So, I really intended to just write about the game part of Death Stranding. That was what compelled me, and that was what I felt I had interesting things to say about. Now, do I have interesting things to say about Death Stranding? Does Death Stranding itself have interesting things to say? I'm still not sure about either! But I kept trying to wrangle my thoughts around what happened in that game, so I decided that writing them out might help me. And if I did that, I might as well put them up here.

Just be warned, I don't have a coherent overall thought on the game. This is just me trying to work my way through it. This is a blog, after all, not a professional write up analyzing the story. I'm sure those exist, written by people who are much better at that sort of writing than I am.

Also, of course, I'm gonna SPOIL as much of the game as I can remember, so, you know.

I think Death Stranding's story gives a fairly good first impression. It establishes how frightening the world can be, how dangerous the BTs are, and the stakes around screwing up with corpses can be (entire cities get destroyed in Voidouts, after an anti-matter/matter like reaction between the living and the dead coming into contact). Then it goes straight into, "Your mother, the President" needs you for this mission mode, and I was cackling. Sam's mother, Bridget, wants him to build bridges, figurative and literal, across America. I laughed so hard I think I missed a line of a dialog after I heard Die-Hardman say "President Strand." Was this stuff good? Eh. What it well written? Probably not. But was I enjoying it?

Absolutely!

Then you deliver President Mom's corpse, literally carrying her on your back, to an incinerator, and have to activate the semi-undead BB to detect ghost monsters, which didn't really work out for me because they grabbed me anyway, and I just had to run away. After that, President Mom's daughter (Sam's sister, Amelie (AKA Samantha America Strand (who looks identical to President Mom, just younger))) is appointed President (rather than, you know, elected), even though she's trapped on the other side of the country (yet can still transmit her hologram despite ostensibly being stuck in a city controlled by terrorists).

Which is the first thing the game confused me about, and having finished it, I'm still a little caught up on it. At this point in the game, they made it sound like Edge Knot City (where President Sister resided) was still a functioning, populated city, just one that didn't want part of the United Cities of America (I maintain that not using "United Strands of America" is a missed opportunity). But, and this is much later in the game, when Sam gets to Edge Knot City, it's completely destroyed, and no one is there aside from President Sister. I don't know if I just missed something, misinterpreted something, or if the game was just lying and/or plot holing.

Anyway, with the help of Guillermo Del Toro and Monster® Energy Drink, Sam Porter Bridges and BB set off to reconnect America, one Distribution Center and Prepper House at a time. This is when the game introduces MULEs, who got so addicted to the high of Likes after delivering packages, will assault anyone carrying cargo, supposedly to deliver it themselves. Sadly there's no way to reason with them, as I certainly could have used their help to expedite some of these deliveries. Or, you know, maybe after I cleared out a camp some people from Bridges could've come and collected the MULEs or something.

Not that I like prisons, they're BAD, and given the world of Death Stranding is (sort of) beyond capitalism (there's no money, only Likes (which have no monetary value) and resources with which to fabricate), I'd also like if it was beyond that sort of criminal "justice" system. ALL THAT SAID, if I can knock out an entire camp of MULEs in a few minutes, I think it'd be nice if Bridges could get off their asses and send some people out to talk some sense into the MULEs so I wouldn't have to keep going around their camps (or sprinting through) when I make deliveries.

But I digress.

So, Sam and BB set off through the tutorial area, and get to Port Knot City, which is a nice moment, going down a long hill while one of the few not Low Roar songs in the game plays (I don't think I like Low Roar, a band I'd never heard of but there must be like two albums worth of their music in the game). I forget what band did this song, but it's the one piece of licensed music in the game I remember liking, so it made the moment nice. Sam makes the delivery, takes a nap and a shower, and then Troy "Two Masks" Baker (Higgs) shows up and hams it up before a boss fight.

So, Higgs is a character. But not really a good one, as the game waits until basically the end before actually making any of his, or the other terrorists (who are never actually seen with him, they just replace the MULEs in the later areas of the game) motivations clear. He just shows up, spouts some lines that didn't make any sense until I rewatched this cutscene after finishing the game (via the Quick Look), and disappears.

Then Fragile (a lady with a rad jacket that I would wear in real life, and a French accent that I don't understand how she has it given she lives in post apocalyptic America (I know the reason is the actress is French, don't @ me)), who owns a boat, takes Sam across a big lake, and the Real Death Stranding starts. Which is to say that the actual story goes on the back burner for a while as Sam does the compelling part of the game, and just traverses desolate landscapes, delivering cargo reconnecting people, etc.

Amongst the many deliveries, Sam gets flashbacks of a baby inside some sort of life support thing. These are the Mads Mikkelsen portions of the game, and eventually result in multiple sequences where Sam gets thrown through time (or universes?) to World War II and (I think?) the Vietnam War to fight against Mads and his squad of skeleton soldiers. But like the rest of the story, none of the answers come until much later, so I'll get to that then.

The main narrative follows Sam as he gets a delivery to South Knot City, which includes a character (who is clearly Higgs) giving Sam a portable nuclear bomb, that the game explicitly says is that, yet Sam doesn't seem to realize it unless he rests at a specific Distribution Center and Fragile finds it. If you don't (I didn't realize I had to rest there to get the cutscene (the game said to meet Fragile at that center, but I didn't see her, so I dunno, I just kept going)), the bomb explodes as Sam enters South Knot City, and the game reloads a save.

Otherwise, Sam has to bring the bomb to a tar pit and throw it in, because it's Death Stranding supernatural tar that connects to other universes. I think.

Then there's a flashback where Higgs is creepy and mean to Fragile, and the story moves on to the other creatively named woman character, Mama. Her baby is a ghost, but a harmless one, aside from making it perpetually rain around the area. After more deliveries and such, it's revealed that Mama has an actual name that I can't remember, and a twin sister named Lockne. Also the baby was supposed to be Lockne's, but Lockne had health issues that prevented her from having a baby, but the two drifted apart after the whole ghost baby thing.

So Mama has to cut the tie with her Ghost Baby, and go with Sam to Lockne, so Lockne and Mountain Knot city will the UCA. Mama dies immediately upon arrival, and her soul fuses with Lockne? Or they were originally the same soul, but split at birth? I'm not sure, but they become one, Lockne joins the UCA, and fills the same role Mama did as the person who explains new gadgets because she's portrayed by the same actress (because again, twins).

More deliveries happen, eventually leading Sam to deliver Mama's corpse (which hasn't decayed or shown any signs of Voidout exploding) to Heartman. Heartman stops his heart every 21 minutes so he can search for his dead family, because there's a lot of guys longing for lost wives/children in this game (at some point it was revealed Sam's wife, who was either pregnant or had already given birth, I forget, died).

There's also a subplot going on where Guillermo and Heartman don't trust Die-Hardman (who is later revealed his real name is literally John McClane), and that subplot is something that feels a little Metal Gear-ish, and I wish the game had more of that sort of intrigue in general. Anyway, Heartman sends Sam off to do more deliveries, and this part of the game centers around people trying to figure out what the Death Stranding actually is, and I found that part interesting!

No, really! For a while there, I was into them trying to solve that, and all the stuff about them trying to say every major extinction event in the history of the world was a Death Stranding was interesting, and I was hoping it'd lead to something...well, better than what happened, but I'll get there.

Because it's after this that Sam eventually gets to Edge Knot City, and the story goes into overdrive.

He gets to the city, has a boss fight with Higgs and a giant BT, then goes to the Beach (oh gosh I forgot to mention the Beach), and has another boss fight, but this time he didn't bring any weapons, so it was actually a fight that involved more thinking than just shooting rockets at the BT. Okay, I'm being harsh, I didn't hate that fight, but I do think the space was too small for how big the BT was. But the fight with Higgs where you need to sneak around and such was fun, felt more like an MGS boss fight. Especially when it ended with a redo of the MGS4 fistfight atop the submarine. Just with less nostalgia and more slow motion shots of Troy Baker's face contorting as he gets punched.

That was fun.

Fragile shows up to deal with Higgs while Sam and President Sister Amelie reunite, and Sam mentions Mario and Princess Peach by name. I'm still shaken by this happening in a Sony published game. I also laughed at the Princess Beach line, which I dunno how most people felt (I assume this is the infamous line people kept mentioning), but I think it was supposed to be funny.

Even though Higgs said it was a final boss and game over, the game isn't over, because now the Die-Hardman might be up to something sneaky plotline and the ghost Mads plotline intersect, and form up with the main plotline of rescuing Amelie who, also, I forgot to mention, is an Extinction Entity.

And, this game is a lot. Sam has to travel back across the country, things are getting messed up with more and bigger BTs everywhere, it's revealed that Higgs was secretly making me deliver pizza to him the entire time, and everyone thinks Mads was the mastermind behind everything until Sam figures out that Mads was just another sad dad (sad dad Mads) all along.

IN FACT, it was Amelie (her name a French play on words) who was pulling all the strings, because she was actually President Mom's soul, and also behind the BB experiments (which were morally wrong but also not just used to find BTs, but also literally what the Chiral Network connecting everyone is made out of), and also trying to cause the extinction of humanity because she thinks it'd be better to just end it swiftly than drag it all out.

Now that I've thought about it, I think the game might have been better off focusing on just one of these things. I'll say the conspiracy to cover up the truth of the BB experiments, their relation to sad dad Mads, and Die-Hardman, because that's the one that works best, and also has the best (sort of) pay off. There's a solid story in there about America being the cause of its own undoing (the BB experiments coincided with the Death Stranding in a way that couldn't have been coincidental), and then trying to cover it up while just continuing to do literally the same thing it had been. That, as a contrast to the "rebuild America" story sold to Sam could have really worked! It's got intrigue, double crossing, mystery, conspiracies! It feels like a Metal Gear story, and I like those. Mostly.

But instead we get a lot of Sam convincing Amelie not to destroy humanity, including a sequence where the player has to unequip a gun and hug her, which would've worked better if I realized I could do that on my first try, and didn't have to reload, haha. Then there's a very long sequence where Amelie keeps explaining stuff to Sam, but only between sequences of wandering around a Beach with no direction, and not even full freedom because it just resets Sam if he gets too far away.

Eventually that ends, Sam returns to the land of the living, everything is rosy, and Die-Hardman is appointed (again with no mention of an election) President. But the game still isn't over yet, because there's more to be revealed about Die-Hardman's involvement in the sad dad Mads storyline, and we learn that the actor playing Die-Hardman is actually pretty decent, he just hadn't been given the opportunity to do much until now.

Then Guillermo says that the BB (who Sam named Lou at some point) is basically dead, and needs to be decommissioned (incinerated). But he also does a "wink wink" to Sam about disconnecting when he does it, so Sam goes off on one last delivery, and another song plays.

When he gets to the very same incinerator he brought President Mom to, he tries plugging into Lou's pod one last time, and gets the final flashback to sad dad Mads, where... Okay, there's a fair amount of the science of what's going on in this game that I don't understand, but I don't understand what happened here.

So the scene plays out, and again this is some of the best acting and whatnot in the game. I would have rather played a whole game about sad dad Mads and John "Die-Hardman" McClane than Extinction Entity President Mom/Sister. I mean, I would also rather a game with women who aren't braindead and kept on life support so undead babies can see ghosts, and where sad dad Mads has to kill his life support wife, but I digress.

Sad dad Mads is trying to escape the facility with his BB, and Die-Hardman tried helping him, but eventually sad dad Mads is caught, and cornered. That's all fine and dandy, but then... Sam shows up? And first I thought this was just like, a visual metaphor for Sam watching this, because unlike the flashbacks through the rest of the game, this wasn't from the literal point of view of the baby. A bit on the nose to actually show him watching it, but whatever, it was still better than Sam literally sitting on the beach as Amelie explained everything to him.

But then Mads talks to Sam??? But Sam isn't really there, none of the other characters see him, or acknowledge his presence in any way. Anyway, it's revealed that Mads (whose name in game is Cliff, and he makes a comment about cliffs and bridges, which got a laugh out of me) is actually Sam's dad, and the BB from the flashbacks was not actually Lou, but Sam. Sam who died, and was brought back to life by President Mom/Sister.

Then it's back to the present, where Sam takes Lou out of the pod, Lou is alive, and the two leave to start a new life, and there's some rain that doesn't seem to be Timefall.

And Death Stranding ends.

Whoof.

I know I said this was going to be just me stream of consciousness-ing, but if you actually read all that, I commend you. Having now laid it all out like that, at least as best as I can remember... I think it's kind of a mess. Or really a lot of a mess. It reminds me of MGSV, just with the opposite problem. MGSV's biggest problem (outside of its terrible treatment of women characters) was underdevelopment. The foundation of a good Metal Gear story is in there, but there's barely anything to it. Whether that was the result of purely creative choices, or cuts having to be made (at least one full cut mission that would've resolved and otherwise dangling plot thread is known to exist) is unknown.

Death Stranding, however, feels like it has the same problem until the end, at which point it crams it all in, and keeps cramming until there's too much. And I get it, I get the impulse to keep cramming in story. I also don't have an editor, but in my case it's because I can't afford one, so we end up with blogs like this, or my fiction writing (which I think is good, but I'm not gonna lie, no one's finished reading my books, and I know the length isn't helping).

The problem is Hideo Kojima isn't me, he's one of the best known game directors in the world. If he really wanted to, he could've had more people around him to try to reign in these ideas, and cut it down to just what actually works. (Unless of course we're all wrong, and THIS is the edited down version of Kojima's vision).

A story about rebuilding a flawed nation that brought about its own destruction, and instead vowing to build something new, something better, something that won't make the same mistakes could have been really good! A story about coming together to rebuild is a good one, especially given how divided the world is. The pieces of something good are in this game's story, and it's disappointing that they didn't come together in a way that was...better.

I wrote way more about this game's story than I wanted to, and I did it without really saying much of importance. Appropriate, I guess.

If you read all that, or even more than a paragraph or two, thank you. Truly. This may end up the last blog I write before GOTY season starts, and I do my usual Moosies stuff. Depending on when I get around to the succinctly named Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order.

I did read all of this, and now I think I can summarize the plot of Death Stranding:

President Mom's Dead; Parkour.

Now that I've thought about it, I think the game might have been better off focusing on just one of these things. I'll say the conspiracy to cover up the truth of the BB experiments, their relation to sad dad Mads, and Die-Hardman, because that's the one that works best, and also has the best (sort of) pay off.

YES! Probably my biggest problem with the game's story is that 95% of it focuses on all the other sci-fi stuff going on. Deadman occassionally chimes in to tell you he's still researching BBs, but otherwise the focus is on the stranding, Bridget, Amelie, and Higgs.

Then that last 5% is completely about the BBs, the BB experiments, why they happened, why they're terribly inhumane and immoral, and wraps them in a very compelling story involving Cliff and Die-Hardman that doesn't play out until literally the final chapter of the game. And the whole BB part is by far the most interesting and, frankly, human part of the story.

I also just want to add that the scene where Die-Hardman basically lays it all bare for Sam in the hallway after he becomes the president was pretty fucking amazing. Like, the acting and the way it was "shot" ("shown" I guess) was immaculate, I felt. It was weird that the entire game happens where Die-Hardman is basically a two-dimensional character that gives you missions and then this moment turns him into a deep, complex person.

Pacing is the problem with the story, in my opinion, I guess.

@drm2thej: Yeah, Die-Hardman really did a 180 from "generic video game guy who gives you orders" to a real character that has just been carrying a very heavy weight all this time that's really worn away at him. Wish more of the game had been like that.

@notnert427: I wish Giant Bomb featured Liking because I would have Liked that in addition to liking it.

I just finished this game today.. and I would probably write a similar stream of consciousness thread because the plot of this game certainly warrants one.

I'm not quite sure how that ending works out either - if Sam is BB all along then who is Lou exactly? Huh?

But apart from some of the E.E, Beach, Seam etc vagueness you know.. weirdly enough.. even not having completely grasped the conclusion it did emotionally have an impact on me. Also I completely agree with @drm2thej that the scene with Die-Hardman right after the inauguration ceremony is some terrific voice acting matched with excellent facial mo-cap. This stoic guy just breaks down in front of you and it feels real and not like your typical polygons delivering a speech. The moment in the incinerator where he is trying to get Lou to breath was also extremely touching. The entire last part of the game seems so centered around fatherhood and maternity to a certain degree and it's actually handled really well.

You can talk about this game for a long time but my closing thoughts are as thus:

I enjoyed the gameplay and could actually see myself doing some post-game cleanup. I thought the story typically suffered from feeding you tidbits of info and then opening several floodgates at the end to overwhelm you with info about what it was all REALLY about. Stylistically the game is amazing and the direction of cutscenes and even credits is top-notch as usual in Kojima games. There are so many of those scenes in the game where you cross a particularly rough patch of land onto an open part and some Low Roar songs kicks in while the camera zooms out - and even saying it sounds cheesy - but it worked on me every single time. Each time this happened I breathed this sigh of relief that I made it, and really enjoyed those weirdly somber tones while I stepped out of the snow onto even grass once more. I dunno anything about Low Roar but they were really a perfect match for this game.

EDIT 2: One thing I think is a completely missed opportunity is the final run back. While some label this as Kojima "trolling you" as they ask you to make your way all the way back from West to East again, I found it weirdly cathartic because I spent so much time building zip-lines and highways that coming back was almost triumphant for me as I zipped my way over the mountains and then caught a truck by the weather station and zoomed across the highways I built. That said, this was a perfect time to introduce like flying boots or some gadget that would completely trivialize travel and let you zip across the ground at great speeds without ever tripping. This amazing power fantasy as you make your way back across all this ground you worked so hard to cover.

Well here I am rambling also. Great writeup - likers get likes.

EDIT: Also my final clock in was 58 hours.. and it feels like I've been playing this game for ages. While I did enjoy my time with it - all the hardships and all the rewards, I am excited to move onto Jedi and other games.

@humanity: Yeah, it's easy to get caught up on the specifics of the story, and clown on a lot of aspects, but there are genuine moments that, at least on their own, work. I probably didn't get as much of an emotional reaction as you did, but there's good stuff in there.

And yeah, I don't think making you go all the way back is a troll. But also part of me kinda wants to go back into the game and make a trek of that length specifically without using any ziplines or vehicles, just to see how long it is. Probably won't though, but who knows.

And thank you! You should definitely also read the other blog I wrote today, the one that's just about the game part of the game. This one was a lot of me just writing and wrapping my head around stuff, whereas the other was a bit more thoughtful. If that makes any sense.

@mooseymcman: gotta say “you’re Mario and I’m princess Beach” absolutely killed me I was cackling with laughter.

@humanity: It's very funny.

Wait, did she say "Princess Beach"? I totally heard "Peach". This is even cornier in all the right ways now.

@drm2thej: I had subtitles on and yeah, it's full on Princess "Beach"

I mean it's dumb but in all the right ways. The entire scene is just bizarre too because why are they running like that.. why would they run? The entire idea of the beach being this void-like plane of existence that connects both worlds makes this whole running bit even more of a fever dream. I particularly like the implication that near the end of the game when they say it took them a month to finally find him, it was a lot longer for him - like I'm assuming years if not hundreds of years or something.

@humanity: I think the run is also supposed to be a joke. Like, try to make you think you finished the game, but then they pull the rug out from you because the game has like another five hours of stuff to do. Also it felt like some Baywatch level of goofy beach running.

@humanity: Im personally surprised others didn't see the hate train hype backlash for this all coming years ago when kojima quit the old company. His ideas were never mass marketable. I knew konami was inserting what was needed to make the artz guy sell. Like most artz stuff getting rained in by the big bad exec who only sees $$$. The big bad exce also sees trends and death stranding isn't a current trend. The super love for kojima when he quit was fueled by the hate over canceled stuff from konami but in the end i saw the over hype starting to get non fans annoyed. Thus, the videos that kept saying what the game was made non fans say this doesn't look like my type of game. The fans screamed you don't get it this is weird no one knows what can happen this is soo kojima. wait till theres gameplay blah blah...turns out he was telling everyone the game. Overhyping and making your own story before the game is release often makes what comes out disappointing.

"Artz" stuff usually really hits one person unbelievably well while it doesn't speak to someone else. Unlike a mass market item. Kojima's stuff seems like the abstract art you see at a museum that you have to look at for a while to enjoy but passers by will run past thinking your looking at something boring and go to more immediately satisfying realistic painting of beyonce. Both are cool but the Artz one was never suppose to get this much mass attention from people who would otherwise walk pass it if never given the incentive to stop and look.

Sam wasn't Lou. Sam was the BB in the pod (Cliff's son) and his connection with Lou triggered Sam's own memories. Louis was just a different BB completely. Since Sam knew he could survive outside of the pod he did the same thing for Louis.

@turboman: yes I know Sam isn’t Lou, as I said Sam is BB. Yet the entire game you are being fed little bits of info making you think Lou - aka the BB unit you get at the beginning in the game - is actually BB from all the cutscenes with Cliff. It has the little astronaut that Cliff gives his BB and Deadman let’s you know that the past records for Lou have been strangely erased or are inaccessible or something. And in the beginning of the game they let you know that connecting to a BB let’s you share in its memories so it’s implied further still that you are seeing Lou’s memories.

I guess it’s a big red herring but then Lou’s significance is completely ignored.

@humanity: Ah, I read that wrong.

I don't think Louise's past is a factor. I'm sure there is some kind of connection somewhere in the "lore" of the game (Louise is roughly an anigram for Soul Lie), but they didn't explicitly say it anywhere in the game.

@turboman: No, did they do the soul lie thing TWICE? This is getting into Rose is an AI territory.

My favorite thing about MGSV’s treatment of women was when Kojima was like, “😤 if they only knew Quiet’s story... They’re gonna be eating their words 😌.” And then the game came out and we were all like oh Kojima’s a fucking idiot.

I will never play DStranding but I read your whole blog and am even more convinced I’ll never play DeathSt.

@development: Let’s be honest, you didn’t need to read this blog to come to that conclusion. I didn’t think Kojima was “an idiot” (regarding Quiet) even though that comment of his was silly if it was even properly translated as we recently saw a lot of his tweets and comments aren’t really translated well. I just thought it was another weird thing he came up with that unfortunately had no chance of being received well in today’s world. Was it good? No of course not, but the idea of someone needing to breathe through their skin was at least interesting to me. There are people out there who painstakingly nitpick all his stuff and say “oh look at this dumb line of dialog wow what a genius!” And those who just shrug it off and laugh. You already know which camp you belong to.

@humanity: It really just baffles me that people have the time and energy to go to such lengths just to dunk on stuff. Like, I'm not going to complain that someone read my blog (if you're reading this comment, thank you for giving me your time!), but also... You know.

@humanity: nah I legitimately think Kojima is a non-smart man-child with a lot of money

I've said it many times but:

Kojima is David Cage with a good back catalogue. He styles himself an auteur and he has some genuinely cool ideas. He just has no idea how to connect anything together, does a LOT of problematic shit, and can't take any criticism.

I genuinely believe David Cage didn't think Detroit had any racial or slavery allegories just like I believe Kojima genuinely thought he was making a game about America even though it was clearly set in the remnants of the Lord of the Rings/Hobbit set in New Zealand.

Kojima knows what he wants to make and he makes it. And good for him (even if I take issue with a lot of his bullshit overshadowing the more genuine and innovative bullshit indie devs and eastern european shovelware houses have done for the past few decades).

But what will always stick with me is Dan Ryckert's story about wanting to talk action movies with Kojima and him clearly being above it all. He is a guy who takes inspiration from trailers or his impressions of films and thinks about how they can be used to make his Vision better. And that is the kind of thing that you either love or nope the fuck out of.

----

We sort of talked about this in extra life chat, but I am genuinely curious as to what will happen next. Kojima's following is both stronger and weaker after Death Stranding. And with crossplay being the expectation for the next generation, Sony may have a lot less incentive to fund games by Kojima or Team ICO because the idea of "I bought a PS4 to play CoD with my friend who is obsessed with Bloodborne" matters a lot less. They need fewer niche titles and more games like God of War or Spider-Man that EVERYONE loves.

I wonder how much Kojima's tragic past with his father effected the Mads/Sam/Lou storyline, because it's far and away the best stuff in the game. I'm glad the game ended on it because the Amelie/EE storyline is the least interesting part of it, which is unfortunate because it's the main focus of the narrative. I was tearing up every scene Cliff was in after his final boss fight, and chapter 14 was heartwrenching for me. In contrast to all the Amelie stuff, in which I felt absolutely nothing.

Ultimately I put 100 hours into Death Stranding and enjoyed most of my time with it, barring the pretty terrible boss fights after chapter 10. I think Mads' incredible performance (Tommie Earl Jenkins in that one scene, as well) and the fantastic online systems & infrastructure building really save this game. Everything else is pretty mediocre, or in the case of the Amelie story, outright bad.

Yeah, the dichotomy between the quality of the Sam/Cliff/Lou and Die-Hardman story stuff and the Bridget/Amelie/EE/Higgs story stuff is so extreme. It sucks that 90+% of the game focuses on the latter because the former is so much stronger.