Death Stranding 2's Unanswered Questions - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Summary

Kinda Funny Gamescast: Death Stranding 2's Unanswered Questions
Episode Released on May 12, 2025
Hosts: Tim Gettys, Greg “GameOverGreggy” Miller, Blessing Adeoye Jr., Andy Cortez

---

1. Giant Bomb Acquisition Announcement

Time: 01:07 - 05:37

The episode kicks off with Tim Gettys introducing Blessing Adeoye Jr. and Dan Riker, the newly appointed owner of Giant Bomb. Tim shares the monumental news that Dan, along with Jeff Bacalar, Jeff Grubb, Janet Choa, and Mike Minati, have successfully acquired Giant Bomb and all its assets.

Dan Riker expresses his excitement:
"It's insane because, like, I've done this for a long time, but I've never had this situation where I don't have a boss. I can't get fired. That's great."
(02:07)

Blessing Adeoye Jr. adds her enthusiasm as a long-time fan:
"Seeing that news get revealed live was such a jump... it's just how it should be."
(03:30)

Dan emphasizes the importance of community:
"The community is very, very passionate about Giant Bomb... now we get to choose who we serve and we want to serve the audience."
(04:14)

---

2. Transition to Death Stranding 2 Discussion

Time: 05:37 - 07:34

After celebrating the Giant Bomb acquisition, Tim seamlessly transitions to the episode's main focus: Death Stranding 2 (DS2). He invites listeners to submit their questions via super chats, highlighting that both Dan and Blessing have immersed themselves in approximately 30 hours of gameplay in Japan.

---

3. Improvements in Death Stranding 2 Over the First Game

Time: 08:24 - 14:08

Dan Riker discusses the enhanced pacing of DS2:
"It is definitely paced better and I think importantly it gets into it so much quicker."
(08:24)

Blessing Adeoye Jr. concurs, noting the streamlined cutscenes:
"It is paced way better. It gets you into the act of walking way faster."
(08:56)

They highlight the game's improved world-building tools, such as an in-game glossary that helps players understand key concepts without confusion:
"If you are confused at any point, even during a cut scene, there's this corpus thing. This like, you know, it's like that."
(11:11)

---

4. Combat Mechanics in Death Stranding 2

Time: 14:08 - 28:54

The hosts delve into the revamped combat system, drawing parallels to Metal Gear Solid 5. Dan explains:
"It's a lot closer to Phantom Pain than it is the first Death Stranding."
(15:56)

Blessing Adeoye Jr. adds that the combat feels more engaging and less cumbersome, highlighting the introduction of non-lethal weapons:
"All the weapons are non-lethal. Does the shooting feel better?"
(41:08)

They discuss strategic options available to players, such as tagging enemies with Doll Man and utilizing various non-lethal weapons to manage encounters more effectively:
"There are weapons you will want to use versus... you can decide which suborders you want to pursue."
(25:37)

---

5. Story and Characters in Death Stranding 2

Time: 38:42 - 49:44

The conversation shifts to DS2's narrative depth and character development. Blessing appreciates the enhanced interactions, comparing them to an ensemble cast:
"They're just meeting a lot of new characters. It feels like an ensemble crew."
(10:34)

Dan elaborates on the introduction of new characters while maintaining connections to the original game:
"There are returning characters and stuff. So you'll meet some fun characters."
(39:36)

Blessing Adeoye Jr. highlights intriguing new concepts like Ghost Mechs, adding layers to the storyline:
"They introduced a concept called Ghost Mechs... that's like the coolest Kojima shit ever."
(48:53)

---

6. Graphics and Technical Aspects

Time: 19:09 - 22:06

Both hosts commend DS2's visual fidelity, especially on the PS5 platform. Blessing remarks:
"The lighting in this game is fucking incredible... can't overstate enough how good this game looks on base. PS5."
(21:23)

Dan mentions specific visually striking sequences, such as a boss fight that surpasses trailer expectations:
"It's just pure Kojima just unmatched."
(20:24)

---

7. Audience Questions and Responses

Time: 08:24 - 55:36

Listeners submitted various questions addressed by the hosts:

• Isaac Dantzler: "Is there less story overall or is it paced better?"
  Dan: "It is definitely paced better and the story's a big step up this time."
  (08:24)

• Hungry for Dog: "Is the Doll Man annoying?"
  Dan: "Oh, no, he's the best. I love that dude."
  (28:54)

• Flaming Kid Flip: "How do the vehicles feel in DS1?"
  Dan: "Good. The Tri Cruiser is kind of the main one I used here which is kind of like the three-wheeled bike you saw in the trailers."
  (29:19)
  Blessing: "They added more mechanical stuff to the vehicles, like turrets and grappling hooks."
  (31:36)

• CJ Splits: "Can you manually navigate the ship in the game?"
  Blessing: "No, but you can fast travel using the DHV Magellan."
  (34:00)

• Calvin Perez: "Menus, inventory management specifically were a huge barrier for me. Are they improved or streamlined at all?"
  Dan: "Be very liberal with the auto arrange cargo feature."
  (40:03)

• Smit Patel: "Do roads in Monorail connect all places and how does timefall affect everything?"
  Dan: "Not the whole map, but you could probably build between all the major spots."
  (53:53)

• Mental Gear Gaming: "Is DS2 iterative like Tears of the Kingdom is compared to Breath of the Wild?"
  Blessing: "It feels very much like an iterative build upon Death Stranding 1."
  (42:36)

• Golden Spider: "Don't forget to freak it today."
  Blessing and Dan: "Roger and Mike have just been freaking... carry that energy into the week."
  (65:36)

---

8. Player Experiences and Personal Stories

Time: 57:02 - 66:28

Blessing and Dan share personal anecdotes from their DS2 preview event in Tokyo. They recount attending group interviews, experiencing cultural activities, and the humorous challenge of pre-ordering the Switch 2 amidst gameplay sessions. Blessing describes the camaraderie and unique experiences, including bonding over wrestling shows and navigating a rare steakhouse event.

Dan Riker reminisces about past events for comparison:
"It was the sequel to the notorious Vita boat... but this one was like, we're all in the trenches together."
(61:59)

---

9. Conclusion and Closing Remarks

Time: 66:28 - 68:43

Tim Gettys wraps up the episode by encouraging listeners to support Kinda Funny and Giant Bomb through memberships and subscriptions. He teases upcoming content, including reviewing "The Last of Us" episodes with full spoilers, and anticipates continued coverage of Death Stranding 2 leading up to its release next month.

Tim Gettys concludes:
"Stay tuned to Kind of Funny and Giant Bomb for all of your Death Stranding 2 coverage. I am sure we're going to talk a whole bunch more about it because it comes out next month."
(68:43)

---

Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Dan Riker (02:07):
  "It's insane because, like, I've done this for a long time, but I've never had this situation where I don't have a boss. I can't get fired."

• Blessing Adeoye Jr. (03:30):
  "Seeing that news get revealed live was such a jump... it's just how it should be."

• Dan Riker (25:37):
  "There are weapons you will want to use versus... you can decide which suborders you want to pursue."

• Blessing Adeoye Jr. (48:53):
  "They introduced a concept called Ghost Mechs... that's like the coolest Kojima shit ever."

• Dan Riker (41:18):
  "It feels great... it's definitely better than it was in the first one."

---

Overall Summary

In this engaging episode of the Kinda Funny Gamescast, the hosts celebrate the exciting acquisition of Giant Bomb by Dan Riker and his dedicated team, highlighting their commitment to serving the passionate gaming community. Transitioning seamlessly, the discussion shifts to Death Stranding 2, where Dan and Blessing provide in-depth insights from their extensive gameplay experience. They commend the game's improved pacing, enriched storytelling, enhanced combat mechanics, and stunning graphics, drawing favorable comparisons to Metal Gear Solid 5. Listener interactions through super chats offer a wealth of questions about gameplay, story elements, and technical features, which the hosts address thoughtfully. Personal stories from the Tokyo preview event add a relatable and humorous touch, culminating in enthusiastic anticipation for the game's release. This comprehensive summary captures the essence of the episode, making it valuable for both longtime fans and newcomers eager to learn about Death Stranding 2.

Transcript

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. Not everyone is careful with your personal information, which might explain why there's a victim of Identity theft every five seconds in the U.S. fortunately, there's LifeLock. Lifelock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity. If your identity is stolen, a US based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year by visiting lifelock.com podcast terms apply.

[Dan Riker]

This episode is brought to you by Factor. Optimize your nutrition this year with Factor America's number one ready to eat meal service. Factor's fresh, never frozen meals are dietitian approved.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Ready to eat in just two minutes.

[Dan Riker]

Choose from 40 weekly options across eight dietary preferences like calorie smart, protein plus, and keto.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Eat [e-mail] listen50 and use code listen50.

[Dan Riker]

For 50% off plus free shipping on your first box.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

FactorMeals.com listen50 code listen50 teas and seasons apply.

[Tim Gettys]

What's up? And welcome back to the Kind of Funny Games cast for Monday, May 12th. Of course, I am your host, Tim Gettys. I'm joined today by Blessing. Adio. Yay, junior.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Good day, Tim.

[Tim Gettys]

Good day to you as well. And joining us is owner of Giant Bomb, Dan Rert.

[Dan Riker]

That sounds crazy to hear. I'm still not used to hearing that.

[Tim Gettys]

It's wild stuff.

[Dan Riker]

Say it again. Say it again.

[Tim Gettys]

Say it again. The owner of Giant Bomb, Dan Rikers.

[Dan Riker]

That's the good stuff. That's the good stuff. Oh, my God. We got the fog machine.

[Tim Gettys]

Got to do it.

[Dan Riker]

Yes.

[Tim Gettys]

Got to do it. Dan, how are you feeling right now? In the last couple days, you and an amazing group of people, Jeff Bacalar, Jeff Grubb, Janet Choa, Mike Minati have secured ownership of Giant Bomb and all of its assets. You have, you get the back catalog, you get the social accounts, you get the YouTube channels, the Twitch channels. Like, you get to independently launch your version of Giant Bomb with all of the good, good parts of it. Like, how does that feel?

[Dan Riker]

It's insane because, like, I've done this for a long time, but I've never had this situation where I don't have a boss. I can't get fired. That's great. I wonder what's going to happen there. That sounds awesome. But yeah, I've worked for, you know, GameStop for eight years. You know, I was a game informer and the store level. Before that I was at, you know, cbs, Red Ventures, fandom, you know, various different owners at Giant Bomb. And I've loved it all, but I've never been fully independent like this. And it feels tremendous. I mean, it came together really, really hot. And once it looked like a possibility, it was like, oh, my God, I can't wait to get this out in the world. And that pack, the timing was perfect. Literally, like, my last day was the day before the PAX panel. And it all came together. Like, paperwork was signed right before the PAX panel. It's like, well, I know exactly how we're going to announce this.

[Tim Gettys]

Yep, yep. And y' all crush it. Everyone should go check out the PAX east panel of Giant Bomb where they announced this news. Very emotional, very high.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Gosh, I. I got to. I watched it live because I saw the teases from the different people from the team of, like, the formal message of, like, please tune in to the PAX panel at this time. And, you know, I came up. I was such a. I talked about this on KFC when we're talking about, like, Giant Bomb and all the Polygon stuff going down. A few weeks ago, I came up a very big fan of Giant Bomb. Like, I listened to as much Giant Bomb probably as I listened to kind of funny before I worked here. And, you know, I. Seeing that news get revealed live was such a jump. Scare is the wrong word, but it was just such a surprise.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Such an unexpected. Oh, shit. Like, I can't believe this is happening in this way. And it's funny, I was telling Tim earlier that I was listening to the next Laner dudes talk about, like, all the Giant Bomb Polygon stuff, right? And, like, one of the things that they had mentioned in their episode was about how it seems like a lot of the problems at Giant Bomb came from it just not being independent, right? Came from all the different owners that just didn't understand the brand. It didn't understand, like, what Giant Bomb is and what Giant Bomb brings to the table. And so to see you guys go fully independent, it feels like it seems like such a. Oh, this is how it should be. And so I'm very happy for you guys.

[Dan Riker]

Yeah, it's cool. Because, like, you know, the thing that has always made Giant Bomb very, very special is the community is very, very passionate about Giant Bomb.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

And.

[Dan Riker]

And so I always like to try to make stuff for the audience. And just by the nature of how corporations work, like, you are serving, like, brands, you are trying to make this, you know, able to sellable to brands, or you're serving an algorithm versus now that we're independent, we get to choose who we serve and we want to serve the audience. Like, that doesn't mean we're not going to do ads and things like that. We will. Thank you kind of funny for being our first sponsors. Very much appreciate that.

[Tim Gettys]

Had to do it.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Dan Riker]

I just, I want to make cool stuff for an audience that gets it. I don't want to have to worry about like, oh, is, you know, this audience going to understand all of our in jokes and stuff like that. Giant bombs and filled with in jokes for, you know, since the beginning. So, like, if you're on board, you're on board and we are making that content for the audience.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Oh yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

I love it, man. And I feel like this is going to allow us to collaborate with you guys so much easier and just better. It's all. It's always been great, but I do feel like y' all being independent, I think gives a different energy to it all. So I expect that there'll be a lot more crossover between us in the future and I'm very, very excited about that. Again, congratulations to, to you and to the entire crew and honestly, the biggest congratulations to the community because this is the ultimate win for them. Like, this could have been so much different. So bad. But like Giant Bomb's community now gets to thrive hopefully in an era that is not just new but the best going forward for serving the community. So congratulations everybody. But enough about that for now.

[Dan Riker]

Remember everyone, this is.comjoin I'm going to say that so much over the coming months or years. Giant bomb.com join if you want to help support us.

[Tim Gettys]

Yes. Make sure you do that. Thank you very much for for getting that in there, Dan. Giant bomb.com join Go do that and then remember that this is the kind of funny games cast where each and every weekday we get together to talk about video games and all the things that we love about them. You can watch us live on YouTube or Twitch or you can get us later on your podcast service of choice. If you love what we do, please support us with the kind of funny membership on Patreon, YouTube, Spotify or Apple Podcast to get all of our shows ad and a daily exclusive. Greg Way for a chance to be part of this show though, please submit your thoughts and opinions or questions as YouTube super chats as we go. Today's topic is going to be your Death Stranding 2 questions. Dan and Bless both played about 30 hours of the game in Japan. They can talk all about it. So if you have any questions about the game, please super chat them in now and we'll get to them. Little housekeeping for you. We're an 11 person business all about live talk shows. You just got a kind of funny games daily Breaking down today's news with Greg Miller and Jeff Grubb, another owner of Giant Bomb. So you can check that out after. This is going to be our last of us screencast spoiler cast with me, Greg and Nick and and bless perhaps.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Oh yeah. I guess I wasn't on the calendar for that.

[Tim Gettys]

Well, if you're free I'd love to have you.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Sure.

[Tim Gettys]

Then after that it's going to be a stream. It's going to be nick playing Expedition 33 for the first time. He's going to play the opening of that game. You know what, I'm really excited.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I think he'll with it.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah, I think so too.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I think he might like it.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah, the, the, the combat we'll see but the story.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Oh, he's not going to like the combat. I'll tell right now he's not going to gel with the combat but I think he'll like the story and world in the French.

[Tim Gettys]

And then if you're kind of funny member of course you get the Greg way for the day. If you're kind of. Thank you to our Patreon producers Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster and Delaney Twining.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

He's walking.

[Tim Gettys]

We brought to you. Nick's here.

[Nick Scarpino]

You don't tell me what kind of combat I like.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

You don't tell me that. What was the last JRPG that you really enjoyed?

[Nick Scarpino]

Oh, that's a great question.

[Dan Riker]

That's a great question.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I don't know that there is one.

[Tim Gettys]

We're gonna give this one a fair shot. Pokemon now.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Oh yeah. Pokemon.

[Nick Scarpino]

Hey that's enjoy is me playing Pokemon less than me playing Pokemon. But people like watching you be torture and hopefully it'll be fun today.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I think you're gonna have a great time. Yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

Today we're brought to you by Shady Rays rframes and Rocket Money. But we'll tell you about that later. Let's start with the topic of the show Death Stranding 2's unanswered questions. Like I said super chat them in. I want to start with one. Super chat really fast. Isaac Dantzler says is the is there less story overall or is it paced better? Dan, what do you think?

[Dan Riker]

I would say it is definitely paced better and I think importantly it gets into it so much quicker. I remember booting up the first one and it's like it is a lot of just kind of establishing, you know, you don't even understand the world or anything. Why are they crying? What is this carillium stuff? And, like, since that's kind of all established, that world building in the first game, it just kind of gets into it in this one. And there's a event very early on that sets off the events in motion. And. Yeah, and the cutscenes that are there are better as well. So, yeah, the story's a big step up this time.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yeah. I was surprised to watch the beginning of Roger and Mike's Death Stranding 1 marathon and see how many cutscenes there were in Death Stranding 1 in the first couple of hours. It is, like, mostly cutscene in the first couple of hours here. That is not the case right here. It is paced way better. It gets you into the act of walking way faster. Like, there's some establishing cutscenes or whatever, but they're not that long really. They're tone setters. And then honestly, they do a really good job in the first gameplay sequence of the game of using that as a tone setter as well, where I find myself, like, you know, kind of. I don't know. It's funny because, Dan, you played it as well, right? Like the first, I guess, destination that you're going to. There's not really any emotional stakes set immediately in the game, but I still felt emotional about it for some reason. Like, I think the music and the.

[Dan Riker]

Gateway, you're just going home. There's not like a crazy, you know, stakes or anything like that, but just it's the music. It is the. There's this earthquake thing and, like, boulders going around you. Like, things like that are really cool. But I said this in my preview for Gamespot, that it felt like the first game was kind of siloed off interactions where it's like, I'm at Hartman's lab and now I'm talking to Hartman. And now I'm over here. I'm in my room talking to Fragile. And so this one feels more like. If you ever watched Arrested Development, there are the first three seasons where, like, the whole ensemble cast is together, you know, interacting all the time. And this one felt like that weird fourth season where, like, none of the actors could be in the room at the same time. So it was just like, basically two people siloed off interactions. This feels more like an ensemble crew. Like, when you go back to the Magellan, which is like your ship, and it's just like, oh, a bunch of cool, fun characters interacting together. It's a Lot better.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I will say though that like, to the question of is there less story overall? I would say no. Like there's, there's just as much story. I think it's just better paced and better done in the stories. Serves like, it serves like getting you into the gameplay better as far as like what you're doing, why you're doing it. I think there's less work to be done story and world wise in this game because so much of it is just built in, in death Straining one and like. One of the things I like that Dan mentioned in our first preview that we put up last week was the fact of like they're telling you about Kyrillium printers and I didn't, I didn't have to think about it.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I was like, oh, I know what that is.

[Tim Gettys]

I get what that.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I understand what that means.

[Dan Riker]

Carillion printed diapers.

[Tim Gettys]

Yes.

[Dan Riker]

I was just like, yeah, yeah, that's normal, that's fine.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yeah, that makes sense.

[Dan Riker]

If, if you are confused at any point, even during a cut scene, there's this corpus thing. This like, you know, it's like that. Well, I haven't played Final Fantasy 16, but I called it like an active lore.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Active time lore.

[Dan Riker]

Or like a vowed had that too. Or it's anytime there's like a proper noun or something, you can easily, easily be like, oh right, here's this like in game glossary at all times.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I got a question for Tim. Yes, this is Death Raining two's unanswered questions. We're taking in questions to the audience. My question for you, Tim, is are you going to check out Death Training two? I forget what your story was with Death Training one, the very quick story.

[Tim Gettys]

Because I have been saying this a lot recently, because it was recently that I got back into it, but I tried it when it first came out and I'm a huge Metal Gear guy. But I, I like when Metal Gear is in control. I like it when it's telling a story that I believe we're going to get an ending to. And Metal Gear Solid 5 is the pinnacle of gameplay, but also the pinnacle of my disappointment in Kojima storytelling. And so getting into Death Stranding, I'm like, seemingly it's all the things I like least about Kojima's storytelling and characters. And so I didn't make it too far. I think I made it like three to five hours in the first time. And then years later, like earlier this year, I gave it another shot on PS5 and I liked it so much more. But I Also stopped playing around three to five hours. So it didn't stick with me. Like, I. I want to like death stranding so much more than I actually like death stranding. And I'm hoping I can push through that. Everything I'm seeing from two seems to solve a lot of my issues that I have. My problem is everything you guys are saying now of like, oh, two just jumps into it. It has the understanding of one. So it's a lot better if I don't have that understanding. I don't know that watching a YouTube video like recapping me is going to get me where I need to be. But to answer your question, yes, I'm going to give to a shot and I'm very excited to.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I will say to that last part, there is the recap in the game that is like. It's like a slideshow essentially of here's what happened Destiny 1. It goes through all the major characters and I think it serves as a pretty good baseline for getting you into Destiny 2 because that's Training 2. Even though it works off of all the rules of Death Training one, I think the corpus thing that Dan brought up, you know, does really well at keeping you in the know of. All right, what's this concept? All right, what's this thing? All right, what are the bts, what are the babies? What are like, you know, they define pretty much everything for you. And the story in Death Training two is it. It's about new characters. Like there are returning characters and stuff. Right. But like, you go to a new location, you're in Australia for the bulk of this game. Right. You go to a completely new location and you're meeting a. A lot of new ensemble. And the story here feels a bit more standalone to like, what's happening actively in like the main narrative. Of course, the world establishment and stuff is all death rating one. Right. But I think you might be able to. I think you'll be fine. Yeah. Jumping into Death Training two if you played some of Destiny one.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah, well, I'm. I'm very interested in that, but I'm more interested in the two of you because you got to play 30 hours of this game. I listened to your Gamescast preview last week. It was phenomenal content. I was incredibly excited to see how glowing both of you were, especially Dan, knowing your history with Death surrounding and history of Kojima games being more in line with what I just said. But you did push through and find the love for Death Stranding 1. Now that we're about a week removed from you playing it, you talking about it. Have you been thinking about death stranding to nonstop or are you just kind of like, I cool, I previewed a game and now I'm going to play it when it comes out and release. But like, that's where I'm at. Dan.

[Dan Riker]

I've definitely been thinking about it, but in these specific last two weeks, I've had no shortage of things to think about that were very time specific. So, you know, with my job and everything. So most of my thoughts have gone towards that. But when I'm talking about this game, I find myself getting very, very excited for it. And I remember thinking that like, oh God, if we're playing 30 hours of this and our save won't come over, like, I don't know, am I going to even want to play it again? Or will I just kind of watch, you know, the cutscenes from the back half and it's like, no, I will play this again 100%. Like it is the moment to moment is very, very fun in a way that I think the first one was not. I mean, this is one that has actual combat that I want to engage with in the first game. I wouldn't want to go to bandit camps or anything like that because it's like, oh great, I'm just gonna be running away, dropping stuff while people throw electric spears at me. Like, that's not fun, this one. The combat is fun and it's like you're gonna hear more people compare it to metal gear solid 5 because it does have more of that feeling. I'm not going to say it's full on metal gear solid 5. Not that amount of, you know, action options and things like that, but it's a lot closer to Phantom Pain than it is the first death stranding, I think. So I think people would be surprised by that.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yeah, I mean, I've been thinking about it a lot. Right. You know, we talked a lot about how going into it playing the idea of doing a 30 hour preview that we weren't going to be able to keep our saves for was a bit frustrating and a bit like, oh man, all right, I'm going to have to replay this thing during for the review. I'm actually excited to go back because I think so much of just the core gameplay has been uplifted from Death Training one. And like I would stress that Death Training two, in terms of gameplay, right, like it is more Death Training one. They have such a belief in that gameplay system of all right, you have your packages that you're carrying, you're walking to the next destination. You're laying down ladders, you're laying down structures to help yourself and help other players. You're picking up packages on the way. You are trying to find ways to navigate around the obstacles, whether the. Whether the obstacles are the enemy bases that are way better this time around as far as, like, the ways in which you can tackle them or whether it's rivers or whether it's steep mountains, which even those like, you know, looking back at watching Roger and Mike play Death Stranding 1 and seeing how steep some of the mountains are and how kind of unfriendly they are toward being able to get up, I noticed in death training too, that like a lot of the getting uphill remind me a bit more of like a Zelda, like Breath of the Wild in terms of like, I felt like I could climb anything for the most part. Right. Like, it's not. It's not exactly that in terms of stamina system and I'm literally climbing anything. But they want you.

[Tim Gettys]

It's more inviting to explore.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

As opposed to like trying to guide you through a chasm.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Exactly right. Like you kind of had those options as far as how do I want to get to the place that I'm going? And yeah, I think the overall just being in the Destiny 2 world is way more engaging and way more fun and way more interesting than I found Death Stranding 1 to be. And I like. I really, really like Death Stranding 1. But yeah, there was a moment during day three of playing where I'm just doing side quests and suborders and stuff for the standard orders. And like, I found a kangaroo and I didn't gun this one. Oh no, I did gun this one. Now this is actually the kangaroo that I gun did with rubber bullets. I didn't kill the kangaroo. I just knocked it the Beef with Kangaroos, dude. No, cuz here's the thing, right? The game has an animal shelter where you can save animals. And I saw the kangaroo out in the wild and I wanted to save it. I didn't realize that if I got close enough, I can just like, you know, take it, back it up or whatever and then do it. I. So you wanted to knock it out to then take it or whatever. I'm saving it. The end product is the same.

[Dan Riker]

Stuff. It was protected very peacefully. I took that kangaroo bag. Blessing had other plants.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

You know, it's easier to carry if it's knocked out, so I use my rubber bolts. But like, like, no joke, I Did that, like, wrapped up the kangaroo. I'm carrying it to the next station so another player could pick it up and give it to the animal shelter. And as I'm doing that, I'm like, it felt like another day on the job. It felt nice.

[Dan Riker]

Like, it.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

It felt relaxing. And I don't. I'm. Yeah, it was like, we're back. And I don't know what it is about Death Stranding 2 versus Death Rating 1. That just makes it more peaceful, more serene, more of like a I can just do this all day kind of game, but it really does capture that.

[Tim Gettys]

Something that I can't help but notice every time I see this game is how drop dead gorgeous it is to a distracting degree at times. What did you guys play on?

[Dan Riker]

They had us on base PS5s, and it looked incredible. I had it on performance mode. Great frame rate, and the fidelity was amazing. And there was one area that we've all talked about. I think everyone that played the game, this really stood out to them. It's one kind of boss fight sequence, and it is one of the most striking things I've ever seen in a video game. I remember because some people were getting ahead of me in the story, and I would get up to go to the bathroom or something like that and walk past other people's screens, and I did a double take at one point I was like, what am I looking at here? And I was thinking about that until I got there, and then it was like, even cooler than I expected. It's. It's just to kind of tease it. If you've seen the trailer, there's that Neo character, the, like, the solid Snake character. And he's got his skull soldier army. And if you remember the part where there's the fireworks going off behind him and they're like, lighting cigarettes and stuff. The sequence leading up to that. Yep, there you got it on screen. It's just tremendous visually. And the boss fight itself is essentially a shootout. You know, mechanically, it's not crazy, it's very fun, but it's just the. The vibes on this sequence are just pure Kojima just unmatched.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

This game, when it comes to the boss fights, I think uplifts the vibes so much. I think mechanically, they're still somewhat simple. Like, they remind me of Metal Gear Solid four boss fights, which I think oftentimes would kind of boil down to a similar thing of chase after the boss. Shoot it. But, like, the spectacle is there. Death Training 2, I think, captures that exact spectacle. And it's so cool.

[Tim Gettys]

My soul saying Metal Solid four Boss fights.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I love it. Yeah, the spectacle is so good. So yeah, the Neil moment was dope. There's a moment even past that that I'll surprise because I thought that was going to be the moment of the preview. And then there's like another moment even past that way further where I was like, ah, dude, they got this stuff.

[Tim Gettys]

So I'm glad to Hear Dan Bass PS5 and it's looking that damn good. Another thing about PS5 is the controller. I always love the dualsense implementation for death stranding in particular. Having that L2 R2 kind of balance of as you're walking. Bless. Did you notice it feeling like a step up from your experience with death standing run that you played on?

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Oh, I played that on Steam Deck, so it's hard to tell because I don't know how director's cut felt on the PS5 DualSense. I don't there was anything that stood out to me in particular. I don't know about you, Dan, as far as like the dual sense stuff.

[Dan Riker]

Not the dual sense stuff, but in terms of just the like leaning back and forth and all that. I remember that being part of what turned me off the first game so quickly is being like, do I'm have to spend so many hours, oh, don't fall over here, don't fall over there. And like I feel like I didn't have to micromanage it as much this time. Same with the, the baby, you know, the baby will cry like maybe two times in my 30 hours. I kind of soothed it and stuff like that. But like it felt like there was way more pain in the ass mechanics and features in the first game and it just seems to like toned them down this time around.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I want to speak more to the PS5 stuff because the way this game looked on just the monitor I was playing at, right, the computer monitor on a base PS5 was kind of unbelievable. Some of the establishing shots in the game are just of the environment and no joke, first I was like, is this live action? And then it cuts to Sam and I'm like, oh no, this is, this is in game. Like this is rendered in game. And you're doing like the first like mission where you know, takes place in the uca, but it is just like rock mountains in the background. And seeing the amount of fidelity in detail on that stuff was incredible. The lighting in this game is fucking incredible. Going back to the Neil sequence that Dan brought up, but even beyond that you have the Day, night, cycle in the game this time around that wasn't in the first game. And seeing the like, rays of the Audra deck in the night time because you have like a flashlight that's attached to it now that you can turn on in the night, like that stuff. The HDR looked pretty fantastic. Like the different, the amount of different types of environments and different types of weather effects as well. For me, I was like, oh, man, I can't believe technically what they're doing here. Because it could be a sandstorm, it could be rain, it could be the rivers, it could be the amount of like, flora that's in this game that I think they're really putting to work as far as what the Decima engine is doing. It reminds me of Horizon and how much like leaves and flowers and jungly environments and are in Horizon. I. I wouldn't be surprised if they saw that and went, oh, we should have more of that in this game because you go into certain environments that are filled with leaves, that are filled with all that stuff and it's like, wow, this looks incredible. And so I can't overstate enough how good this game looks on base. PS5.

[Tim Gettys]

Scat H writes in saying, how does it improve on metal gear solid 5's close to endless possibilities when taking on bases found throughout the open world in DS2?

[Dan Riker]

Dan There are some cool things you can do. Like, you know, in the first game, you might remember having the PCCs. They were the things that, like, would allow you to build any number of, like, okay, I'm going to build a zip line, I'm going to build a watchtower. And some of that can play into this. Like, if you're approaching an outpost, you can build a watchtower. You can, you know, tag all the enemies before you go in and try stealth. Or you can do a thing that I prefer, which is doll man, the puppet dude from the trailers. You can just throw him like a softball above the base and he hovers and you see through doll man's eyes. And so you're like tagging dudes and stuff. And then you pull him back and he's like, oh, did I do a good job, Sam? That I was like, yeah, buddy, you did great. Like, that's my way of tagging guys. And then, yeah, you can go in, you can do all sorts of stealth stuff. You can do, you know, tranq sniper rifles from a distance. You can go in and try to choke them out with the rope, things like that. There's decoy, like hollow holographic decoy. Grenades. So, like, you can throw one of those and it might pop up and it's like an ostrich or something and it distracts a dude, or it could look like you or another soldier. So it's kind of con. Contextually, it'll have something pop up and distract guys. And then when shit hits the fan, you know, there's any number of, like, there are weapons you will want to use versus, like, in the first one, I would get weapons and I'm like, I'm not going to use this. This is a lethal weapon. And then I'm going to like, cause a void out or something if I don't take a guy to incinerator here. You get to just use your weapons and have fun with them. And by doing those side missions and the suborders and all that stuff, you will get some cool stuff to play around with. And another bonus is when you look in that corpus and you. You look at the different people you can deliver to, it will tell you like, oh, you'll get an automatic handgun if you get a closer relationship with this person. You'll get a customized electric rod if you keep going here. So you can decide which suborders you want to pursue. You know, like, that's so cool.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I didn't. I didn't realize that they told you that stuff.

[Dan Riker]

Yeah, it was super helpful, but because.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Like, for me, I was excited to do the sub orders just to like, figure out what items I was gonna get. I was really excited when I did a suborder for a character and they gave me like a sniper rifle, a non lethal sniper rifle. And I was like, oh, I'm gonna use this for every. Every encampment. It's also funny hearing you talk about Doll man and using Doll man to mark Dan because, like, I didn't even think to do that. Like, I knew Dalmain had that functionality, but I was so locked in on the Watchtowers, which is like another PCC structure that you can build. And usually because of the way the Chiral Network works with people playing online, I would get close to an enemy structure that I knew or an enemy camp that I knew I wanted to go into, and I would see that somebody had already built a watchtower, and I'm like, oh, perfect. And when you go up one, it automatically just tags everybody and puts the number of people tagged at the top of the screen. And so, like, as I'm going in and taking out people one by one, at first I would start off with the sniper rifle outside of the camp until they noticed me and then I would then start to use like you know, more close up weapons. But I'll see that number tick down. I'm like, all right, there's one more person left in this camp. Let's scan. Okay, he's over there. Let's go get him. Take him out. And for me that was always my routine. One of the things that they talked about during the interviews because we did two interviews, right? We did the production team interview which included Yoji Shinkawa and then two, two other of like the team leads over at Kojima Productions and then we did another one with Kojima himself. I believe it was during the production team interview where they talked a little bit about combat and mentioned that like yeah, like we looked at the feedback for death Training one and like, you know, a lot of people like it when we have like you know, more defined combat in our games. And we looked at our team and went oh, we have people that know how to do combat. So let's, let's use our team and make a. And like spruce up the combat system. And so like when I look at the death rating 2 combat system versus something like MGS5, it's an interesting comparison because I the, I think the inspiration is there as far as the direction taken with it, but I don't think I would, I would, I would never say that it touches MGS's MGS5's combat system in terms of depth and quality. More so inspired by it. And so there are things like certain enemies will have on helmets in ways that remind me of like MGS5 where if you hit it it'll knock off the helmet and now like get another shot and they'll go down right? Like it has a lot of those basic concepts from MGS5 but I definitely don't want to overstate how much this is still death stranding compared to an MGS5 even though like it has those MGS5 flares there. As far as what they're doing with.

[Dan Riker]

The combat even like that's the bandit encounters that we've mostly been talking about. But remember the first game the, the BT encounters would be. They thought they were the biggest pain in the ass because it's like I'm bad at stealth so the BTS would spot me, the ground would turn into tar. I'm kind of trudging through it. It's like it was just a pain in the ass. Now a lot of your weapons will just take out bts like their standard enemies or there's things like the blood boomerang, which is a boomerang that, like, you can siphon Sam's blood into the boomerang, charge up a shot, and you headshot a bt, and they just totally dissipate and your blood grenades and everything. So, like, now it's just. I don't worry about, like, I have to crouch, walk, and hold my breath and, oh, no, the baby's crying. It's just, I. I will go in there, I'll try some stealth, and then when they spot me, I'm just going to kill them all.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

Hungry for Dog says, is the Doll man annoying?

[Dan Riker]

Oh, no, he's the best. I love that dude. You go back to your private room, he hangs out on your shelf, and he's just like your. Your buddy. You just talk to him. Every time I go back there, there's a little exclamation point next to him. If he's got something to say, I will exhaust that until he's done talking. I have seen that man dance. I have learned how he stays young. Can I explain why he stays young? This is one of the things I learned by talking to him. Okay, so there's a character named Rainey, and she is a woman. She's a. One of the, like, the still mothers who has, like, a seven month.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Anyway, she's played by Shioli Kutsuna, if you know who that is.

[Dan Riker]

Sure. Yeah. And she. When Rainey goes outside, she causes time fall rain everywhere, which makes everything age. But in a 1.5 meter radius around her, it's core fall rain, which makes things younger. So every once in a while, she will take doll man, the puppet, into the shower with her, and her abilities make the shower water turn into core fall rain, which keeps the puppet maintaining a youthful appearance. Of course, it's a good video game.

[Tim Gettys]

It just makes sense.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I mean, it's funny because I was like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. Like, there are certain things.

[Dan Riker]

That's a good idea.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yeah. I won't spoil, like, his backstory, but like. Like, doll man explains, like, two in two sentences, like, what his backstory is. And I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, why not? That makes sense. Oh, yeah, that makes sense.

[Dan Riker]

A man got stuck in the car of a puppet. I get it.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yeah, exactly. And so, like, yeah, no, I don't think he's annoying. Like, I. I think when we make the mirror comparison, right. Of, like, a dude who's on your waist, he's always talking. He actually doesn't talk that much. Like, they. They tuned it perfectly where sometimes I'll forget he's there until he says something and I'm like, oh yeah doll man, you're, you're here with us. And so I, I think they did well with him.

[Tim Gettys]

Flaming kid Flip says. How do the vehicles feel in DS1? The vehicles were very rough.

[Dan Riker]

Good. You got. The Tri cruiser is kind of the main one I used here which is kind of like the, the three wheeled bike you saw in the trailers. There's also, there are like clunky big just like delivery vehicles that are just for delivering large amounts of cargo. And I feel like they feel clunky and big in the way they should. And something like the tri Cruiser feels fun and it's cool. Like you can see in the trailer there, like if it's going up a certain terrain, the wheels will turn into like kind of these gripping like blades and to help, you know, pull it up mountains and things like that. So yeah, all the ones I used were fantastic. You can also build things like monorails and you can use that to just ship stuff from station to station or Sam can kind of like hang on to the monorail as well as the cargo. It's, it feels solid for sure.

[Tim Gettys]

Did you guys get to play that little like Tron?

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

No.

[Tim Gettys]

§ no.

[Dan Riker]

That looks cool.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

It looks so cool.

[Tim Gettys]

Very, very cool. Yeah, stick it on the, the vehicles a little. I mean bless. Do you have anything to say about how the vehicles feel?

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

No, I echo everything that Dan mentioned. I will say that they added in like more mechanical stuff to the vehicles. And so like I, I don't think I unlocked this, but I grabbed in the way that you can share items in the game. I rented somebody else's vehicle from the garage and they had on there a turret. And so like I'm driving by enemy camps and the turret's starting to lock onto people and, and there was another, another truck that I rented that had like a slingshot thing to her grappling hook on it where I would be driving by like packages that were just left by other players and it would grapple hook the package to the vehicle and so I wouldn't have to get out and pick things up. It would just automatically detect things. And so by the time I arrive at a structure I'm like, oh, I have all these items now that I can turn in or store or do whatever with. And so like they have a, they, they. There have been a lot of just incremental tweaks to like, oh, we should add this. Oh we should add this. Oh this makes sense. For what this game is like, it's fun to see Kojima Productions like look at Death Stranding 1 and just keep on asking themselves like how do we uplift this from what the first game is? And then yeah, like to what Dane was saying. Right. Like and the, the terrain stuff is cool as well. Oh, one more thing I'll say on the vehicle stuff as well is I found that that I there was like a really good balance between me wanting to be in a vehicle versus me just hopping out and going on foot. Right. Because like that ends up being sometimes a way more viable thing to do as far as like all right, I'm about to pass enemy, enemy camp, let me get out, take care of the camp, come or like store all my stuff in my vehicle, take care of the camp, come back to my vehicle and then continue the journey. Or oh, I'm at this mountain or I'm at this, I'm crossing this river. You know what, let me just get out and just do this by foot. Like I, I, they do a good job of making. You have to make those choices in.

[Dan Riker]

Real time that there's also, there's more like kind of hot key stuff going on with like the cargo management. So like let's say you are making a delivery and you got a bunch of on your back and you're like, oh, I want to take out this camp and see what's in there. You can very quickly just like cargo management, drop all non combat stuff. So it's like you basically just take off your rig, leave all the like big boxes and materials and stuff and you can just go in with your guns and stuff like very simply without having to like, like manually remove a bunch of stuff.

[Tim Gettys]

So stick it on vehicles a bit here. CJ splits on, wants to know, can you manually navigate the ship in the game?

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Oh, manually. No you cannot. But you, you can fast travel in it like that. That kind of works as a fast travel system where there will be certain. Damn. What are the big structures called? Where like people are living in them and stuff. Do you remember? I always forget the words.

[Dan Riker]

There's some of them were cities and some of them were just like outposts, like stations. Yeah, similar to the first game but there'd be like you know, whole full cities like that as well.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Exactly. Basically you can have the, it's called the DHV Magellan, your big ship. Once you get to certain ones that are I believe connected to the chiral network, you can have that ship teleport between spots and so if you get Inside. And that happens like through the pause menu. So you go in and like, you're like, okay, I want the DHP Magellan to go here. And you can do that if you're in it. You can do that if you're outside of it. If you do it while you're in it, then you fast travel alongside it. It like has kind of a cool fucking like animation within the menu itself where it disappears and reappears where you want, where, where you want it to. But there's not been anything yet where it's like drive the DHV Magellan. I'm sure once you get further in the game they have to have that like, that seems like such a slam dunk of a thing to do.

[Dan Riker]

There is that part in the trailer where heart man, like puts the hologram of the Magellan on his head and then it's like on top of a giant.

[Tim Gettys]

Oh yeah.

[Dan Riker]

Or something. So I don't know what the hell's going on there. That wasn't in our time with it.

[Tim Gettys]

God, there's so much in this game I want to keep asking. This is Barrett in the control room? Yes, he is. He is everybody. Hey, get your super chats in. We're gonna keep answering all of your questions when we get back after a word from our sponsors.

[Nick Scarpino]

This episode is brought to you by Shady Rays. Get ready for the season ahead with quality shades built to last. Our friends at Shady Rays have you covered with premium polarized sunglasses that won't break the bank. Shady Rays is an independent sunglasses company offering a world class product. Rated 5 stars by over 300,000 people. Their shades have durable frames and crystal clear optics making them the perfect choice for all outdoor adventures. They have hundreds of options to choose from, so you're bound to find the perfect pair to match your style. Take it from Tim Geddes, who rocks his Shady Rays. Every day going on Pokemon Go walks out and about SF looking dope. If you don't love your shade, exchange for a new pair or return worry free within 30 days. There's no risk. When you shop, their team always has your back. With personal and fast support. Exclusively for our listeners, ShadowRays is giving out their best deal. Head to shadyraze.com and use code funny for 35% off polarized sunglasses. Try for yourself the shades. Rated five stars by over 300,000 people. That's shadyrays.com promo code. Funny. This episode is brought to you by Aura Frames. Every day we're taking photos from big events to silly moments. But doesn't it sometimes feel like all of your favorite photos are just stuck on your camera roll. Wouldn't it be great to have an easy way to share and enjoy them with friends and family? That's where Aura comes in. Aura makes it effortless to upload unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone, so your favorite memories are always within view. Plus, you can personalize and preload an Aura Frame for a unique and special gift. We love Aura frames in this office. Roger has one at home he got for his fiance's birthday and she absolutely loves it. It takes about two minutes to set up the frame using the Aura app, add unlimited photos and videos and invite as many people as you want to an Aura Frame. There are absolutely no hidden fees or subscriptions, and for a limited time, listeners can save on the perfect gift by going to auraframes.com to get $20 off plus free shipping on their best selling Carver Matte frame. That's a promo code. Aura 20. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by Rocket Money. With prices going up on just about everything lately, being smart with your money isn't just a good idea, it's essential. But managing subscriptions, tracking spending, and cutting costs can feel overwhelming. Lucky for you, Rocket Money takes the guesswork out of it, so you can easily make smart decisions. Rocket Money has helped multiple members of Kinda Funny learn they were still paying for things they totally didn't even realize. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Rocket Money's dashboard gives you a clear view of your expenses across all of your accounts, and then you get alerts if bills increase in price, there's unusual spending activity, or if you're close to going over budget. Rocket Money has over 5 million users and has saved a total of 500, 200 million in canceled subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year while using the app's premium features. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to rocket money.com kind of funny today. That's rocket money.com kind of funny. Rocket money.com kind of funny.

[Tim Gettys]

And we're back with more of your super chats. The Mark Shark is asking, are you still delivering to Metal basis with hologram holograms?

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yes.

[Tim Gettys]

Is that the core of this game still?

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yes. The holograms do look better though. Like the holograms are way more like I Guess just defined. Right. Like they're clear, like a bit more polygons to them. But yeah, that's still the core of the game, is that you are in Australia, you're working with Drawbridge, which is Fragile's new company. And like you have new characters as far to Draw Bridge and all that stuff. And you are reconnecting the Chiral network within Australia. And so you're going through. You're going, yeah, big structure by big structure, which are these like either cities or outposts or whatever. And you are doing favors for these people. You're delivering packages. Right. And you're also. Yeah. Connecting the cow network and getting everybody. Everybody to be a part of it. Yeah. Dan, would you say that's accurate?

[Dan Riker]

Yeah, totally. And yeah, sometimes it's cities, sometimes the outpost, and sometimes it is just like, oh, here's this hermit in the mountains, or here's this artist and suddenly you're friends with this artist and she's sending you like different paintings and things like that that she makes. So like there you'll meet some fun characters that aren't major but will pop up from time to time.

[Tim Gettys]

And then another question, comparing it to the first game, Calvin Perez wants to know. The menus, inventory management specifically were a huge barrier for me. Are they improved or streamlined at all?

[Dan Riker]

It takes getting used to for sure. If there's one tip I would give which also applies to the first one, it's just be very liberal with your use of that auto arrange cargo thing. It's just like when you're on the cargo management screen pulled in triangle and it'll just like, just kind of put everything on Sam in a way that makes sense. And if you drop stuff or whatever, just keep doing that. But no, there are a lot of menus. It seems overwhelming at first, but you do really get used to it. And there are some good like hotkeys, situations and stuff you can use now to navigate that.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yeah, there are a lot of wheels now. And so like you'll go and you'll have like a. Like, it's not even a weapon wheel, it's like an item wheel. So then if you go to the weapon portion of it, you can then scroll through weapons or if you go to like a different portion of it, you can scroll through different items and stuff. But even in there they have like an auto arrange thing where if I think it's like one of the buttons on the D pad go to like the top right thing in this, like auto arrange, you can do it right there. And I Think that helps tremendously as far as that. But when I look at the menus for actual, like, arranging the packages stuff, I think mostly it's the same, but there's just a lot more going on now too as well, Dr. Ryan says.

[Tim Gettys]

Dan, in your article you said it feels easier to engage in combat now that all the weapons are non. Lethal. Does the shooting feel better? I love DS1, but the combat was a tad clunky.

[Dan Riker]

It feels great. And you know, Bless talked about it feeling like phantom pain. And you know, you're talking about shooting off the helmets and things like that. There's even like the little details where it's like when the helmet flies off or you get that headshot, it's like just kind of slows down and you know, when you get caught and stuff, there's like these lens flares on the screen that like, feels straight out of Metal Gear Solid vibe. So again, don't want to raise expectations too much. It is not Phantom Pain, but it's. It's definitely better than it was in the first one.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Dan, correct me if I'm wrong, it does have like the. When you're spotted, the time slows down, like Middle Gear Solid five.

[Dan Riker]

I can't.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I couldn't tell if that was something.

[Dan Riker]

When I was getting. When I was getting the headshots and stuff. It would definitely do that. A short like. But I don't. I can't remember if it did it. When you get caught.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yeah, that was one of those things where it would happen periodically. And I'm like, okay, what's causing the slowdown? Is it that somebody sees me? But I. I could never clearly tell. But even then, like, sure, it is very. It's in ways that I think MGS5 in that way is pretty generous as far as how the combat went. This game also, I think is fairly generous as far as, like, all right, stealth is hard, so we're going to give you the options to like, take somebody out pretty easily if you. If you get caught. Or like, if. Yeah, if you want to be able to have time, slow down for a second so you can maybe get one or two headshots in a row real quick.

[Tim Gettys]

CJ also writes in saying, is this game iterative in the same way that Tears of the Kingdom is compared to Breath of the Wild? Is that an apt comparison?

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I mean, here's the kingdom I'll say was surprising, surprisingly not iterative. When you get to the final game and you like, see the depths and you see the sky and all that stuff, like it turns out to be a way, way bigger experience. I will say that we've only played the first 40 of this game theoretically, right? Like they told us that the preview event that where we'll get by the end of the week should be around 40 of the game. I'm not discounting some wild happening in that second half. Like, in fact, I'm kind of expecting maybe not like a MGS2 situation, but like something along the lines of oh, didn't see this coming, like that sort of thing. Right. Like, and I don't know what that is. I don't know if it's a different continent. I don't know if like yeah, they straight up Cap sand, Porter bridges or something. Like I have no idea what they could do. But the amount of like the amount that they let us play and the amount of non restrictions on how much we can talk about makes me go, wow, that's kind of weird. The fact that we can talk about whatever we want here except for like a couple of things, but for the most part so far from what we have played, it does feel very iterative in building upon Death Raining One in a way that I think is beyond anything that Kojima has done before in terms of that. Right. Like this is a chronological direct sequel to Death Stranding 1. Metal Gear typically hasn't really been that as far as MGS to MGS2. You have a new character. MGS3 is a prequel. MGS4 is like another jump as far as how it feels gameplay wise and where it takes place in the story and all that stuff. MGS5 again, different type of game, open world. All this DS2 or Destiny 2 is like very much, hey, what, what is all the feedback that we can take in for destroying one and how do we make that game? And it could be a response to we want to make a game that objectively is going to have a really high Metacritic and it's going to do really well or a lot better than Death Stranding 1 did on the critical level. It could be that or they could be saving something for the second half. I don't know.

[Dan Riker]

Yeah, I do think there's like 50, 50 odds of there being another continent because it was these gate plate. Gate plates is what they. Plate gates? Yes. That's how you go from Mexico, which, you know, the first like seven or eight hours are in Mexico and that's almost kind of like setting the stage of the story. But I did look in the corpus and it said something about like, oh, go to the east coast of Australia, something about another plate gate. So, I mean, I got about halfway across Australia in my time with the game. And again, if that's 30 to 40%, wouldn't surprise me if maybe there's something past that, but I don't know the scope of it.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I was also thinking the same thing of like, yeah, you get. You maybe finish Australia in another 20 hours and then they send you to an entirely different continent. That would make this game seem gigantic, though.

[Dan Riker]

Yes.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Which to be fair, like 30 hours, 40%. Right. Then you're talking about a game that is 70 hours long. So I could see it. I'm not expecting it. I'm not trying to put it out in the universe of people like being like, oh, there's another continent. But, like, I could, I could see it. I think that could make sense for. If you're hiding that in the second half of the game, do you think.

[Tim Gettys]

That from what you've played the game can support that system wise? Like, do you think that you, you guys played a fair amount of this game? Do you think that there's room for this to keep growing for another 30, 40 hours?

[Dan Riker]

I feel like I didn't really. Like, at the time we were kind of wrapping up, we were still getting pretty big things. Like, you know, the monorail and some of the vehicle stuff was pretty, pretty late in our time with the game. So, like, yeah, I don't feel like we hit a plateau really in our time there. I felt it was still climbing in the stuff it was giving us.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yeah, I, I agree with that. Like, mechanically, I. And like, just in terms of the systems that you can still layer on top, I wouldn't be surprised if there's still a lot more. And in terms of story, I think there's a lot more. You can do a story as well. Like, we don't really know much so far about the Neil character. Like, we got. We've had like a, like a cut scene with him. As far as where I ended my playthrough, I didn't actually get to like the final, final mission. I was like two missions away. So I was close. But, like, there's still a lot more to be learned about, about this dude. There's still like a lot more to be learned about. Like, even the characters that you know, I want to know more about Elle Fanning's character. I want to know more about Rainey. Right. Like, I feel like there's still a lot more as far as the character stuff.

[Tim Gettys]

So I want to ask, story wise, is it like, oh, I'm into the story. Or Bless, are you? Like, dude, this story's awesome.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I think for me, I might do. The story is awesome, but it's. It's awesome in a different way than a Metal Gear though, where I. I think the plot is interesting. I'm engaged with it, but I'm more so, I think just engaged with the characters and like, what their individual stories are. I think they're doing such a great job of it, honestly. Reminds me of Peak Kojima stuff of like when you play, when you have the, oh, what's the crew in Metal, you're solid one. Or any of the, like the Cobra unit or like sound Foxhound. Yeah, like when you have those crews of characters. Maybe not the Beauty of the Beast, right? Maybe the Beauty of the Beast. Like when you have groups of characters that each have individual, like, backstories that are developed really well. That is in inherently Kojima thing, like, that's kind of a staple of how he goes about writing his stories. And I'm getting that from Drawbridge, right? I'm. I got a cutscene with Tar man where I was like, I didn't. I didn't know that, like, your backstory was this cool. Same with Rainy. I just got a cut scene in like My Final Day with Tomorrow where I was like, dude, this is cool. Like, I'm. I am. I am in a. In the yes side of things. But it's still the weird death straining main story where I'm like, okay, this is very abstract. It's still very weird, but I'm really into what's happening.

[Dan Riker]

I'm right there with Bless, where it's like, I feel like the stuff in the first game that I liked was more just like, wow, this is real crazy. Oh, this guy dies every 21, 21 minutes. But like the overarching thing, like, even understanding the basics of what the beach was and what the extinction events anomaly and all, like, I didn't quite have any kind of grasp of what was going on with any of it the first time around. With this one. They do kind of like some main story beats early on. They plant the seeds for some mysteries that, like, I am very curious about. And that's on top of the individual character stories. Like. Like Bless said. And yeah, there is that Tomorrow cutscene that is just like, oh, oh, cool. Okay, I'm into this character. So it's. I mean, there's more to chew on here.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

They. They introduced a concept and I won't. I don't. I'm not gonna get super into like the definitions of what it is, but they introduced a thing called Ghost Mix, Dan, and like, do you know mechs? Ghost mech or. Yeah, I believe they're called ghost mechs. I think I wrote them down as ghost mechs. I'll talk to you off the, off the thing about them. But like, they introduced a concept where I'm like, oh, that's the coolest Kojima shit ever. And that was like hour 26 or something like that. Like, I want to see more of what the fuck this is. And so, yeah, I think there's, so, I think there's a lot more on the table as far as the story building and like getting to it. Oh yeah. And like, yeah, no, there's so much left now that I think about it because like, I got more questions about Higgs and what his deal is.

[Dan Riker]

Oh yeah, there's that Red Samurai. Don't know what's up with that.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah, no, Calm says, is there new traversal options, climbing, etc, or is it more walking?

[Dan Riker]

It's, it's walking. You know, we talked a little bit earlier about how like it is a little less pain in the ass to climb up mountains and stuff, but it gives you just enough friction still to where, you know when you build a zip line and now you can just go right over that mountain instead of climbing it. It does feel like a. Oh, sweet. Okay, that's gonna make it so much easier. But no, you're, you're walking, you're driving, you know, you're fast traveling in the Magellan. Yeah, yeah, it's that, that's similar, I would say.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yeah. Like, I'll echo what I mentioned way earlier, right. Of like the, it's, it's more forgiving a bit in like the steep hills and mountains and stuff. Like you still have those cliffs where it's okay, I need the drop down rope so I can climb down this thing, but if I'm pressing the Audra deck button to scan, I feel like there's less red as far as you cannot climb this thing. Like, it's a lot more yellow and so like I, I, I, I think it's more generous in that stuff.

[Dan Riker]

You can also get the floating carriers and use them like skateboards and kind of like just, you know, push off them with your foot. Like, it's basically a hoverboard. Yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

Mental Gear Gaming says how accessible is two for newcomers that didn't beat one. Can this be a starting point or would I be too lost in the complex context of the First. Bless you answered this a bit. But Dan, what do you think jumping into this one?

[Dan Riker]

I mean, jumping into this one. I played the first game. I can't really say I understood any of it. And so like a 20 minute video I found on YouTube just like here's a recap of all the main things. And I did feel like I got kind of an understanding. You just need to kind of know what the beach is, what Kyrillium is, what the idea is of these like porters that are delivering stuff and the Chiral Network, like basic broad concepts. I, I think if you know that, I think you're good. Like there aren't things like. I remember the last few hours of the first game having so much about like who Lou is and who Mads Mikkelsen's character was and all that. I remember being very, very confused. And I'll say that none of that has really played into like, that's not necessary understanding in the 30 hours I played of two.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yeah, I, I tend to agree with that. And like I, I would rec. I would highly recommend playing one before two just to get like all of the store, the like world set up and like the rules of the universe and stuff. But as far as the plot, as far as like following the characters, the narrative, you might be able to get away with watching a recap. But it, I. It's so funny how quaint. A lot of like the new concepts introduced are in this game because I experienced the first game and so like they say things and I'm like, yeah, that makes sense. I couldn't imagine then hopping into this game for the first time and having to hear them talk about certain things and like seeing Fragile eat a cryo bite and being like, why she just eat a beetle? Why is that happening?

[Dan Riker]

But I'm surprised sometime because like my wife, her first Metal Gear game was Metal Gear Solid four and she liked it and I was like, wow, if you can jump into MGS4, it's like.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

All right in that the, the glossary I think does a lot of heavy lifting as far as. Okay, what is this thing? All right, I'll just read a quick paragraph about it and then you just go, go, go along with it.

[Tim Gettys]

This is getting into the nitty gritty. So answer to the best of your ability here. Smit Patel says. What about the five star rating? Do we need to do them manually? How does timefall affect it? Does difficulty affect loot drops? Do roads in Monal connect? All places are ziplines nerfed by how much is. And how much is automated. So a lot there. But what. What's your response?

[Dan Riker]

Let's go one at a time here. Let's start with the first one. What was that?

[Tim Gettys]

What about the five star rating?

[Dan Riker]

That's there.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

That's there.

[Tim Gettys]

It's there. Okay.

[Dan Riker]

And as you like, you don't have to get the full five to get like the item that that person gives you. I think once you get to like three or something like that, they'll give you a gift. I'm not sure what the full five does.

[Tim Gettys]

How does time fall affect everything?

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I mean, the same way as they did in the first game.

[Dan Riker]

Yeah, yeah. And you can build shelters and things like that that'll like repair your cargo. That's very similar.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

Do you know if difficulty affects loot drops?

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I don't remember there being a difficulty.

[Dan Riker]

I don't either. Yeah, there was one, but I probably just said default.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

Do roads in monorail connect all places?

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

All.

[Dan Riker]

Not the whole map, but you could probably build between all the major spots. I bet you could build at least roads. Yeah, yeah.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I was. I didn't really get a sense of how much you can do with the monorail. I gotta imagine that you can do quite a lot with it because, like, one of the first things they teach you or one of the missions they put you on when they first introduce the monorail is to connect the a mine to one of the city structures. And like, basically what the monorail does is it's what it sounds like. Right. Like it's a train that you can take back and forth, but you can also load it with resources. And so if you go to a mine, you can create a bunch of metals and then transport the metals to the city and then like use that as a spot of. All right, cool. I want to make this at this location. Cool. I. I have to imagine that you'd be able to like, maybe connect that then to another like, city structure and then have it so where you can like take the monorail between all these things. But I don't have that confirmed. That just sounds like a cool gameplay thing that. I don't know why you wouldn't do it that way.

[Tim Gettys]

Our zip lines nerfed.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I didn't really use the zipline. They introduced it kind of late.

[Dan Riker]

I got it near the end and I did one thing over a mountain and it worked exactly like I remember in the first one.

[Tim Gettys]

CJ splits on says. Talk about the soundtrack. Does it hit?

[Dan Riker]

Oh, more so.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

So we can't talk about specific licensed Music. But I will say the. One of the main additions that I love is the music player, where if you're within the Chiral network, you can have like, a playlist that, like, is based off of songs that you unlock as you're playing the game. Like, they do the same thing where you'll walk to a certain point in the main story and then they'll have like, the artist and song name at the bottom and they'll start playing a license track. You're essentially collecting those as you go now. And yeah, you make a playlist and you can play those whenever. And so I had music constantly playing, especially because they didn't allow, like, phones or laptops or anything at the desks that we're playing at.

[Dan Riker]

In the relaxation area. You're fair game.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yes.

[Dan Riker]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

If we went over to the relaxation area, then you can look at your phone.

[Dan Riker]

But the greatest vending machine of all time, by the way, in the relaxation area, especially when I had food poisoning for most of my time there and I drank like 30 Picari sweats that were free and coffees and stuff. It's like a death stranding branded vending machine with like 50 buttons of every Japanese drink you would ever want on it. Oh, my God, let me tell you.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Pocari Sweat. I didn't know about that before. This trip. That goes hard. Yeah, I love Bakari Sweat. But, yeah, because, like, I. I couldn't have any electronics or whatever. Like, by day. By day four, I'm kind of like, man, it'd be nice to listen to music while I'm going on these walks. I'm like, oh, I can. And so I start listening to music and I'm like, yo, this soundtrack bangs again. Can't talk about songs, but. But I will say, even like the ost. Oh, there's.

[Dan Riker]

There's some good tracks I was noting down. Like, I gotta look these guys up on Spotify here. There's, you know, one that they did announce, like, in the trailer and stuff is Wood Kid does stuff for the soundtrack. And I was like, oh, let me tell you, a good fit for this.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I'm a Wood Kid boy now. Hey, Wood Kid. I. I didn't understand. I didn't know your game. I. I didn't know you were like that.

[Tim Gettys]

Like, I love that. I love that so much. We're gonna call Super Chats for. For the day because I want to get to. You and Dan spent a week together in Japan. You bonded, you formed a friendship.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I've never felt closer to Dan Reichard in My life.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah.

[Dan Riker]

Yeah. It was incredible. When I heard Bless was going to be there, I was so excited.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Oh, do you have you got the jacket on? Can you explain?

[Dan Riker]

I got the Rivera jacket.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Can you explain this jacket that you spent half the week trying to get?

[Dan Riker]

Yeah. So if anyone happens to watch wrestling, there might be some kind of funny fans that do. This is a very legendary steakhouse in Japan that dating back to like the 80s. It was like a rite of passage for like American wrestlers that just wanted to eat big ass American style steaks and get their protein and stuff. So they would all go to the Rivera Steakhouse and the owner was a wrestling fan, so would always take pictures with them. And they all gave out these jackets. If you look up Ribera jacket, you'll see old ass photos of Undertaker and Stan Hansen and Vader and stuff with their jackets. And it still goes on today. So it's like a badge of honor for wrestlers that like, it shows that. But you got popular enough in the west to get booked in Japan. And so you go, you make the pilgrimage to the rare steakhouse. You take the photo, you get the jacket.

[Tim Gettys]

Love it.

[Dan Riker]

So, yes, Marcus and I went. Marcus Stewart from Game Informer went one of those nights and we got a jacket and had a delicious steak at the Rivera Steakhouse.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I'm so sad I couldn't go because we tried to go like one of the nights before and I believe it was closed. Both locations were closed. And so, like the next day you and Marcus were like, all right, we're gonna go back. And I was like, I really want to do some shopping and in Shibuya. And so I opted to go shopping. And then like, I got the text from you guys in the WhatsApp of you guys wearing the jackets, and I was like, I totally should have gone.

[Tim Gettys]

With you guys, but you guys got to do a whole bunch of adventures together. There's a boat that you've been teasing that you couldn't talk about.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Oh, my gosh.

[Tim Gettys]

And you're in the original preview embargo. So here we are now.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yes. So I. I can't stress enough how bizarre of a preview event this was. It was the coolest preview event I've ever been to in my life. Right. It was one of the. One of my favorite trips I've probably been on in my life. Right. As far as speaking in Koji Productions for an entire week in Tokyo and then hang out with Dan and Marcus and everybody. And like, there are so many bizarre things about it. But one of the very Cool things they did to end the. End the trip. We did our group interview with Kojima, and one of the things Kojima talked about was the reason why he wanted to do this preview event this way. And a big part of it was just that preview. Preview events don't function like this anymore. And one of the themings of destroying, too, is the idea of, like, you know, should we have connected. Should we have. Have connected the chiral network and all this stuff. And Kojima went on to talk about the Internet and the metaverse and the pandemic and how during the pandemic, that shaped a lot of his ideas of, like, how the Internet has kind of taken away these, like, these natural occurrences of being able to meet with people in real life and have those, like, he called them in real life coincidences of meeting people and what that would lead to and, like, you know, just what that does for us as human beings. And so the way he explained it was like, I wanted to bring everybody together from different places and, like, have it be a thing of getting to hang out with each other and doing all these things. And so as a surprise, they were like, okay, we're gonna put you guys all on a boat, and we're gonna, like, have you guys sail around in this boat around the port of Tokyo. And, like, as we're leaving Kojima Productions that last day, to go directly to the boat. Like, they give us all. I forget the name of the gowns they. They. They gave us. Yeah, but, like, gave us all gallons.

[Dan Riker]

We got to keep them. Y.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

To keep. Yeah. And they were, like, destroying two branded. And we all go onto this boat. We all have to, like, take off our shoes to go in. And they have, like, tables set up on the floor where we're all having, like, crazy meals, like, hella sushi, hella steak, all this stuff. And, like, they had, like, basically, like, it was us as, like, the press, right? 30 press people. It was like some PlayStation people. So I got to sit next to a dope dude from Kojima Productions whose name unfortunately escapes me. But it was fun talking to him. He, like, formerly worked at Spotify, and then, like, got to just chat about him or chat with him about, like, music and stuff. He would ask me about Tyler, the creator. I was like, okay, cool. I can have you. I can have this conversation with you, even though there's a language barrier. But, yeah, we sailed around. We, like. I don't know, like, Dan, is there anything that. That sticks out to you as far as that boat trip?

[Dan Riker]

I mean, the Thing that I kept thinking of was it was the sequel to the notorious Vita boat, which some people might know that story. It was also a Sony thing and it was the exact same experience, but a bad version of it. Because the buses that were taking us there, this is back in like 2011 or so, before the Vita came out. Could be 2012. And the buses got lost. We got stuck in an alley for like, it felt like, I think an hour or two, we were stuck on the bus. Then we went on there and the whole thing was like, you're going to get to play the Vita on this boat. And they had three Vitas and no headphones. And if I remember right, the game you could play with sound shapes, which is all about the sound, so no one could actually play it. And those that did couldn't hear it. And we're all just stuck on this boat and the buses got lost. And so that was the thing. Like those who. That was like, we're all in the trenches together. Anyone who did that. So this one was like, if it went well, you know, like, we all got to hang out. There's some karaoke going on there. I distinctly remember looking down at the food and being like, I am still getting rocked by food poisoning.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I felt so bad for Dan.

[Dan Riker]

Yeah, it's a bless. And Andy Robinson from BGC helped me with some of the, like, will you eat some of this? So I'm not rude, you know, so I just ate the steak and rice. I kept it pretty simple there. My stomach was not having it, so.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

And it's like one of those things where I, I like listen to podcasts forever, like games, media podcasts. And like I hear people like Greg or you talk about like the, the, like the weird preview events that would happen back in the day or like the over the top things that would happen, happen back in the day. This is one of the few instances of me getting to experience it because, like, most preview events are not like this. Usually I'll, you know, I'll fly to LA and play a game for three hours and come back and talk about it. Right? This is one of those ones where as I'm meeting him, I'm like, how much money did you spend on this? Like, this is horrible, insane. Like, you did not have to do this. Like, we could have played five hours. Like, this is crazy kind of thing. But like, like, you know, separate from like the preview and all. And let's talk about the game on all this stuff, I will say in a vacuum, very cool experience getting to Take a boat on the port of Tokyo and take pictures in front of the Rainbow Bridge. So that was awesome. Me and Dan got to go to a wrestling show. I believe we talked about that already on the kind of funny podcast the dpw.

[Tim Gettys]

But now we can officially talk about your switch to pre order.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Oh my God, that was, that was such a dilemma because so the switch two pre orders happened in the middle of the day of us playing death.

[Dan Riker]

Training 2 and 1 o' clock Japan time.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

1 o' clock 1pm Japan time. And it happened to like coincide very closely to the production team interview with like Yoji Shinkawa and people high up on the Kojima Productions team. And so like there was this weird thing of the Americans and it was only three of us, right? It was like me, Dan and Marcus us being like, all right, how do we not be rude? And how do we get our pre orders going? Because like, I need to get a switch too. Because I just need to, right? This is the thing I need to do. And I'm looking and I'm like, all right, 1pm it also happened to coincide with lunchtime, which worked in our favor because yeah, 1pm happened. We for an hour are just in Kojima Productions, scarf down lunch, finish it, and then we're just on our phones for an hour straight on the different websites trying to pre order the Switch 2. And it was way more difficult than any of us had anticipated. And for that hour, I forget, I know I didn't get one in that hour. I don't know if you or Marcus got one, Dan.

[Dan Riker]

At the end of it, I did get one through Target.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Nice. Yeah. And so like I, as soon as the time hits for. All right, we gotta do this interview, this group interview, we go and like the whole time like we're, we're interviewing the like these very high up, very cool ass people from Kujin Productions. But at the same time in my mind I'm like, fuck man, I gotta get a switch too. I gotta get a switch too.

[Dan Riker]

I remember now because like, yeah, I didn't have one going into that interview. And as we were walking out, a friend of ours was just like, hey, just heads up, they're staying on Blue Sky. That Target might have opened them up again. And so we just got. That's when I got in real quick and snagged one. But it was like, yeah, two hours after they initially went on sale.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yeah. And yeah, thankfully after that, Roger, I hit up Roger. I was like, yo, I see you got two. Like, let me get one of those and so it all worked out itself, but it was like, oh, like just the weird thing of us being in Tokyo being like, oh, fuck. Switch to. Pre orders are at 1pm like, how do we navigate this? How do we figure this out? And also how do we not insult anybody that we're trying to pre order the switch to? Yeah, it lined up very nicely, thankfully.

[Tim Gettys]

Oh, man, I love it. Real quick, we got one super chat to end this saying. Or actually, I guess there's two I want to read. Golden Spider says, don't forget to freak it today. KF Crew. I don't know what's going on with.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

The freaking stuff, but it's been happening. Roger and Mike have just been freaking.

[Nick Scarpino]

It all weekend and we need, we.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Need to carry that energy, energy into the week.

[Tim Gettys]

Okay, well, speaking of them, Jeremy writes in saying, quick question. Will Mike's walkathon VODS be made available on YouTube? Love the content. Can't wait for DS2 and more game showdown. Yes, they will. I don't know what the plan is. They're very, very big files, so it's probably going to take a couple days. But yes, they will end up on YouTube at some point. So stay tuned for that. No, they got close. I think they're like five hours away.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yeah, they're. They're close. I think they wrapped up sometime this morning and Chat was telling them, like, hey, this is a good stopping point. Just because if they continued on, it would have gone way too early into, into this morning. So, yeah, they're, they're very.

[Dan Riker]

He was walking the whole time.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

There was walking, there was ordering Chili's, there was ordering Denny's, there was laying on the floor. There was a lot of stuff happening throughout the weekend.

[Dan Riker]

Yeah, that reminds me, you can help me solve a mystery. I remember two years ago or something at this point, Mike just decided that, like, oh, I'm going to go run a marathon right now, despite not training at all and everything. And like, that's not really something you can just do. And he tried to stream it and it cut out or something. How did that go? How many miles did he make it?

[Tim Gettys]

Dan, you're. You're tapping into one of the most controversial kind of Funny Lord moments of all time. Did he do it? Yes. Did he do it? Did he do a full marathon? Definitely not.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Did he do half a marathon?

[Tim Gettys]

Half a marathon? That's debatable. No, depending on how you do half.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Of a half of a marathon, most likely we're not so sure.

[Dan Riker]

Takes a lot of training.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah, but he freaked at everybody. That's all that really matters. Dan, thank you so much for joining us today. Again, congratulations on your acquisition of Giant Bomb. This is one of the rare acquisitions we're cheering for.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Oh, yeah, you know. Oh, yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

But where?

[Dan Riker]

They're bad. Yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

Where could people find you and the boys?

[Dan Riker]

Well, we're gonna be going to YouTube and Twitch primarily for our content. Also, we've got podcasts like the Voicemail Dump Truck, the Giant Bomb Cast. Those will be your podcast apps of choice. But yeah, I would say for just our daily stuff, follow us on YouTube, follow us on Twitch. You're going to see, you know, we're going to be streaming stuff every day. Jeff Grubb's doing the news show every morning, Bombcast on Tuesday, Blight Club on Wednesday, which if you haven't seen that or if you're just coming back to Giant Bomb after a while, Blight Club has been an absolute delight. It's me, Mike Minati and Jeff Grubb beating the worst games of all time.

[Tim Gettys]

It's.

[Dan Riker]

It's fantastic. But yeah. And if you want to support us, go to giantbomb.com join. We do want the large majority of our stuff to be free. I've done the thing where I've made series and stuff behind paywalls and I hate that I can't just share it with people that aren't supporting monetarily. So we are just hoping that if you like our stuff that folks can jump in there, you know, subscribe annually. Subscribe month to month. But that's giantbomb.com join and we are going to do right by the audience for sure.

[Tim Gettys]

Love to hear that and I believe it as well. Stay tuned to Kind of Funny and Giant Bomb for all of your Death Stranding 2 coverage. I am sure we're going to talk a whole bunch more about it because it comes out next month.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

And that's crazy. Stay tuned today. If you're watching live on Twitch, stay right where you are. If you're on YouTube, you're gonna need to make the jump over to a different video. But we're about to review the last of us latest episodes. Full spoilers, all that good stuff. Until next time, though. Love you all. Goodbye.