very cool moment.

This leading into chapter nine.

Episode nine is all about Higgs.

We're about to do a big boss fight with him.

Omily has a few visits with us in the nighttime, basically confirming all of our suspicions.

She tells us straight up that she is an extinction entity, that this is all inevitable.

That she does seem to feel compassion towards Sam, and she seems remorseful, but she's like, you know this will happen.

This is what I am.

You can't change it.

And it leads to this big boss fight with Higgs summoning a gigantic bet that sort of absorbs him and Omily.

By the way, am I baddie?

Am I crazy for thinking that Higgs unmasked looks a lot like the Nightman from It's Always Sonny.

It's the It's definitely the eyeshadow.

The eye shadow really does it.

Like it's all I can see.

Well, it's all I can think of when I look at him.

He looks totally like him.

No joke.

If if they got Troy Baker to sing that song in this game, I would have this would be my game of the generation.

This would be like my personal goat.

This would be the best.

I mean, hey, he's referenced other movies before.

It's not out of the it's not out of the ballpark.

I wonder if he likes It's Always Sonny?

I bet he does.

Who doesn't like it Always Sonny?

Does he like TV?

Wait?

Do you say you don't like it?

No?

I say, who doesn't like It's Always Sonny?

Like that's just a super Yeah.

I mean, well, he also a good person that hasn't met it doesn't like it.

I should say he loves film so much.

That he just might not have watched it.

That's true.

This boss fight, uh, I don't know.

It's it's kind of a theme with all the boss fights in this game, this one specifically with the BT not the upcoming ones.

This one is super easy.

Yeah, it's just kind of it's run.

And it's just easy.

It can be easy.

It's not like a hurdle.

It's a cool spectacle.

It looks very but I mean you kind of just run to one end, shoot all of your ammo, run to the other, pick up ammo, and you know, rinse and repeat.

It will fire metroid brain beats at you, but they don't really do anything.

A lot of the time.

They just hit the ground and you know, stop, split and that's it.

Yeah, I was really kidded out for this, for this boss fight.

I had like a ton of like Ammo and blood bullets and of course and like you know, blood bags kind of stored up for for this fight because I felt like something was coming.

And I also generated the the the classic resident Evil grenade launcher in kind of.

Quickly double shore this way.

So maybe that's why it was boring for me.

This is also where they start almost over communicating the sort of idea that this is inevitable.

You can speed this up or slow this down, but you cannot stop what was started.

Is what Higgs told you, this extinction event, this sixth one, is going to happen.

All we're doing is delaying it by putting up a fight.

That's sort of what every what Higgs and Omily are telling you over and over again.

That kind of comes into play with what's coming up.

Sam is gonna go to Omily's beach.

At this time, Higgs has taken Omily fragile can't jump there herself.

But she jumps you there and Higgs will explain his reasoning.

You know, it basically boils down to what we just said, everyone's gonna die.

Just do it now.

You can't see her, that's all this.

This is a gun deal and this man, I really don't know how I feel.

Well, yeah, I do know how I feel.

I don't like this section.

It's two boss fights with Higgs in a row.

There's a part of me that thinks Kojima just put this in here, you know, to appease the action fans of Metal Gear, because even today you can find tons of reviews on this that's just like nothing happens, you know, it's just walking.

Where's the action?

But this is a boss fight in two phases.

The first boss fight is fine, it's you know, your running after Higgs.

Higgs will shoot at you, he's throwing bombs at you.

You just have your fists and he's also teleporting jumping.

You run after him and just punch him several times.

That's the first phase.

The second phase transitions into a like a PvP fighting game, except it's a really bad fighting game.

This this did not need to be here at all.

This is this is actively I think the worst part of the game.

I think, so you.

Want to know something crazy is that I did not realize that you could parry with the strand rope this entire game until you are forced to do it in this boss fight.

And that drove me fucking bonkers to no end because I never really had to deal with mules like up close and personal, and if I did, I really just like knock them out by just hitting punch over and over again with whatever I was holding, or I would shoot them once I got the non lethal guns.

Like I was fine for the most part, but this this really was I'm in line with you, Rick, because this is so frustrating, Like they don't really do a great job of being like, hey, unless you die and then they give you the tip page, don't forget.

To use your rope.

You can do.

You have to parry.

I was under the impression that you did.

That's how I was doing because he because he was teleporting away from you as soon as you get close, and so you have to like wait for him to teleport to you to like punch you, and then you parry so you can get a few hits in.

I don't know, maybe maybe you guys did it differently.

Maybe maybe you didn't have to do it that way, but I kept dying, So I generally waited until he started shooting, and then what would zig zag towards him, and once he was reloading, that's when I would actually what I really like to do was jump and do a flying super rock water.

The drop, kicker the knee.

Yeah.

Yeah, nice, nice, you know, yeah, I did not.

I did not do either of those things.

I kind of was just like I was waiting for him to come to me, I guess, just because like he kept teleporting away so quickly whenever I would get nearby.

So I was like, okay, so we just gotta we just gotta wait for him to come in.

Yeah, it's funny.

It's a It's one of those things that I was kind of used to just because I hadn't played it personally, but I had known you know, MGS for yeah, ending with kind of like that one v one personal old man fight.

So I was like, oh, nice, I get the chance to experience this in a new game.

So so this.

Is a like a rent and repeat of something he did in for a little bit.

It wasn't It's not you know, quite exactly the same.

But the fact that you have like a big, old giant battle that culminates in a one on one kind of personal fist fight mirrors that game from MGS four.

Yeah, I mean, if it's a nod to his earlier work, I can understand that.

I don't know one the I mean, the first part of this fight's fine.

It's really the fighting game portion that stinks, partly because it plays terribly.

I don't know, man, there's so much dissonance in this game with kojimas messaging his intended messaging and at the very end, very explicit messaging that violence isn't the answer.

But at the same time he goes out of his way to put violence in here.

You know, you don't want to shoot anybody because that'll cause a void out.

Violence isn't the answer, So instead we're just gonna play pretend that all of these firearms and ammunition are you know, non lethal.

So go nuts.

It's Neil Druckman all over again.

You know what I mean, Violence isn't the answer, But let's beat the shit out of Higgs, like to the point where you're punching him in slow motion.

And admittedly this made me laugh like, like, that's my takeaway of this too.

I'm sorry, I'm getting entirely too sidetracked.

I'm not on my game today.

This is like I don't think this is the deep masterpiece that people think it is.

I think this is just a fun summer blockbuster action That's what this is.

And like sometimes Kojima forgets that.

But when he doesn't, like in this fight, and you're getting close ups of Sam punching Higgs in the face and a slow mo of like his tooth shooting out of his mouth, that's when this game is the most fun to me, you know.

And and the zen aspects of portering, that's I love that too.

But like when when this game is not trying to be overly pretentious and scholarly and trying to tell this deep story, when it's just being a fun movie, I think that's where it shines, man, And that's you know what's happening here.

Uh, I don't know.

I still I still just wish they would have cut the PvP thing.

But you know, well, if it's not, if it's a nod to his previous work, then I get it.

Yeah, Like my thing is, is that exactly what you're saying about the slapstick, like the the you know kind of force full you know, like you know, slow mo punching humor.

Like there are moments in this game where stuff like that has happened before, like you know, in cool intense shootout moments like could you even knows how to kind of bring the hype?

And I just wish that he stayed in that lane and just gave us so much more of that, Like I wish he gave us Oscra's wrath but death stranding and didn't really get too concerned about trying to be kind of academic or trying to be philosophical with where he's going for.

But it's just because it's like I don't know if that's the lane that he really can can live in in the games that he's going with.

But uh, something that I did want to ask you is in regards to what is going on with the character dynamics between Higgs and Omily earlier on my assumption is that Higgs had been working for Omily this whole time?

Is that is that right?

I?

Or will do you want to sell this one?

Working for isn't quite or being manipulated by because it's like I think.

I think I think that's closer to the.

Chair because you know, you get that that single shot where Sam finally comes, you know, the second phase, you know, before the final boss fight with Higgs, and you see this moment.

It's like it's like a very quick, kind of more subtle scene which I kind of appreciated, where he's like kneeling on the ground at the at the feet of Amaline.

She's kind of like looking at him, and they're having a brief exchange.

I can't recall exactly what, but it gave me the distinct impression that he was doing her bidding somehow, and that it was in a situation where she was at you know, the she was you know, subject to his whims as this kind of like you know mad villain that he's you know, kind of portrayed as in this game.

More so that he's the one that's actually kind of getting getting emotionally or you know, psychologically manipulated by her into doing especially what she needs to do as an extinction entity.

So I thought that was, you know, an interesting wrinkle to the story.

But alas you know, like you you were saying, Ricky kind of ends with messiness.

Yeah, I was like, it's ultimately more of Omily manipulating what's already kind of in higgs heart in his mind.

You know, he's kind of tipping towards that edge of chaos already.

And she's like, oh, you know, this guy would be an easy person to give Hella dooms too, and then have him just go out there and create a bunch of craziness.

Okay, now that this person's I hear creating craziness and I have a villain, Sam, come be my Mario and save me from this bowser jeez, which you know he comes in does, and then we get the best in line in the entire game that everybody loves and no one has any issues with it.

Oh yeah, beIN in that.

I think Fragile does say that to Sam at the end, Like when they were working together, she was using her I think jumping powers to help them do deliveries and connect people.

Emily comes in and shows that she can do that even better and seduces Higgs and basically makes him go mad with power at that point, like she turns him into her lackey to bring about the end.

And it was largely due to that seduction of power I think let's talk about what you just said, Will, And to be fair, this is not the only video game line here.

Like the Dead Man opens by making a big, big statement of game over man, and during the Higgs fight, you know, he prefaces by saying, this is just a good old fashioned boss fight, one last game over.

So Kojima does this like throughout a ton of this, but you get a little dialogue with Amily here, by the way, after a really really stupid line from Fragile between her and Higgs, when you know, Troy Baker does this whole monologue and calls her damaged Goods.

So she punches him, and you're damaged Goods, fucking dumb.

But Omilly could get here.

That's that's the big reveal here.

Emily wasn't actually stuck here.

She was able to get out to visit Sam.

This hole being this, her being stuck here was a whole lie made up by die Hardman to manipulate Sam.

And the way that they get out of here, Emily suggests is to just run hand in hand.

We run together, run, Yeah, like Mario and Princess Beach.

And they zoom in on her face as she's saying this, I don't know why they have the confidence to do this.

It's I've like, it's so strange because it's it's really really bad, it's really ham fisted, clumsy, but they do it with such confidence that it's I don't know, like it's almost like they're so confident about it, like they're making fun of themselves, so you can't make fun of them because they did it first.

I don't know.

To the running down the beach, like I've heard this called like a what do you call it?

A medical commercial?

You know, like they're.

Running down the beach and you can just imagine a voiceover like ask your doctor if Flea Michtel is right for you.

I don't know, dude, this is this is absurd.

They had to know they were going to get a big groan out of that one, which is I'm partially like a lot partially, I'm very sure, which is why they zoomed in on the face, like they just leaned into it.

This This has had to be one of those lines that Kojima was like, it has to be in and I guarantee somebody said please not.

Yes, He's like nah, yeah.

One of the editors was like, you got to take this out and he's like, no, this is this is a load bearing line.

He said, this is the lynch pin of the game.

If this isn't in the game, doesn't come out.

Yeah, it's it's nutty.

It's nutty.

Everybody everybody ships on this line online.

So I don't know that we need to devote a ton of time to it.

It's just it's.

The crazy thing to me is the confidence that they that they have when delivering shit like this.

I think I'm like fairly confident when I say that the Princess Beach and Mario line is what specifically makes this game one of the Alzheimers for Will like at least top ten, just for him.

Top top five, and it's not five, like gets up there.

So on this Beach, Homily, Bridget, maybe die Hardman who is here now and tries to shoot Bridget, and Cliff Hunger, who comes out of the tar.

They all have a little pow wow, and it's clear they know each other, and it's clear that there is not good terms Like Hunger looks like he's going to shoot Hardman at one point, and the next few chapters, I mean literally the next episode is entirely just dead man telling you about die Hardman.

But moving forward into this next Cliff Hunger Battle is setting up some reveals about their backstories in the coming episode the Cliff Hunger Battle.

This one here that I think is reminiscent of Vietnam, Is that right?

I'm pretty confident it was pretty sure there was.

I think.

So this was really tough for me.

I died like four times.

Yeah, this is the hardest one of the three.

Yeah it's not.

Yeah, it's it's not easy.

But I really liked the I like the construction.

I wish like this was ninety percent of the game, honestly.

I'd like the level layout obviously, the sequential nature, using the BB to kind of detect where Unger.

Was going to be.

Like I just I really, you know, they weren't the best.

They weren't like, you know, you know, the most emergent, you know, third person shooting gameplay that I've ever experienced.

But I did have a really good time playing these like action sequences.

You gotta get you on Metal Gear Solids soon then, So if you like these sequences.

So much, I was gonna say what Nick wishes this was Metal Gear Solid That's what what this comes down to it's it's a tough battle, but it's it's a lot of fun.

This ending scene, though, there's a tender moment between Sam and Cliff where it looks like Sam might give the BB over for a minute.

They both sole the see the Sunset melody to the baby Baby gets happy.

It's clear that Baby is not pleased comforted by Cliff's presence and actually, Will, I'm wondering if you could clear this up for me.

I'm a touch confused at this knowing what we know about Cliff.

I'm not crazy about this scene.

I'm not I don't dislike if it, I'm not wild about it.

But he asks Sam, you know who he is?

Sam says, are you the father?

And Cliff?

I mean, at this point, it's clear Cliff is kind of resigned that he quote unquote lost here.

He's he's getting some sort of closure.

But he says, they told me your name was Sam Porter, your Sam Bridges.

You're the bridge to my future, or you're the bridge to all of our futures.

Who told him that he was Sam Porter?

Because I mean, we set up top spoilers are all on the table.

Cliff is Sam's father, and the bbe flashbacks that we were experiencing.

We're from baby Sam's point of view.

Yeah, that's the big reveal that I think Sam realizes here.

I'm pretty sure Sam realizes here.

But we get expeciciites.

All that year.

But you know, there is a flashback where Sam and Cliff talk before Cliff dies.

I didn't take that to be literal.

So like who who said that he was Sam Porter?

That I don't understand.

Was he already named as a baby even though Cliff kept calling him Bibi to his face and to Hardman it.

Was named by Kojimo because he moves things.

Well poor true?

But in universe, Like who told Cliff that he was Sam Porter?

Why does he say this line?

I have no idea.

Yeah, I'm trying to think off the top of my head, which is not quite coming to me.

I mean, there's a couple of guesses I have.

Is that because of Cliff's current status, it was like as he starts to learn things, it could just be more of those like you absorb information through the chirro mad which, since everyone at this point has been kind of completely covered in touching the chiro matters like that could be a part of it.

So that's like my only kind of thought there, because it's not like there was a scene where somebody was like, that's your son, or it could just be the classic.

As a parent, you know, you kind of know.

It's like, you know, you've seen that a million times in movies, TV show, other entertainment.

Someone you think may or may not be a part of someone's life and they look into their eyes or like, I've recognized my son.

Well, he's got to know that Sam is the baby, you know, the way he says, you're not Sam Porter, you're Sam Bridges.

Yeah, so that was my thought when I first played through it and trying to remember through from this one.

I just kind of piggybacked off that from twenty nineteen where I was like, oh, it's like you look into your child's eyes and you kind of know, as you know what we've seen that with time travel movies, where I'm gonna go go back in time and see my dad when he was younger, and then like they look into each other's eyes and you're like, I feel like I recognized you.

That's kind of what I picked up from there.

I didn't consider your first point too.

They they could have just told Cliff this present day.

You know, while Cliff is sort of in the ether, not having moved on from his beach, kind of stuck in the scene because of this horrifically tragic backstory that gets unfolded over the next few hours.

That's probably You're probably right, I think.

Yeah, I mean, he had access to information that you know, non normal personnel would have.

But then also it's like he's on a beach.

He especially because there's so much exposition, there's so much like lore at this point of the game, I'm like, I'm fully checked out of like questioning why people know what or how they know it.

To be frank with you, like, it's I mean, I understand that it does matter, and it is curious, and there are still questions that I personally have about like how characters relate or how they work to each other.

But yeah, it's one of those things that I just kind of accepted he knew that's fine.

Yeah, well, I agree with you.

I I kind of got to the point where I stop questioning too.

The reason that this scene in particular jumped to my mind though, is after you know, you learn all about Cliff's backstory, basically at the end of the game.

And the first thing I did after seeing all of that was think back to the scene, because before I knew that I hated the way that this resolved, I knew that there had to be more.

And after you learn that Sam's Cliff's son, I thought back to hear and you know, I don't know, I'm still not even sold on whether or not I like this even with all of that information.

But yeah, I don't know.

I'm just really perplexed as to why he says this.

Oh, really like the kind of Cliff coming to recognize Sam as his son.

Thing didn't really land for you.

I don't know.

I didn't dislike it.

I just don't know if I like it.

I really don't know how I feel about it.

I guess I was hoping for something a little more dramatic based on how horrifically awful the end of Cliff's life was, and you know, so much so that he is literally living in a purgatory that is more akin to hell, just NonStop death and destruction, fighting to get the BB back.

And here's the BB as a human being, And all he really says is, you know, you're Sam Bridges.

You're the bridge to my future.

You're the bridge to our futures, and that's it.

I don't know.

I'm not convinced it would be better if it was a more dramatic heart tugging scene, but maybe moving forward here you learn a little bit more about Omily's background too, Omilely and Bridget.

Hard Man left a little hologram as insurance, as he says, and he basically gives you the background of Bridget and Omily.

This is where the wheels really start turning and where the game starts just explaining everything to you.

Some of this you don't learn until a little bit later, but let's just talk about all of it now.

Essentially, what this is is Omily doesn't exist as a human being like we thought.

You know, it's not the reason that nobody's ever seen her.

And we get people saying this every now and then throughout the game.

You know, folks from the expedition that were like, ah, I would love to meet her, I've never actually seen her.

Hartman says the same thing, like have you ever actually seen her?

Really?

Think back, have you?

And Sam's like, well, yeah, lots of times, and then he's like, no, no, you haven't.

Emily was born on or was she born on the beach or was she born I think she was born on the beach, right.

Emily was born on the beach.

Yeah after you know Bridget and had to split.

That's when she was born on the beach.

She was born on the beach and spent so much time there that her ha and her ca, her body and soul sort of split, one staying on the beach, never aging, one staying in real life and growing old.

So the cover story became then that Bridget the aging body, made up a counter story that Emily was her daughter and was very sick.

Couldn't be because Bridget had very in cancer or uterine cancer.

I think they say, so she couldn't have children.

They are the same person, is basically what it gets down to.

Yeah, because ultimately a Bridget existed first, and that's when she went through everything, you know, becoming vice president, all that jazz.

But when she was younger, she realized that she was that ee and she rejected it and rejected it for so long that eventually her han ka split into you know, Omily, omilyou being born on the beach and being on the beach forever and the nuts after, like she started getting that uterine cancer.

She saw that as kind of a punishment for not fulfilling her cosmic duty to end the world.

Right, Yeah, the chiral network too, This is something we wanted a little bit later.

The chiral network was all Bridget's idea basically, and will You're gonna have to correct me.

I think I might be misunderstanding this.

Basically, her idea with the Chiral network was a search for all of human knowledge to figure out why ees come to be and potentially how to stop it, because that's one thing throughout here is she keeps saying that this is inevitable, this will happen, but she's not overjoyed about it.

She's not like Higgs, looking to destroy it all, tear it all down, because it's gonna happen anyway, might as well be now.

She genuinely seems regretful.

So my understanding was she started the Bridge Baby projects and the Chiral Network as a means to dig up all of Earth's history, all of earth and times knowledge to figure out why ees come into existence and how to stop them.

Is that about right?

I thought Bridget maybe had that thought, And yeah, I'm trying to think even from her end if how to stop it was maybe the right way as opposed to maybe how to kind of like live with it, like literally live since she was dying.

But I picked up at least I'm trying to recall.

I feel like Emily, you know, was helping her to a degree, but at some point she just got to that section where she realized this is going to happen no matter what, and I'm not happy about it, but I kind of have to get those gears spinning, which is why she initially started working with Higgs.

But then after seeing everything that goes on, you get more towards the end of the story where it's like she's still conflicted again.

You know, there's never quite a yes, this is the right thing to do, especially when you're talking about, you know, the potential end of humanity as we know it.

Yeah, I'm not sure.

I really don't quite remember.

But she's definitely homily yourself is, you know, definitely like you have in the notes here, like she's behind all she's like that puppet master, and that was kind of working everybody from the beach, including Sam, just making sure that he could get to where he needs to be in order to have her plans kind of come to fruition, but I just feel like as he gets there, it's almost like you you have something that's so solid and so so real that you're about to grab it, and then you're just like almost scared to touch it.

You're like, is this actually going to happen?

Is this going to come true?

And she's kind of conflicted all the way up to the end.

Hardman, by the way, went to the beach to end it all.

He was he was going to stop Bridget slash Omily.

He took hermatic rounds and a gun and everything pin in that I want to say, talking about Hardman and Cliff's backstory here for a little bit, but you you get brought back from that beach and essentially you and everybody dead Man, Fragile, Mama, slash Lachna, slash Mulingan, everybody's there and you have a pow wow basically saying you need to stop Omily, You need to go to the beach.

You either stop her or you kill her.

You know, there's there's really no other way.

Sam has a moment here.

Sam, throughout this entire game, has virtually zero character growth, but he has this whole speech about how this is to build a better life and a better future, And nothing lasts forever, but we got to keep going for as long as we can.

Right.

I might put some of that speech in here, but with the shape the.

World's in, it'll only be delaying the inevitable.

Still, if it buys us time to try and build something better and knew least on life, at least for a little bit, well, I can think of one woman who made the most of a.

Chance like that.

Nothing lasts forever, not even the world, but we got to keep it going as long as we can.

Right, Patch the holes, change the parts, all that, so we can say we had a good run that we lived.

Thought you didn't like having to handle things with.

Care, cause it was hard enough keeping my own shit together.

Back when we met at the cave, the only thing I cared about was making it to the next sunrise, Sir as Helle didn't care about America or the future.

I was living a lie, hung up on past regrets.

I was broken.

But somewhere along the way I started changing, started meeting people that made me think that maybe it wasn't all bad.

People that put their faith in tomorrow and in me.

That kept the lights on.

I'm waiting for Hope to arrive, so I got to deliver for their sake.

It's it feels so out of place to me.

This this feels like a south Park thing, like at the end.

I don't know if they still do this in the current seasons, but back back in the back in the day, South Park used to do a thing where Kyle would be a mouthpiece for a moral lesson at the end, and it would always start with you see, I learned something today, and then he would deliver the moral thing.

There would be a little ironic subversion of it, a little joke in the episode Wild End.

That's kind of what's happening here.

I don't know, And this is I wrote a whole thing here about how this is like a Saturday afternoon blockbuster, but this is just such a weird thing to put in here, especially coming from Sam, who up until this point was barely even a character at all.

That's such an interesting way though, I felt, I don't know when you when you had that line, as like he had virtually easiero growth.

I thought the whole point, especially showing from the beginning when you know he couldn't touch people and even talking to his you know, quote unquote Mom Bridget where he was not just even uncomfortable touching her, but completely against the idea of bringing America together again.

And through you know, this forty potentially plus hour long experience, he meets dozens and dozens of new people, fights his way through BT infested lands just to do this thing that he initially didn't want to do in the first place.

But coming across these different friends, you know, heartman, die hard man, all these people that he kind of meets along the way, and that ultimately, you know, help him out towards the end there too.

I feel like his character growth was definitely there.

He still stays a mostly kind of gruff, not talking a lot character, but that's just kind of who he is.

But as far as his actions, I feel like his actions prove that he had growth, because the Sam from our one would not have been doing what we see right now, with the Sam you know, going to potentially kill Omaly the last like the only person that he cared about back in the day.

Well, part of the problem is that they just don't they I don't think they gave Norman Retis enough to work with to be Frank and they continue to play a stoic and this is what I understand they continue to do in the second game as well.

Like he for all intents and purposes, could potentially even be a silent protagonist if he really wanted him to be.

I think that, like some of these character notes are interesting, he does add interesting flavor.

I think the highlights of his performance is something that I've said before is specifically his work with Lisido.

Whenever those two characters, Fragile and Sam are both on the screen, I think that's really where it shines through.

And that's specifically, like what's going on and she's in the background, and there's there's you know, a particularly interesting thing going on with her and her vengeance that she's taking against Higgs up until this point.

But I think, like I see where you're coming from, Rick, because it's like, you know, the it's like the the character growth that Sam has siloed, but it's not intrinsic to his to himself, like it's it's siloed to the characters that is surrounding him.

It's almost like affected in a way, I think, But at the same time, it's just like at the end of it all, it's it's a result of you know, poor planning and not really you know, strong character, you know, mapping that they didn't give him enough to like give him these pinnacles, you know, and Act one, Act two, in Act three to show, okay, this is where Sam is going through.

We didn't even, like this is something that happens all the time in games.

We didn't even get a moment where Sam is like truly doubting himself or like you know, really facing like some serious adversity, like you know, other than you know, getting the BB stripped away from him at one point in the game.

There's no real low point for Sam to him for, in my opinion, for him to come up to this moment and have this like epiphany, have this realization, and you know, deliver this monologue of you know, finally being tired of the violence, being tired of you know world that we're living in.

So I am in conflicted.

I do still think that the end of this game is quite beautiful, even if it is messy and it doesn't make a damn like a sense, But I I will say that, like it's just it's complicated, And I think this is another perfect example is that you have to meet Kojima where he.

Is, Yeah, I think I'm closer to where you are on this Nick.

Sam is almost functionally a silent protagonist than all of the story and growth of characters are around him, not within him.

I think that's the thing.

I think we just don't know Sam enough.

There's not enough about Sam that is given to us for there to be meaningful growth.

We don't, you know, and even the stuff that's here kind of gets walked back on.

Like here, Sam is align during that speech.

That is, back when we met.

At the cave, the only thing I cared about was making it to the next sunrise.

Sure as hell didn't care about America or.

The But and then he says, you know, somewhere along the way, I started changing, started meeting people that made me think that maybe it wasn't all so bad.

But then after this, you know, after Hartman hard Man takes the role of president, Sam goes to leave and he's like, you know, I don't have anyone.

Everything I touch dies or goes to shit or whatever.

He says.

He just goes back to the same old Sam, Like it's not it feels like this was just inserted to show the appearance of growth when no growth could occur because we don't know Sam.

You know, he's a mouthpiece for the player character, not even a mouthpiece like a cipher.

I'm like a silent protagonist, which is why I don't like silent protagonists.

It this same problem happens with them.

Chrono Trigger is a fantastic example.

It feels sort of like that great company to be in with Chrono Trigger.

But you know, I don't know, man, I don't think you're wrong, will I just I don't know.

I don't I just don't see it that way.

With the ending in particular that you're brought up.

I mean, he finishes everything that he effectively needs to do would do with Bridges.

Is not like they need further connecting anything past there.

He's did what he had to do with Omily, which once again was one of the only people in his lives that he actually had any kind of like major feelings for outside of his tragic backstory for himself that was now not there with him.

And then ultimately he you know, ends up with the BB, which is kind of his his rope right keeps him going on.

So I don't know, you say, like he walks it back but it's more of like he's talking to hard Man specifically because of all that craft that went down.

He's like, you know, there's nothing here in this group right now for me.

Let me go on and continue to try to live with young BB.

Sure, I can see where you're coming from.

Yeah, I mean for where we're at here, I think I've I you know, I'm a little scared of, you know, kind of falling down the same path of like repeating myself.

I think something that one thing that we didn't mention if we are going to go back and we talk about like the duality of like what's going on with bridget strand slash Omily is that I will say, in retrospect, as we're thinking about it and as I'm thinking about this game, that was set up pretty well.

And uh, I think that they used mulingan Slash, Mama slash, whatever, however many names they're using for those characters, that that was foreshadowed really well, I thought, and like kind of setting up the audience to understand that there is a difference between the ha and the khah and the soul and the body.

Are these you know, to the the they are these separated ideas that are split apart by the beaches and split apart by you know, the the chiral matter there and that is in this world and how that has affected omily I think is pretty interesting.

But I will say that I think it's it is it at this point in the game.

I'm going to be one hundred percent honest with you.

I was like the ending in this game too.

It's like it is a like an hour and a half long cut scene.

I want to.

Feel like it probably is shorter, but it felt like that because it was probably four o'clock in the morning when I was playing Rick, because I was trying to play it to get ready for our first recording.

Funny enough, but yeah, I was playing, and I'm sure I was tired and stuff like that.

So I did eventually go back and I rewatched the cut scenes kind of the ending to kind of like sit there and sit with it and digest it.

I just think that it is in one of those things where you kind of have to look at it and take it for what it is and kind of just absorb it for what you think is personal to you.

I do think like the beach at the end, you know, I know that you're just recently covering the last of US Part two.

I thought that the ending with Sam and Higgs, you know at the end with the final boss fight, reminded me a lot of what was going on with Ellie and Abby closer towards the end of Part two.

No spoilis knows no future spoilers for the show.

I don't know.

I know this is that's not coming out until this episode is released.

But yeah, so there there's multiple things that are like kind of competing for attention at this point in time.

But yeah, I feel okay here.

So they do send you to Emily's beach.

Fragile sends you off.

This is where Omily will fill you in on a lot of the backstory that we kind of touched on.

Omilly and Bridget are the same person.

She doesn't exist in our world.

Omily doesn't because she's been on the beach for so long.

Omily's beach is sort of like the connection to every beach Heartman very appropriately likens it to a heart where her beach is the main pumping mechanism everybody else's beach and the beaches in the world are the sort of valves that deliver the blood to the rest of the body, so Omily is at the center of everything, being an ee.

This is the sixth extinction will happen.

Delaying it is inevitable, and Omily gives you a choice.

You know, you can stay here with her and watch it, just watch it come together, or she gives you a gun and tells you to stop her.

Those are the only two options at this point.

You can wait and do nothing and let the extinction happen, which is what I did because I knew it would give me, you know, a game over and try again kind of deal.

It just fades to white.

You can also try to shoot her, which I also tried.

Because I tried, I started blasting.

We're gamers.

We have to exhaust all the options.

I mean, if you try, it just doesn't work, you know, it just it's like it doesn't even hit her, you know, I kind of I kind of already said this earlier.

This is where I wrote a note about teaching you non violence, but that doesn't jibe with a lot of the game.

I'm not gonna repeat myself too much.

But what you do is you run up to her, unequipped the gun and hug her.

Yeah, did that did that make either of you feel anything, not.

Really didn't make me necessarily feel anything made sense for Sam, But I was just like Omily's low key evil.

I was like, let's.

Yeah, like this is this is the villain of the game that we're talking about.

But I mean, like, yeah, it's just it.

It is not a cohesive like theme.

It's not a cohesive narrative Like this is a perfect example of like characters doing something like that is inherently out of character for them.

Oh you think it's out of character for him to hug Omily.

I mean I think he has affection for Omily, certainly because because of the because of how he interacted with her as as a young man and everything that's involved within it.

Any do you think that he recognizes that Sam consciously recognizes that there is a tragic component to who Emily is in you know, what her function is in this world.

But also she's like, looky trying to you know, end the universe, and she he is aware that she tried to manipulate everything and complete her purpose as the sixth extinction.

Excuse me, but I just I just don't see it, Like am I I I am personally okay that we don't have to end the game with like punch harder, shoot more, Like I'm okay with that, Like that's not the resolution to how we get to this point.

I just think that like it doesn't seem to be consistent with like who Sam has been up into this moment for me personally, that he's not shooting or punching well like through through the end of the game, that like you know, this is this is the end, Like obviously this is you know where we're we're leading up to the final culmination.

This is the the This is like the apex of the of like where the emotion is supposed to be in this game, like you know, his his confrontation with Bridget slash Omily and you know where we're gonna And by the way, I took several screenshots of this moment, you know, with the son in the background kind of looking like a super nova.

It was really really beautiful scene.

But it's just this isn't something that like Sam is a conflicted and like broken soul and he is trying to repair things.

But like for me personally, I would have thought he would have been reeling from the level of betrayal, not understanding who Bridget slash Omily is like, I don't see Sam immediately accessing this component of emotion or like that that empathy for him to go and try and comfort Omily at the end.

That's just not something that I see.

That's not a choice I would make in the in the cutting room.

I think you have to buy in to Sam's character growth for this to make sense, and if you do, this is sort of the climax of his entire character when he does decide to hug Omily, because we see him that in a similar position with Bridget early on in the game.

And yeah, I mean, I guess you could make the argument that even though she's family, he didn't really have a good relationship with her, which would lend itself to not wanting to be affectionate.

But I think if you do have buy in to the idea of his character growth being present, then this is like the climax and probably the most impactful moment of the game so far.

Whether that works for you, I mean, your mileage may vary, but that's probably what their team was thinking.

If I had hazard a guess.

There's that, and there's also just a part of the kind of ludo narrative dissidence where you can play a Sam who like clears out every mule camp, you know, by punching the hell out of them or beating him down, or like knocking them out and doing all that.

But I would feel like in general, cannon ish Sam is more like either stealthy and tying people up with the ropes or just avoiding the mule camps in general, especially if you're just doing Golden Path, Like there's a few times where you kind of have to go into the camps and cause any kind of ruckus.

The only time he really fights is like the BTS when Forced two, or Higgs towards the end, maybe some of the Homo demons when you get to the back half of the game.

So I don't know.

For me, it's like him getting violent with Omily, even with the betrayal, isn't in character because I saw the last time Sam had a really big issue happened in his life, he didn't necessarily like fight.

He ran.

He seems somebody who would recoil and avoid issues in trauma versus try to dive into it or fight back against it.

So this is his character growth by not running from Omily or not avoiding the situation, but voluntarily going into the beach, initially yes, to potentially stop her with the gun, but ultimately connecting with her in that hug, which is one of the only people up until this point, you know, where he could actually touch because normally his his condition would make him break out into a rash or hives.

Yeah, and will.

I actually kind of would like some clarification on this next part too, because I'm not one hundred percent certain that I have this correct After this moment, Sam hugs are Omily prior to this, said that, you know, you can either stay here and watch the world end with me, or you're gonna have to you know, shoot me, kill me to make sure it doesn't happen.

You can delay it until the next EE comes about.

But after this, Omily said, you know, all right, I'm gonna shut myself in here with with within my own beach, which will you know, delay the inevitable extinction.

It'll still happen, but it'll be way on down the line.

One do I have that?

Am I remembering that right?

Did I write it down correctly?

Two?

Why was this hidden as as an option?

Why is she just now revealing this?

Yeah, she does?

You know, seal herself off effectively for you know, the foreseeable future to avoid you know, harming anybody who's in that current timeline.

I'm sure it's trying to be like ohe hundred years from now, when people don't exist anymore, or rather the people now don't exist, it will happen.

But yeah, I would say maybe that third one is just her like kind of contingency plan.

You know.

Ultimately it looks like especially if you try to shoot and nothing happens, and then you wait, which is what she would like to do, right wait for the end of the world with somebody that she cares about, just to kind of be done with it, to stop existing in this this in between that she was born into and has been her entire life.

But if you show her that compassion, you know, you show that connection that's still there, and she's, for whatever reason, swayed by the fact that this still exists, that it's potentially a world that's worth keeping for now.

That's when she chooses to seal herself off, you know, to accept that hardship of being alone for however many hundreds, potentially thousands of years until it has to happen, Just like how Bridget as a full person rejected her extinction entity kind of not privilege, but her you know, cosmic power, her her ability to do so, you know her.

Some would say maybe her she I'm trying to not say right, but you know what I mean.

It's like it's thrust upon you.

So she rejected that, was potentially punished by the universe for it, and Emily was born diego duty yet so then Omily is born to right this wrong.

And then, like her quote unquote mother before her, rejects this in favor of the people that she cares about.

What's interesting too, is like Sam doesn't willingly go along with his choice.

He doesn't want this to happen.

He I mean, he even goes so far as trying to shoot himself with the gun, which doesn't work.

He can't do that.

She gives you the gun and she tells you that it has a role to play, but it's not now, so his attempt at blowing his brains out doesn't work here.

The gun in interestingly, the role that it plays is how Sam gets out of here.

He doesn't leave willingly.

He gets pulled out.

He gets yanked out by dead man.

This is the scene that you had mentioned earlier on Will that dead Man's finally on the beach, they find you because of that gun.

That's that's how they can sort of lock onto And now that I'm saying it out loud, I'm realizing I don't know how how that works.

You know.

It's like the dooms being able to tie on too.

It's like everybody had to work together, you know, look fragile with their high level dooms die hard Man, which I can't wait till we do the official name drop for him.

I love it so much, you know, having that connection to the gun in itself, and then Hardman being the person that could actually go on to the beach because of his you know, distinct separation from any other kind of beach.

It allows him into like the seam, like the big beach to actually get Sam.

So everybody has to work together to you know, pull Sam out.

And I love it too.

I can't.

I don't recall they use it in the actual game, but one of my favorite debt stranding like explained Lord videos, really puts it very eloquently for me, at least, especially how like the beginning of the game and it kind of bookends it very nicely.

Is the gun that Sam has right ultimately is a stick as used in those flashbacks with Cliff, that becomes a rope in order to tie everyone together to pull Sam back from the brink.

So I feel like that just kind of succinctly wraps up that beginning and end of the story pretty well, right right.

I still this would have been so much more effective to me had the entire game been a little more focused on painting.

Violence is the wrong answer as opposed to, you know, the shooting segments, the non lethal rounds kind of just being a sweep under the rug, lets you shoot, shoot, shoot, that kind of thing.

But would that have been as successful as a game, you know, I don't think so.

I think people would have got a little fed up with that.

That's that's just a rick thing.

But you had mentioned the hard Man thing.

I think we should talk about hard Man and Cliff and the the impetus behind what brought this game along, because it's there are some truly good scenes.

I know, Nick, you had mentioned that this is just an hour and a half of cut scenes, which, by the way, I thought you were a Yaka is a fan.

These cut scenes shouldn't bother you at all different different yaka is that you got like three hours in a row man.

It's golden pizza, you know what I mean?

After so Sam gets pulled out, and this is where the ending starts.

These last two I think it's these last two chapters, or maybe chapter and a half is just ending before you know, the final episode fifteen or whatever, where it's just endgame, you know, free roam, side missions, build stuff.

Hard Man is doing like a press conference.

He is the de facto new president of the new UCA United Cities of America.

He uh, and everybody's in attendance, including Hartman, who is like laying down passed out because he's I guess having a heart attack at that time, which is really funny to me.

Oh you know, we didn't even mention Hartman's shtick of like giving a thumbs up with that sound.

Yeah that the first time it happened, I groaned a little bit.

But they do it so often and so blatantly that I was It was cracking me up every time.

Toward the end.

Ooh good because.

Half of the time Hartman just looks at the camera too.

And I also love too when he's explaining some high level concept to Sam.

Sam will be like, oh, so it's like this, and Hartman will be like nope, and then he thumbs down you.

It's like you'll get a message saying twenty likes deducted by Hartman.

Yep.

Yeah, that's my favorite.

That's my favorite.

I like that a lot.

Oh it's so good that that whole scene ends with him looking at the camera giving a thumbs up and then passing out to It's so good.

It's so good.

But yeah, he's there.

Hard Man is giving a you know, a speech, you know, a basically ah, what do you call it?

An induction speech new eraguration thank you?

Not induction inauguration thank you.

He does this thing where he like thanks Sam, but he won't name him.

He just keeps saying the name is unimportant.

They know who they are.

I think he's doing it just to blatantly like talk to the player character like us playing the game, thank you Ri, But like, man, what a what a slap in the face to Sam.

Yeah, I can't get a little recognition.

My interpretation was is that Sam wouldn't want the like public recognition, and so he's trying to respect his privacy.

Slash wish and this is my this is my head canon at this point.

No, totally, I think you're right.

But at the same time, like Sam nearly died or actually died several times over, I think at least a brief thank you Sam would have been appropriate.

The name is unimportant and then in secret, not secret but private, that's what he's like.

You know that was about you, right.

Well, the private scenes that happen after, you know, you run into dead Man, who kind of you know, he tells you about the gun and I think this is where he hugs you too, and he's like, I've been waiting for this for so long.

But he before he leaves, he's like, yeah, you know, there are records on the president.

He's hiding a lot of stuff.

I don't trust him and you shouldn't either.

And immediately that's when Hardman comes in and you and him, Sam and Hardman have this last little scene.

This is Hardman's confession.

Far and away my favorite acting in the game.

I think, like Mad's Michelson up until now was like and still is like throughout this whole game, impeccable in his role.

This scene was so extremely powerful.

The way Tommy Earl Jenkins acts this out.

You know, I was afraid that Hartman.

Hardman was just gonna be a one note character, just the kind of booming voice, really dig afied president of the UCA and the guy that gives orders.

But he has a complete breakdown here.

You see his entire soul on display here.

He is a broken man and he's explaining all of his sins that he's done, and he just breaks down, just uncontrollable, sobbing, and it's extremely effective.

I think.

Anyway.

You know why they call me die Hardly because he wouldn't let me die.

He brought my sorry ass back home every time, and I loved.

Him as much as I loved her.

And when he.

Stared me down that ghost, I knew he was here to kill me.

To make it right.

And why should he?

Why didn't he?

He couldn't save his his kid, his baby.

And that's what brought him back.

I guess when he's.

He saw I was trying to do my part for America.

He remembered who he was and he forgave me.

God, but I don't deserve a goddamn it.

There is no atoning for what I've done.

It's just so good.

I don't know I was watching it like twice today and trying to figure out how I can insert it.

But I kept thinking, like, I can't leave off there.

I have to get the next line.

I can't leave off there.

I have to get the next line.

I can't leave off there.

It's just I don't know how I'm gonna edit it in.

But it is so terrific.

It's really really good acting there so like especially too towards like the end and just hitting it like on those notes heavy, like his crying like on his knees, looking up to Sam, and I was like, Ah, it's so good.

There's a line here too, because Sam kind of rebukes him.

He doesn't he doesn't really accept all of these apologies.

There's a there's a line that Sam just kind of throws off, how can you value life if you aren't afraid of death?

Or he says some variation of that to Hardman, which is just such a bold thing to say and devote no time to.

Like, like this just isn't explored, h and I wish it was.

But this, uh, the backstory of Hardman ties directly into Cliff and Bridget and Sam as well, and you get this piece together.

You were seeing this the POV, through the baby, throughout this entire game, just in bits and pieces, but now here at the end, as Sam is taking Lou to the incinerator because Lou has stopped working.

By the way, when you get there, you connect to try and you know, one last time to see see if maybe you can revive him.

You get this this full scene of what happened in the past, and the gist of it is this hardman was a soldier under the direction of Clifford Hunger like he was at one of his soldiers squad, I guess, and he has a ton of respect for him and is part of the reason why he's called die Hardman, which he tells you is because cliff saved him, like so many times, he would not let let his men die.

So there's a lot of respect there.

And he comes in to speak to Cliff off the record saying like, you know, we can't do anything for your wife, like we can't save her.

You need to take your BB and get out of here.

What's going to happen If the BB stays in here, you won't get him back, You'll never see him again.

Just take him and go.

So he gives you a gun and tells you to shoot your wife.

I'm actually a little unclear on that too.

Will.

Was that just like a mercy killing or was that a requirement to get the BB out in general.

It's one of those things because the BB being connected to the still mother is like there would always be that connection there.

So it's not like you could ever actually escape with Sam in that kind of BB form, Like he would always be never growing, right, he would just be kind of stuck in his way and then also be prone to that was it like autotoxemia or that thing that could happen.

So in order to have you know, a fully fleshed out child that can grow and live and exist in this world, the still mother would unfortunately have to be terminated that and you know he doesn't also want to escape at the baby and leave his poor wife in a vegetative state right in the government's control.

So it's one of those mercy killings.

Yeah, that's and you know he doesn't there's not like there's not a lot of histrionics here.

He's not sobbing, freaking out, uncontrollable, unconsolable.

And I think that actually is a perfect acting choice because and you know, I'm not married, so I'm doing a bit of placing myself in his shoes.

Even though I can't truly know, I can imagine that being faced with such an un unforgivable, such a heavy choice, that is such that it can almost be decided, like it has to be decided for him, which fate ultimately has face with so much emotion and grief and anguish that it just overrides your system and you can barely process anything at all, almost like shock in a way, just so much terror and fear and sadness that to preserve your literal sanity in life, you cannot process and express it all in that time, otherwise you will shut down completely.

So the body says, nope, we're not going to do that right now.

You will deal with this later as a lifelong trauma.

And that is my kindness to you.

That is the kindness in the situation.

And he does, he shoots his wife, and it's really effective too, because he uses his military training to silence the gun.

He puts a pillow between the gun and the wife's head to silence everything.

And I'm assuming too to you know, make not make a mess.

So there's there's an element to it.

That makes it a little bit cold and calculating, which makes it all the more are stinging to me.

It's it is such a tragic.

Scene utterly said as far as especially to this whole time, even playing what you know, you get to see Cliff drunkenly dancing with BB and talking about how much he loves the wife and they're going to go dancing and do all this.

And you know, if you've played on your birthday, you get like a less little birthday message.

There's there's all.

Yeah, there's so many beautiful little scenes in poignant times of him trying to keep his family together.

Cliff is ultimately with a brain dead wife and a child, you know, stuck in a glass container.

It's trying to make things feel as normal as possible.

He just talks to BB like everything is normal and then ultimately having it end like that is just utterly heartbreaking.

But like we said, there's necessary, you know, and he treats it like it's necessary.

Yeah, it is heartbreaking, and I will say that like this is this is a really good performance put on by Mattivichelson.

The one vote the issue that I take with it is that I was in and out of I was in and out of safe houses and your like sleep room, and I was going in and out of bases so much that none of what's happening here, none of the reveal of like the events of the timeline of like what happens and the choice that he makes makes to try and get BB out, like none of it is surprising to me, Like all of this, like like I've seen these scenes over and over and over again at different moments to this point when it's like, yeah, okay, this is this is interesting, you know, kind of seeing it fully fleshed out, but there is no like really huge reveal like the fact that he had to that he killed you know, Sam's you know mom of course makes perfect sense to me at the end of the day, and and and that you know, he went through the whole thing, and then that you know, die Hardman is coming, Like I felt like it already, even the fact that you know, the with die Hardman being distrusted by the people being a red herring, I was like, oh, well, this is clearly like you know, as I'm going through the game, I'm like, I'm pretty sure that he's like actually perfectly fine.

And then like you know sure, and behold like he seems to be perfectly fine and like actually looking out for the best interests of Sam, and he was going along with, you know, Clifford, you know, trying to help him out as best as he could.

Like it's a good scene.

It's a good scene.

It's just like I was kind of hoping for more, but you know, we got what we got, and that's okay.

Well you do get more.

I mean they didn't show literally everything.

They they gave you like seventy percent of it in bits and pieces, but some of those puzzle pieces and links were left out, and the whole ending was left out too, not to mention it was all, you know, told through a visual and audio muffled filter, So seeing now just without that as if it were happening, I thought it was really effective and it was nice too to see how the scenes pieced together to get the transitions from the first one to the second and then eventually to the end.

I don't know, it worked for.

Me, and it's always a good thing when you, like you said Nick, going in and out of the safe houses, you actually get the majority, if not all of it.

So then when you get to the end, you're rewarded with your completed puzzle versus somebody who maybe just us safe houses when it was necessary.

They're missing some pieces to their puzzle, so when they get to the end, now it's filled in, so they get to kind of get that aha moment.

But God Path exactly, Yeah, Golden Path, they get the aha.

Wow.

This feels like a twist.

You're like, Okay, I get the payoff of everything that I've seen up to this point because I was taking my time with the game, and it's like both the right, you know, both are getting the good ending.

Yeah, that's a good point.

I was somebody that didn't use safe housess a ton either, so I didn't see a lot of these.

So maybe what I'm perceiving as you didn't get the transitions between certain scenes.

Maybe you did because you use safe houses more.

I didn't think of that.

Yeah, I feel like I got pretty much everything sides, like the majority of him being in the hallway.

But yeah, that's that's right.

That's interesting too, because he does take Bab and he leaves, and guards are both like it looked like government guards and like that building security guards.

But I'm not entirely sure about that are chasing him actively.

You know, Hardman rigged it up so he had like five minutes after getting out of there, but the alarm ends up going off, and so he's being pursued, and like two or three times Hardman has to stop other guards from just open firing on correct Cliff.

And that's what makes this so tragic is Hardman is now stuck between doing his duty, his servitude to Bridges and to America, and his unyielding love for his commander, right, somebody that from all I've heard, transcends family in some ways, the bond between those who have shared the atrocities of war.

That's a love and camaraderie that cannot be comprehended by those who aren't.

So Hardman is in this impossible predicament that is probably tearing his psyche in two.

So he stops them the first time, and Cliff uses him as like a hostage to get.

Out of there.

They corner him and he's like, no, wait, wait, we'll handle it.

And you can even see the like fully armed swat team like giving him the stink eye, like what are you trying to do?

He does get clipped.

Cliff does he gets clipped by a bullet.

So when they do find him, Hardman, some other guards, some other guards, and eventually President Strand.

He's bloody sitting there.

He knows he's going to die.

And there was a previous scene where Hardman kind of crashes out a little bit to Cliff where he says, like, you know, if she gives me an order, I have to do it.

I cannot disobey President Strand, like she is my commander, but you were also my commander.

It's you know, and he basically extols his love for him.

But here in this moment, and Strand is behind Hardman just screaming shoot him.

I gave you in order, shoot him, kill him now, and he's doing everything he can to not He's like, please put the baby down, put the gun down.

I don't want to do this, put it down.

And the whole time she's screaming in his ear, kill him, kill him, I told you to shoot him.

It's just such an effective scene.

And what's really cool about this too is Sam is here as well, Like astral projection, dreamy wemy tymey, whymy Sam is like watching all of this take place.

He can't interact with anybody, but he tries to.

He like gets in front of Cliff, you know, putting his hand up like don't shoot, don't shoot, don't shoot, which is also very sad because you know, we know now that Cliff is his dad.

So he's trying to save the remaining family he has.

His mother is dead, his sister never existed, he doesn't have friends, so he's like in a desperate attempt to change the past.

He's saying, no, please, don't it and it can never be.

It's it's the tragedy of Sam Bridges.

But they have a moment here where Cliff and Sam, like out of time, misplaced in time, speak to each other and you get the reveal that Sam here is the son.

If you didn't figure it out, that Sam is the babe that we see that we've been seeing.

You told me your name was Sam Porter, but youre Sam Bridge itself, my son.

My bridge to the future went down here.

I was just like any other Cliff, dead end, no way forward, nothing but an abstacle.

No God, I don't want people like you.

What's trying to.

Melt And it's touching because it mirrors almost identically the conversation that Cliff and Sam had in the Vietnam Beach, but now there are more lines added to it.

It's it's nice.

I like this moment a lot.

It's it's really it's a really touching moment as the world is burning down on the outside and Cliff eventually does ultimately get shot and killed, as does the babie, as does Sam, and.

You see that on there how he's ordered.

John McLean is ordered to shoot Cliff, hesitates, and then Bridget is the one that actually grabs his hand and pulls the trigger twice.

So it's like they both had that hand and not only killing Cliff but also killing Sam for the first Yeah.

Did you say, John McClean, you knew that?

Right?

You realize that right?

Isn't isn't that?

What is that?

Top?

Die Hard?

Top from Diehard die Hard?

Yes, Jesus Christ, it was John.

I knew his name was John.

I didn't know it was John McClain.

Somebody needs to sue Cochiina.

Honestly, he has to get away with it and why we need him top John Blake McClain aka die Hard Man.

It's so good.

Oh my god, that's so fucking funny.

Oh my god.

Yeah, you are right, though, she she does grab his hand and kind of makes him pull the trigger.

Just a horrific thing to do.

To imagine living with that guilt being the mouthpiece of the gun, being the effectively being the gun and pulling the trigger against your will.

Oh man, Like, it's a wonder Hardman has held up at all.

And it just makes his confession scene all the more memorable.

And it's it's jarring too to see an infant being shot, correct, you know, which is exactly what happens here.

And it explains how Sam became a repatriot too.

And I'm not convince again, I'm not convinced I fully understand this.

But when the when Bebie died, when Sam died, he went to the beach, as you do, you die, you go to the beach, and then you go to the land of the dead.

You know, beach is purgatory.

He got intercepted by Amile on the beach who basically just healed him, brought him back, and sent him back, which is how he became a repatriot.

Is that about right?

That is accurate.

Yeah, that's why he came back.

And Bridget was like, oh my god, magic baby, I will now adopt him.

He is my mind, yes, and Omily was like, yay, I have a little brother.

I'm going to give him a dream catcher, and then he's going to give me a kipoo and we're going to be connected forever.

Mm hmm.

It's need.

I had been wondering about the repatriots throughout the whole game.

Is Sam the only one?

He's the only one to our knowledge in the first game.

I feel like there's got to be a second one there, or at least another one in the second game.

I have a strong I have a strong spidy sense about these things.

I would assume that Lou becomes one.

Probably potentially we got to do a part two.

Speaking of Lou, of Sam you know, takes the baby up to incinerate it, and he's replaying what dead Man said in his mind.

He's saying that, you know, you could try to remove it from the tube.

It might come to life, but it's pretty unlikely.

And again this is something that like I I'm not a parent, I can't ever truly know what this is like.

But Sam, you know, takes that chance, he cuts his losses, he takes that chance.

He removes the he removes Lou from the thing.

He doodle and he is trying to wake Lou up.

Just imagine, like Sam's already lost a baby in the in the void out, he's going through it again.

Yeah, he's re experiencing this horrific trauma.

Once.

I thought that this was the most emotionally impactful, like tragic piece of the game, that he went through all of this and he has to lose Lou.

Yeah, this is similar to the Hardman thing where he was pretty stoic and kind of unemotional all the way up until now.

Uh, and here he just breaks down.

He's he's crying.

He's not calling it Lou or BB saying come on baby, come on baby.

Yeah, it's it's tragic, it's it's horrific.

It's he's he's potentially reliving the worst day of his life.

Fall over again.

Poor Samy cannot catch a break man.

He just had to lose his entire family in like one you know what, a couple of weeks.

How long would we assume that this game took in like real time?

Maybe two weeks, three weeks.

Oh, it's got to be more than that.

He traversed the entire United States on foot.

Well maybe you didn't know, but I had Hella highways.

Oh yeah, it's because it sees the United States.

Also was like the size of you know, Winston Salem on a good day with light traffic.

So you know there's that too, Winston Salem.

What a poll, Yeah, that's where we live.

He Sammy boy does catch a break though, because his gambit pays off.

He doesn't relive the worst day of his life.

He revives lou Louis revived, wakes up americle finally happened, and that's the last line of the game.

The last word of the game is the reveal that this was a daughter, because he says lou and then he says Louise and that's it.

Credits roll and don't forget lou having the little kei poo.

Yeah, oh right, right baby, And then of course the you know the time fall where it's like, hey, look, no one's aging anymore in the rain.

So it seems like everything that happened with Emily is causing some real good changes out in the real world.

So obviously everything nothing bad will happen.

Yeah.

At the very end, when he steps out into the rain with Lou is like you know, the rain and like the rainbow above him, but he's not being rapidly aged while standing in the rain.

Oh right, right, I completely forgot about that, which is significant.

Why like, is it because he stopped Emily's Is that exactly what it's supposed to change the function of the time Fall?

Okay, well that makes me curious to how they're going to handle this in part too, because like, don't get me wrong, I much preferred traversing and delivering and building to dealing with bts, especially like the big bet fights.

I didn't mind.

They were easy, but I didn't mind them.

It's just like when they grab you out of the ground.

That sucks so hard.

And I would assume if time Fall is stopping, it follows that the connection between or it follows as much as it can in a Kogma game, that the connection between the world, the living and the beaches aren't like merged up anymore, like things aren't bleeding over, I would assume.

So how do bats play a role?

Then?

You know?

Have you started the game?

Will part two?

No?

I haven't started part two yet.

I don't think he's bought it.

Yeah, no, I don't.

I don't have part two yet.

My plan was to get it after completing are Part one here and then probably gonna pick it up in a month or so.

I would be very curious.

I can't imagine BT's aren't in the game.

That's they're kind of like the mascot of death Stranding.

Yeah, so they're definitely still around.

It's just different, same thing, but still different.

Okay, okay, they're Australia this time they're upside down.

Good good, Yeah, nice ending.

I'm glad that Lou woke up for Sam.

I don't know, man like I overall, I had a good time with this.

I do think the last like third is a bit of a mess, even though it contains some of the best scenes in the game I think, and some of the best acting in the game.

Just this was such an insane first exposure to Kojima is the thing, because I think a lot of folks that played this have the Metal Gear solid background.

But that was when Kojima was under the constraints of a company under Konami, and this was, at least from what I understand, the first time he got the unfiltered what I say, goes treatment.

Yeah, I agree with you, Rick, I think this is a really interesting way to jump into the work of Hideo Kojima.

I really wish that I had done my due diligence and you know, taking more of approach of some of our other friends who have you know, successfully gone back in playing some of the earlier Metal Gear series to kind of get a more ground foundation of like where he came from, like his flair for cinema, like what he does with his characters like Solid Snake or the Boss, all of all of these these interesting, you know, eclectic characters that he makes.

So I agree with you, but at the end of the day, I do think that this is going to stand out in my mind really hard, like for all of my complaints, for all of my you know, critiques, if you will, I will say that, like I have never played a game like dest Stranding, and I don't think I ever will, And I really I think it is deeply important for me to kind of like accentuate that because, like I see why people call you know, Kojima, you know, a master of his craft in this sense, just because he is able to like put, he's able to cook with so many different components in the pot.

Sometimes they work and then sometimes they they didn't work for me personally, but I still think that it's the uniqueness and his abilit to really redefine what a triple A experience can be is is, you know, different from from everyone else out there.

That's always been Kojima's strength is you know, because even with the Metal Gear Solid franchise, which is storied and you know, ultimately kind of on a pillar when it comes to video games, still not ultimately for everybody.

You know, it has maybe too much stealth, that has potentially too much action, definitely has too much goofiness for some people.

But the big thing is that you can always look to Kojima's games, and I would say very rarely, if at all, can you say, hey, you know, this didn't try to push something new.

This wasn't trying to go out of its way for better or for worse.

Even in that Metal Gear Solid franchise, you know, people would look at something like for with the guy what do they call the like the Beast group, there's a there's a bunch of ladies that are named after different animals, and they're kind of like you're rare occurring antagonists throughout the story, and there's just so many different ways to fight them versus straight fighting or you can put them in this kind of like a dream sequence where you're taking pictures of them and they're posing for you like it's insane, it's crazy, and it's just very Kojima, and that's something that he brings to each of his games.

It's just a new wrinkle, a new way for you to look at a game, or a type of genre, or even a new genre.

You know, these strand type games that will never exist outside of the two that we currently have or any potential sequels, and just say, yep, that is very much Kojima.

Can't have a whole lot of repetition or kind of retreading when it comes to his work, which is nice.

Well, thank you fellows for joining me.

I really appreciate it.

This was fun to do on the show.

Looking forward to coming to PC.

That's probably what I will wait for.

I'll probably wait for it to come to PC before picking it up.

But yeah, that's death stranding, hell of a ride.

So thank you for sticking around.

To all of you listeners out there, thanks for sticking around through three episodes and to the end of this one, Will and Nick, it's been a minute since we've recorded a bit of a gap in recording time.

What's new over at the Friday Night Game Cast?

Oh, what's new?

Indeed, Rick, nothing much recently.

I think this may still be true based on what we have you know, talked about last time.

Most recently, you know, we are our latest episode is up on the feed.

It has been corrected.

There was an audio issue for any listeners of the show that you are listening to this and then also you know, enjoy the Friday Night Gamecast.

We had an audio issue with a mix up for our Coffee Talk episodes one and two review with Kate Emily of No Small Games.

But that has been resolved and that is the top of our feed and that's, you know, something that you can go through.

Rick.

Last time, you know, you talked about some of some some episodes that we would recommend to people if they're new to the Friday Night Game Cast.

And I gotta tell you man, you joined us for the episode right before Coffee Talk for clayps Here Expedition thirty three, And I do think that it's an all timer.

That was that was a really really fun episode and I encourage anybody to go and listen to that.

I think that's that's a great one.

But yeah, Will and I are flushing out of schedule.

We have things cooking, you know, behind the scenes of stuff that we want to review as soon as I can get my house settled and I can, you know, kind of get back into routine.

We're going to be.

We have a lot of plans coming out with what we're going to do for the rest of this year, and lots of exciting stuff happening for this year.

But again, yeah, if you want to, you know, find us, just check us out Friday night gamecasts and all podcasting platforms.

Anything going to add Will or did Nick pretty.

Much cover it?

He covered the majority of it, so yep.

Outside of the podcasting platforms, make sure to interact with us on the social media site that shall not be named, as well as Blue Sky and Instagram of course, where we you know, post up some funnies.

He posts up some goofies here, some good stuff, and of course make sure that we keep you all locked into what we're currently doing and potentially have upcoming.

Yeah, and I promise I'm not plugging our Patreon on our friends show.

You know, of course, you you know, sub subscribe to ricks Patreon first first do anything.

But I am doing my best you know, Republican man cosplayer with the hat and the sunglasses in the car.

I am I'm doing.

I'm doing like kind of just you know, day in the life recordings, you know, vlogs on our on our Patreon for just random gamer thoughts, gooner gamer thoughts on the way to and from work.

So if that's your cup of tea, you know, feel free to just you know, let's checks out checks out, you know.

What I mean.

I did get that notification, and that was my first thought was that it's a selfie cell phone camera of Nick in a car with sunglasses, and I was like, man, he's gonna be complaining about the woke I bet exactly.

Let me tell you about these goddamn plankers exactly that one right there.

You can find links to all of the Friday Night Gamecast stuff in the episode description.

You'll find all of their social medias and their patreons by going to I think it's link tree.

I think you guys have that.

Yes, let's find that, and you can find that.

In the description.

You'll find links to our stuff as well, to our social media presence on bluesky and Instagram, to the discord that is free, and to the Patreon that is not free.

You can check all of that out.

Support if you're so inclined, leave a rating in a review if you're so inclined as well, And once again, thank you, appreciate you sticking around for such long episodes.

I think that's all for today, so thanks again, Nick, Thanks again, Will.

It's been fun and until next time, next time.

Next up on the show, we've got Claire Obscure.

Got a couple of episodes coming on Claire Obscure and that's going to be a blast.

That's a beautiful game, right there, y'all enjoy that.

Yeah, So until then, we'll see you all next time.

Take care, keep on, keeping on, keeping on,