Death Stranding

 I had my eyes on Death Stranding for awhile since it released, as the quality of the graphics alone seemed stellar, as well as hearing brief mentions of how its the epitome of a "walking simulator". How the whole game is based around the concept of just carrying stuff around. I thought that was a funny and intriguing concept, like how can they possibly make that fun and exciting? So it peaked my interest. Eventually I picked the game up when it was on a decent discount but I didn't really know much more than those brief facts about the game.

The game is very story driven, as it starts off with a lengthy introduction setting up the scene. The overall concept is that its a sort of post apocalyptic wasteland, where total extinction is looming around the corner, and the only viable way to receive important items is by having people called porters to manually deliver them to the various outposts across the world. You play as one of these such porters, and soon into the game you are tasked with the objective to "rebuild America" by connecting all the outposts together by something called the "Chiral Network". Usually this involves long manual treks across almost barren landscapes to each outpost, and then having to please the people there in order for them to accept joining the network.

The introduction of the game sets up for a lot of intrigue, too. The games narrative certainly tries to set it apart from the crowd. You have all these weird angles, like the introduction of the game sets up this concept of rain that rapidly accelerates aging if you stay in it for too long, where it introduces this character called Fragile who's face is normal but apparently the rest of her body is withered as if shes an old woman. It introduces these predatory enemies called BT's, which are these sort of invisible monsters that stalk you and try to pull you down into a black tar void if you make your presence known. The game is full of all sorts of strange and wonderful technological advancements and items, that it keeps you wondering what kind of bizarre thing they will present to you next.

And the first impression gameplay was interesting, too. The landscape is covered in rocks, boulders, and is very bumpy and vertical, and you carry lots of things, so it means running around you are frequently fumbling around and tripping over objects. But there is a mechanic where you can hold each controller trigger to brace yourself and prevent yourself from wobbling around. You can either hold them both down at all times, which makes you move a bit slower but makes it much harder to fumble, or you can tap each trigger individually to try to momentarily re-balance yourself, it almost reminds me of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater grind mechanic, funny enough. The movement feels unlike many other games, and the control scheme, physics, and navigating the world is unique too. You can tap a button to scan the environment which highlights lots of little X's or yellow spots warning you of places you may trip, and it shows you things you can collect too. Navigating to the objective is nuanced also: You can hold Left bumper to go into first person mode, where it shows you a compass, but also highlights an icon in the world to walk towards your objective. You can even open the map screen to manually plan a route towards your objective, however I personally found this route system to be clunky and was too annoying to try to interact with as the controls on the map screen were not great and the map screen also  was a jumbled mess to try to figure out how to actually plan my routes in a proper way. It was more intuitive and effective to just press LB and walk towards the icon. However, the icon does not stay on your screen permanently for whatever reason, so you have to frequently retap LB to make it show up again. I understand in one sense why they didnt make it permanently stay on the screen, but on the other hand it can be just annoying to have to keep tapping the button to make it reappear, because not only do you have to just tap it, you have to point towards the icon or press Dpad to cycle to the objective, which can frequently feel buggy and spin your entire camera around 360 which is disorienting.
But at least the opening cutscene also showcases Vehicles, which is something I looked forward to later.

You play as Sam Porter Bridges, also known as Darrel Dixon from the Walking Dead. Its basically the exact same character. This actor has apparently just been typecast, its like whatever piece of media he is in, he is always this gruff, morose, edgy, low deep voice talking grungy guy. Its a little off-putting, because, its like, I already know this character. I already watched The Walking Dead. Why is Darrol Dixon in this sci-fi game? It comes across as a little unimaginative and playing it safe. Still, his character is entertaining, and much of the dialogue and scenes between him and the supporting characters can be gripping and exciting. But its not just Norman Reedus which is typecast, we also have the actor from Hannibal - Mads Mikkelsen, who pretty much acts the same way in this game as he does in that tv series. Creepy, mysterious, dark, weird, and a bit morbid. I understand Kojima has a reputation for being obsessed with Hollywood and actors, but he doesn't seem to encourage them to act different than they did in their past famous roles. And at a certain point I start to wonder is he more obsessed with interesting movies, or interesting gameplay.

Everything is wrapped in a very cinematic angle. You can tell that the producer, Hideo Kojima, is trying very hard to give the impression that the experience is "Absolute Cinema" or "Kino", as they say. Everything seems carefully choreographed and timed to incite an emotional response from the player, from the camera angles panning and zooming out at certain times as you walk around landscape, to the very frequent choices of moody almost pretentious sombre indie music that plays as you go on your journeys. Honestly , at a certain point I hate to say but it comes across as trying too hard and pretentious. Like it desperately wants to sell you this idea that the game is very deep and emotionally gripping, but at times it comes across as contrived.

Still, there is no doubting that some of these scenes are impressive. The graphics are gorgeous, especially the models and animations. But also the landscapes, while they are almost entirely barren, it does set for very cinematic scenes. The view distance is far, and theres multiple different biomes you can come across, which all can altar how you move across them. For instance, the snow biome drastically slows you down at a snails pace.

Although, there isn't really any memorable landmarks or locations. The entire game world really is just a series of barren landscapes. Theres no points of interests or really anything to explore. Honestly, the whole game kind of feels like the world was generated by a random terrain generator... I know its all probably on purpose, again to send some narrative about loneliness and connection or something, but sometimes the game can just be boring to look at where not much is happening and you are just crossing a barren wasteland for 30 minutes at a time.

But take away all the cutscenes and narration, and what kind of game are we really left with? The bulk of the gameplay has you traveling to one outpost to the next, carrying cargo. Each outpost has multiple missions you can select, but many of them are optional side content. The main mission is highlighted by a yellow swirly line going through it, something that you only get told a few hours into the game. There are tons of side missions, but I honestly don't really understand the point. I get that some of them may unlock a new gadget or thing here or there, but it really just didnt seem like a good use of time. A few times I would bother to do these side missions, if they were the same destination as the main quest, but I struggled to see a real reward from it. Upon completing missions you get a screen showing you how you did. The more you damage cargo, the longer you take, the less score you get awarded. Each mission then rates you from F to S. I almost always got A or S rank, without really trying. The purpose of these rankings seems to affect little more than just your overall Porter score. As your score raises, your Title gets upgraded. You start off as a basic "Mover" but as you rank up, you turn into a Master Mover,  and then a Transporter, Master Transporter, and so on. Ranking up seems to give you a few perks, like sometimes it increases how much KG you can carry, and it unlocks equipment such as Exoskeletons, various weapons, and I think eventually different vehicles although you get a Bike automatically. But really I found I was ranking up at a rapid pace just by doing the main quests, where all of the equipment I needed was flowing to me quickly without ever thinking that I need to do side missions to get things faster. I barely even realized I was ranking up, and that I was unlocking things until like halfway through the game. It all comes naturally and you dont feel too enticed to go out of your way to do optional content. Especially because the optional content is really just more mundane stuff like carrying a box of pills half across the map to some generic NPC that will thank you.. its not exactly thrilling stuff.

Each time you accept a order at one of the games main facilities, it gives you a cargo screen where you can customize how you carry your cargo and what you will take with you. This is a unique idea and mechanic, it allows you to in-depth change exactly where you want to place each item, you can attach items to your hips, shoulders, carry it on your back, carry it in your tool rack, and so on. But again I felt little need to actually manually mess with this. Usually I would just press the button to automatically carry everything on my back and it seemed to be good enough for my purposes. I would try to carry as little extra stuff beyond what I needed to make the delivery, because it also just slowed you down and it didn't seem that impactful. As you progress through the game you get all sorts of equipment, things like Ladders, Climbing hooks, Grenades, a Floating Carrier, Thermal Pads, Oxygen Mask, and eventually various types of weapons - But really, none of it felt impactful to me. The only thing I would basically ever craft and take with me are the various Exoskeletons, and then the PCC item used to create a generator and recharge the battery. Everything else just weighed you down and didn't feel worth it. The game tries to have a lot of mechanics beyond being a basic walking simulator, but none of them really hit that hard or are that fun to use. The bridges are kind of neat, but I would rather take the extra 15 seconds to walk around the obstacle than fumbling with laying down the bridge. Same with the climbing, its slow, clunky, and annoying, with weird controls, and I found myself rather just walk around the obstacle. You eventually unlock weapons, such as an Assault rifle, Pistol, Shotgun, and so on. But really theres hardly any enemies to fight with it, and when enemies do show up, its more worth your time to just run past them than bother trying to engage.

While the game does have a good variety of equipment and mechanics, I found myself disappointing and unmotivated to actually interact with many of them, finding it more viable to just ignore them and continue on to the objective seemed to be more fruitful. The previously mentioned Exoskeletons were the one item I found actually significant. Theres different types, a Speed exoskeleton, which when equipped makes you move much faster, but drains battery, however in some terrain types it does not work very well. There is an All-Terrain Exoskeleton, which is a good all rounder that especially helps in Snow areas, without it you will be almost literally crawling through the snow, but with it you will be hopping around at a brisk pace. Lastly there is a Power exoskeleton which allows you to carry more items, but I didn't find myself ever really needing to use this one. It comes across as the game tries to portray its self as having some depth, but it actually doesn't...

Another funny oddity is the inclusion of sort of online features. It seems inspired by Dark Souls in a way (What isn't these days)
In the sense that other players can leave messages laying around, and create structures around the world to help other players. You will be roaming around the world and see a bridge, or a ladder, or a highway road built by some random player. You can press "Like" on it and send them a like. You can even see other players discarded cargo, and even sometimes find their left over vehicles laying around. I don't think you can actually play with another player, but its like you are constantly seeing remnants of their past behavior. Players can even build these safe rooms around the map, which blast their own choice of music, which is funny and amusing. Though, there doesn't seem to be much to it beyond that. Really it kinda comes across as another gimmick or novelty to make the game seem like it has lots of depth but under the surface its just a cute oddity. I guess its also used to compare yourself to other players, like a leader-board of sorts. If I had played the game in offline mode, it wouldn't be that different, there would just be a less convenient vehicle, battery charger, or bridge here or there. It seems that the inclusion of these online features is more to serve a narrative point, to give the player some sense of connection because the game seems meant to feel lonely, and its almost like every mechanic in this game serves the narrative first...but I can't help but feel I would wish some things serve gameplay first and foremost and forget about trying to send some grand narrative.

Most missions involve you carrying a variety of equipment from point A to B. Usually to another facility. Usually it is mundane stuff, like some important batter, some medicine, or some important machinery. But sometimes you will be carrying bombs or nukes where one wrong move will make them explode. So at least the game does try to throw curve balls at you. Still, most of the time is spend just holding the joystick forward and staring at a big open empty landscape, or fumbling around trying to get around a mountain, trying to walk around some river, because going into the water drains your battery fast and also you can get swept away and have to retrieve your cargo, or monotonously trudging your way through snow, sometimes with zero viability in a snowstorm. And I understand the game does use monotony on purpose, to try to immerse you into the role of being an actual Porter, of course it wont always be fascinating work, but at the end of the day it is a game, and the whole "Kino cinematic immersive experience" isn't going to awe me for hours on end. Its like sometimes playing this game is so dull you can play it one handed with the controller holding Forward, and with the other hand browse the internet with your phone. The only things that wake you up from your slumber are the enemy encounters. There are two types of enemies: Human bandit type enemies, that can scan the area when you are close by, shooting out a big orange beam letting you know they're onto you, and these BT invisible monsters that suck you down into the void. The humans are really not much of a threat at all and were really just disappointing. There is no point to even care about them. Even if they spot you, they are almost entirely harmless. They suck at catching up to you, you can very easily just run past them, even carrying tons of cargo. Even if they shoot at you, their guns suck and their bullets can barely hit you. A few small times you are tasked with a mission to go punch a few of them or retrieve some item from them but its few and far between. Most of the time you can simply ignore them, even if they are right in front of you and chasing after you. Just keep running past them and you will lose them without much thought. So this alone means theres pretty much no point to take any of the weapons with you, making the combat pointless.

The other enemy, BT's can be a real pain in the ass. At seemingly complete random the game will play a mini-cutscene, showing you that your scanner device thing is active to let you know they are near. Once this happens it means there are invisible monsters all around you, and if you stumble ontop of one, they spawn a black tar and start trying to pull you down into the void. You can spam RB to scan the environment and try to get a visual glance at some of these monsters, but its kind of annoying to do and makes the graphics look cluttered and bad. At least you can stare at your scanner device, because it points in the direction of the monster so you can use that to try to avoid them. You can also hold your breath with RB and I guess it makes you more stealty when they are near but its hard to tell. I also cant tell if crouching matters or not. But really, the first bit of the game I didn't realize the scanner device points towards them, nor did I realize you can tap RB to see them briefly. So I would constantly just randomly have them spawning ontop of me, being very frustrating making me very annoyed at the game. Even after realizing these things, though, it wasn't exactly moments to look forward to. They are a nuisance more than anything. I appreciate that the game wants to give some threat to the player, but this is just a pain in the ass. When they try to drag you down into the void, you start to move extremely slowly walking through tar, you have to tap X to "Shake them off" and you jump around like a maniac trying to get out of the pit. Once you're out, they simply go away.   But if they manage to drag you down, you arent dead yet - It spawns the entire area in black tar, which honestly looks incredible and super cinematic, with giant whales and dolphins and buildings coming up from the ground, giant monsters coming towards you, but still its also just kind of tedious. You have to simply get out of the black tar area before too long or you get a Game Over screen and reload to the last save. Thankfully the game autosaves frequently, and I never game over'd very much, but to say the enemies are a bit annoying would be an understatement. The whole thing is just sprinting away from them and stumbling over annoying controls and trying to avoid almost entirely invisible enemies...

A few main missions are more interesting and amusing, though. They involve either carrying a corpse on your back in a body bag to the Incinerator, or carrying living humans on your back with you to other places on the map. For lore reasons I guess the living people cant walk themselves, but actually it was never quite clear why. But really, thats about it for the variety of objectives and encounters. Many missions are samey feeling. Especially the whole storyline about connecting the chirnal network. The game has 15 chapters, and around chapter 5-10 felt like a bit of a slog. It was this constant "Go to this outpost, and convince these people to join our network" - What that means is go run a bunch of menial fetchquests for random NPC's until you get in their good graces and they let you progress the campaign.

The pacing of the game was a little grueling, too. Like I said, theres 15 episodes, but some of them can be like 4 hours long. But then others are like 20 minutes long. Its all over the place. So if you want to play 1 episode per session, it doesn't really work out that well. They should have tried to chop up each episode into bite sized amounts, like an actual TV show if thats what they want to go for. Because damn, this game does feel like a TV show more than a game at many times. Sometimes it will be 20+ minutes of cutscenes, so long that my monitor would go to sleep because I had not pressed a button for so long.

Though, funnily enough its like the devs realized they cant just get away with nothing but menial walking missions. Because for awhile, almost every second episode is some drastic shift where you're playing these War missions. You get sucked inside some alternate dimension where you're in the trenches of some battlefield, with guns all around you, hallucinating soldiers popping out and shooting at you and playing more like a standard Third perosn shooter, although the shooting controls and gameplay is far from amazing. Theres no cover shooting or anything, and it does feel very barebones. These missions usually involve you chasing around the actor from Hannibal, who plays as a sort of military war commander, and is desperate to get his baby (called BB) back. As you can see on the games box art, the game has an odd fixation on babies. Early on into the game you get literally equipped with this baby, stuck to your chest, which gives you the ability to tap RB and detect the previously mentioned BT tar enemies. That's really about all the baby does, I think. The baby cries when you run around too rough, and has a healthbar, and when its depleted you have to rest for him to come back. When hes crying you can stop and soothe the baby to tame his stress, but it seemed more like a novelty than a real gameplay strategy. Anyway, these war Episodes are just funny to me. The devs knew people would probably get too bored with constant back to back fetch quests, so they shoved these short War episodes in. The health sytstem involves collecting Blood bags, which get automatically administered to you, and weirdly enough your guns consume your own blood to shoot. Something about the lore where the BT enemies are only weak to your own special blood, but also in this alternate world the soldiers are considered BT's also I guess. So you run around and grab these blood bags, but theres also these Insect bug pods you can find and eat insects to restore your health too. Its really not much to write home about, very standard Third person shooting for 15-30 minutes in a few different War locations, and then the episode ends and you get transported back to the main world. Its not very difficult or engaging, sure you have to try a bit to not get shot up, but its not exactly gonna test your gaming skills.

Although, at least, a few times you come across these big epic boss fights. This is good to see, and a welcome addition. Usually they consistent of some giant tar creature as you roam around the arena collecting weapons and blood packs that spawn randomly. There are even these weird ghost state creatures that toss you items to help. It usually consists of picking up a dozen or so weapons and just shooting at the big monster, a health bar appears and you keep shooting and collecting new guns until the health bar depletes. One of the boss fights has you up against Higgs, this skull faced masked antagonist, and you're in an arena without any weapons, though he has guns and is shooting at you and tossing grenades at you, and you have to just repeatedly run up to him and punch him down until he teleports away. A bit of a goofy fight, and wasn't really hard, but a little silly that you just punch the guy for 10 minutes and don't get a gun. The boss fights have pretty much infinite health, theres always health around the arena including those insect pods you can eat and collect. The final boss is like this giant whale that flys across the sky and shoots beams at you, and you're inside a giant tar ocean where those tar enemies appear and try to drag you under. But buildings crop up randomly that you have to stand on to avoid them. Its a decent boss fight, and I did die once because those tar guys caught me off guard, but still it was little more than just collecting a bunch of guns and standing in a safe spot and waiting for the boss to appear and shooting him down, rinse repeat. Still a good change of pace.

And I have to say I don't think the controls are that great. The dpad has you accessible 4 different menus, and even after 20 hours I never got muscle memory for which one is which, its all so jumbled. You have to hold them down to open each one, and its menu's upon menu's. Especially some of the mandatory gun sections, when you run out of ammo on your guns you have to hold to open one of these menus and equip another gun, and I fumbled around with that a lot, it did not feel responsive or intuitive. I get that movement isn't supposed to feel like you're some parkour expert, but sometimes it feels like you're controlling a car more than a person, when you move the stick to turn around he doesn't do it sometimes and kinda turns like a tank, its hard to explain. The controls when you're in the tar and being dragged down is just annoying to say it lightly also. Even stuff like completing a delivery has you holding the X button and then holding X to accept mission, holding X to equip certain packages, it feels clunky and weird. Even the vehicle controls felt like a damn chore most of the time. The smallest pebble or rock stops you dead in your tracks, and almost the entire game world is covered in them. I get that they dont want to make vehicles overpowered where you can just breeze past the main mechanic of the game, but it got to the point where I just stopped bothering to use vehicles entirely because I spent more time trying to unstuck myself from damn rocks and pebbles that it wasn't worth it. The speed exoskeleton genuinely seemed way faster... The controls could be more polished, at least for me. 

So as the game has 15 episodes, really its 14. But even then its kind of less than that, because some episodes are almost entirely cutscenes. So maybe 10 episodes. And half of each episode is probably cutscenes and dialogue. So ultimately there isn't actually a ton of gameplay. I would almost wager to say 50% of the experience is not playing the game but listening to dialogue and watching cutscenes. When you do have gameplay, its usually little more than slowly walking across a giant landscape and listening to some random sombre indie folk music. Don't get me wrong, the game certainly has some engaging moments, where I could not wait to see what was around the next corner... and some of these music moments are genuinely beautiful sights and very relaxing and introspective, the game loves to use music by the band Low Roar and you'll be hearing these songs multiple times, and the first few times its pretty great, but at a certain point it starts to feel like a one trick pony... and eventually more often than not I was just waiting for each episode to be over as I felt bored or exhausted and just wanted to be done for the night, only to find that the episode keeps dragging on and on with more fetch quests or more longwinded cutscenes. But take away the longwinded cutscenes and dialogue and I'm not sure theres exactly an amazing underlying framework here to keep anyone thrilled.

I've tried to speak as little as possible about the plot and story so far in this review, because I mean its a game review, I'm not going to review a movie script. But I will briefly mention some core concepts and the overall impression of the narrative it had upon me. The plot is very ambitious, sci-fi, and philosophical. It has all sorts of concepts of the worth of life, what it means to strive in the face of despair, existentialism and all that. The writing tries very hard to weave a deep narrative, and it uses all sorts of metaphors to do so. You are tasked with rebuilding America, although the main character is brooding and indifferent, but reluctantly helps because of his estranged interest in this Amelie person. The game has a few memorable characters, namely the sidekick Die Hardman which is this dorky fat guy that enthusiastically helps you along the whole game and is almost a buddy, hes the one that gives you the baby. then you have Fragile which I mentioned earlier which is this strange woman that always randomly eats a bug but acts tough and mysterious. You have the Mads Mikkelsen character who you always get flashbacks about in between loading screens and his Baby, you have the main President which is this guy that wears a silly skull mask but other than that hes fairly generic and stoic, later on in the game theres this guy that has a weak heart and every 20 minutes he dies but gets resurrected by his AED, but other than that hes a fairly forgettable dorky scientist type guy...thats about the extent of the memorable characters. Theres one other girl called Mama who fosters a dead BT baby but thats about the only notable thing about her.

But the problem with the narrative is that it has so many twists and turns that it just comes across as contrived and unbelievable.
Like you know when kids play Cops and Robbers, and one kid shoots the other with his toy gun and hes like
"Haha, I shot you!"
But the other kid is like
"Nuh uhh, I have a magical force field around me"
And the first kid is like
"Oh yeah...well my bullets penetrate magical force fields because they are made of stardust"
and the other kid goes
"Oh well I have fairy dust imbued body armor"

...and so on

The entire narrative is like this. Like every step of the way is some contrived goofy high-tech jargon reason why you're gone off into this other distant realm, but then the person you were speaking to doesn't actually exist because they exist on the fourth dimension, but then actually it turns out the baby is really You, but then it turns out your wife is your mother, but then not really because your wife never existed because shes on the other dimension where she is disconnected ... blah blah... I mean I'm being hyperbolic but its just too stupid to get into. At some points I was interested, to see what happened with the baby, and all the fancy technology is interesting, I was interested to see where the characters were going...but far too many times the game would just suddenly invent some new piece of technology or invent some new convenient gimmick to where why the story twists in an unexpected way and its just like - Yeah, I see what you're doing, writer. You're being the kid from Cops and Robbers. It's not clever, I'm not that impressed.

Its all about preventing extinction, I guess, you go off into these alternate realms, called Beaches, these distant realms where you interact with ghosts and spirits? and for some reason talking to this red woman in a dress prevents extinction because shes a imaginary Extinction Entity God? but you keep getting reborn as a baby and waking up on a beach? But other people have to come into your Beach to save you? Just what the fuck, man. Again, the narrative is just so pretentious its cringe. The game clearly has an agenda, to sell this optimistic happy ever after story about how procreation is the ultimate goal in life and how we must strive through hardship and be hopeful yada yada... I mean its not exactly the most deep and philosophically nuanced take in the history of cinema. Its pretty base and standard, like something your mother would tell you. But its wrapped in so many layers of pretension and grandeur that it tries to make you think something more profound is going on. I don't care so much about a generic plot, but it comes across as being desperate to blow the player away, and in its desperation it loses something. Almost like it muddy's the water to make it seem deep. But I have to say, at least the acting is good. I don't think the acting or the cast is a part of the problem. They did the best with what they were given, and I would say they were probably the most interesting part of the experience.

Its not so bad, but like I said almost half of the experience is just sitting through all these cutscenes and the dialogue. Sometimes just walking around the world you can get 10 calls back to back. You even have those full screen radio calls similar to Metal Gear Solid. Frequently when you finish delivering a package, you can get multiple characters back to back yapping at you. The game frequently has you sifting through menu after menu, to the point where it gets tedious and annoying. Every time you bring back a package you go through like 6 menus. You turn it in, you get the rewards screen, then you get the Chiral Network screen, then you get the extra rewards screen, then you get the NPCs talking to you screen... it goes on and on. If I had one word to describe the game its Tedious.

I'm not trying to hate on the game, I don't even dislike the game. But I'm a little bit disappointed, maybe my expectations were too high, seeing the game all over the placed, here and there seeing snippets of people saying its a masterpiece, that its by the grand Hideo Kojima (I never really played that many Kojima games, actually. Just MGS1), but yeah I guess it just didn't hit too hard for me.

But even the parts I was most fascinated by, like how the rain called Timefall can rapidly age you, well that wasn't really expanded upon. It was this interesting thing at the beginning of the game, I thought it would be a large part of the game, but when you actually play through the game I never even cared about the rain. I could just run around in the rain with my face touching the rain and it didn't seem to matter. I don't get it. Am I missing something?

Chapter 15 begins after two sets of credits roll, it starts by saying "Two weeks ago" and then it says something vague like "Pass time until the inauguration" , well the Inauguration already happened in the previous chapters. Basically what this means, is this is the Freeroam endgame. There is no way to finish Chapter 15. There is no way to complete the objective stated. It just leaves you hanging, to do all the remaining side content and keep playing as you please. I don't really like how it leaves it ambiguous like that, it makes it seem like there is still a main objective complete, and I had to Google it to find out that there isn't...

I give the game props for trying something different, for having a bunch of odd mechanics and choices, for instance there are these Private shelter rooms where you sit in a bedroom and can look around and interact with various things in the room. You can shower, use the toilet, and get cutscenes for them each time which have unique buffs and perks. You can customize your backpack and put charms on them which amuse your Baby and lower stress levels. You can drink energy drinks and eat these insects for buffs, you can fast travel after a few hours into the game via an umbrella on the wall, Which definitely helped reduce the tedium, but you still have to find one of these shelters to access it and you leave all your gear behind so you cant just fast travel during a mission..and theres even an email mechanic where previous characters will send you emails and sometimes give you tasks and rewards, although I never cared much about it. Theres even a weird system with "Likes" , where doing various things will get you Likes, even stuff like sprinting really fast the baby will start laughing and you will receive some likes, I guess it helps to raise your rank faster. But still, I would be lying if I didn't say there were many sessions where I was just looking forward to the episode being done so I could stop playing for the day, or almost falling asleep at the controller monotonously walking across a landscape for 30 minutes with not much happening. Its an ambitious and weird experience, one I would actually suggest almost any gamer to play through because of how odd it is - but unfortunately being unique alone doesn't make something amazing, and for me, I came away from it all thinking it was just okay.

6/10