Some thoughts on the entirety of death stranding 2- The Crew of the Magellan
Dear god, I am not a religious woman. But please, give me the strength to make it through this post without absolutely losing my shit and devolving into swears and petty grievances. Amen.
I think I'm gonna talk about my problems with the individual characters, how they interact with Sam and then finally my problems with them as a whole. Again, I'll try not to just straight complain about the characters being annoying, even though I thought they were, and talk about things that could be called actual faults and not just personal choice.
long post under the cut
Starting off with the character i took the most umbrage with,
Fragile
First off let me say that in DS1 I was a fragile fan. Kojima ate with all of the female characters in this game, except in one aspect that I will talk about in another post. Ds1 fragile was interesting, complicated and conflicted between the fact that she's a good but hurt person. Between wanting revenge but not being a vengeful person. Between doing the right thing and living with the physical regret of that.
My biggest problem with her is she doesn't respect boundaries. Not with Sam and also not with rainy ( rainy doesn't want to be touched in her backstory cutscene but fragile grabs her anyway and doesn't let go. It's weird). It seems like she just can't leave people be. Like ever. The game literally starts because she refuses to leave Sam in peace to be a sahd. Sam set a very clear boundary at the end of ds1 by leaving both her and bridges behind. She had no right to land on his door unannounced, demand he go to Mexico and, unless I'm reading this wrong, level a thinly veiled threat that Bridges knows where Sam and lou are and will never stop hunting them without her help. Girl, what?
Then she ditches Sam for a month after his child is murdered on her watch. Listen, I know this wasn't her fault, I know she probably spent that month recovering. But not one message? How do I know this? Because you can read sams sss after the fact and see photos she took pre lou murder. There haven't been any other messages since that.
Them she shows up and demands more of Sam who is clearly running on empty? I know we need a narrative drive to get Sam on board for the story but this was just not it chief. By the time she showed up with the magellan I was finding it very difficult to like her because her choices just came across as incredibly abrasive.
I was in the same mindset as Sam, grieving and wanting to wallow over the loss of Lou who I am as attached to as Sam. But then fragile comes along and decides, whether we like it or not, that we have to move this plot along. We aren't even given any choice, fragile decided for us/sam that we’re getting out of this funk. No luring him out with the promise of an adventure or meeting new people, no “why don't you think it over” just get in loser we're reconnecting australia.
She acts more like a bossy mother figure to Sam, rather than a friend or someone who treats him as a partner or equal. A problem to be solved, a tool for a job.
Then there's her frankly bullshit reveal that she’d essentially been dead the whole time and conveniently ”””””forgot””””” about some super important story elements like what happened to lou, the fact that higgs was the one who shot her (which, come to think of it, is never actually addressed. Higgs just announces he was the shooter when fragile runs him over with the magellan, in the same breath he tells Sam he's the one who killed Lou. Very odd behavior from Sam and fragile in that scene tbh) . Naturally she waits until Sam is out of the picture to “come clean” about everything that happened. Diehardman is the one who tells us all of this after she's passed for good, absolving her of facing any consequences for her actions.
Don't even get me started on the romance. Or lack thereof. Maybe im just to aroace to have picked up on this but i was genuinely annoyed by the kiss. Literally forced in at the end of the game and then fragile fucking dies???? I was dumbstruck, I had no idea what happened or why. I got zero inclination in DS2 that fragile had feelings for Sam or vice versa. The only moment I could point to was MAYBE the ending of DS1, fragile wanting to have sam work for her , but it didn't feel romantic in the slightest. It was more like platonic head hunting for her company. This woman, who spent the entire game lying to Sam, is who you think makes an ideal partner for him? Deadman is literally right there.
Romance in general in this game is fucking weird. Lucy and Sam have the worst, borderline abusive relationship, Lucy and Neil ( who are married irl) have as much chemistry as a lump of coal in maple syrup. The closest thing we get to a ‘normal’ relationship is heartman and his wife. And even then one could argue about the dangers of obsession. For a game entirely about connection and relationships I am genuinely struggling to point to a single, healthy bond besides sam and lou/tomorrow. I suppose one could also argue about the nature of the bond between sam and higgs but that is a whole can of worms im not ready to open so back to the crew.
what id change if i could
Unlike the rest of the game I genuinely have no idea how to fix my issues with fragile. They're so pervasive throughout the entire bloody game the only thing I could think to do would be an almost total rewrite of her story. Maybe you could have her and Sam in a secret relationship before the start of the game so that her showing up at his door makes more sense. Her baby sitting lou is something she does on the regular and there's nothing out of the ordinary about it so that higgs showing up is even more of a shock. Maybe she could explain her thinking to Sam and to the audience so we know she means well and isn't entirely self-serving in her desire for Sam to get over it. Maybe they could add scenes without Sam, with her talking with the others further elaborating her decision to hide the truth from Sam and show how conflicted she is about it. Maybe her romance with Sam could be made more obvious through little casual moments sprinkled throughout the game. She could leave us a blood bag with a cute note, sneak extra cryptobiotes into our pack or shout “ be safe!” out the window of the magellan. Lastly her “oops i forgot” reveal needs to go right in the bin. theres no saving that, the game works fine without it .
Picture this if you will, as an ending alternative: fragile is dying and she knows it. She chooses to tell Sam now, with her dying breath, the truth, her reasons and her apologies. She’d planned on telling him everything when he linked up Australia but then everything with higgs and tomorrow happened and she's sorry for not telling him sooner. She and Sam have her last kiss and she goes to the beach knowing she did the right thing, told the truth at last and made Sam feel loved and cared for even though she won't be there anymore. Yes you can argue cliche all you like but cliches are popular for a reason, they work. The way they messed us about, outfight confusing at times with her story, was just a waste of a good character. The kindest thing I'm prepared to say about ds2 fragile is that she had so much potential but was dragged down by bad writing that made her seem uncanny and weird.
Dollman
I don't have as many problems with the rest of the crew as I do with fragile but dollman is probably top problem under fragile, if only because he's with us the entire game.
I was laboring under the delusion that dollman was a psychologist in life. He is not, he is a spirit medium which is frankly more of a kick in the teeth than him being even tangentially related to the field of psychology. Thinking he was a psychologist made me think his advice to just move on was coming from a place of knowledge. Knowing he's a spirit medium, could theoretically channel Lou but chose not to mention that or the fact he knew best of all that Sam's pod was empty was an absolutely terrible thing to do to Sam. He gives advice to Sam like a mentor, always encouraging but it rings completely hollow because he's not even over his OWN trauma so how can he reasonably expect to advise Sam on his?.
I liked that his backstory was similar to sams, the loss of a wife and child. Yes it was born of hubris and not tragedy outside his control but still similar enough for the two to relate to each other. What I DONT like so much is that dollman was very clearly going to be honest and truthful with sam but is then pressed into silence and the collective gaslighting effort by Fragile.
I don't want to paint her as a villain; she's not, she's doing what she thinks will help. It's just that what she's doing is so bloody obviously a bad idea and the wrong way to do things. I'm surprised no one else calls her out on it, especially Dollman, the closest thing Sam has to a companion in this adventure. Maybe this is a personal gripe, in which case feel free to disregard everything i say here but i really feel like it would have worked better to have Dollman as a real confidant , the one doing the right thing (ie telling sam the truth early on) even if it wasn't popular with the others. There's a scene where tomorrow leaves the crew because “they were fighting about her”. Baby girl, that was the most milk toast argument I have ever seen. It wasn't even really an argument, no voices were raised and there was no conflict because fragile decided to pull rank. I wanted to see some REAL tension between these characters, fighting over what they thought was best for sam AND MAYBE IF WE’RE VERY LUCKY coming to the realisation that stringing sam along, no matter how much you care for him, no matter how well intentioned, is ultimately wrong. What they need to do is tell him the truth, no matter how painful and then just be there for him. Share his grief, don't try to force him to get over it.
What id change if i could
I think the only way you could theoretically fix my personal problem with dollman would be to just let him speak. Stop fucking around with all this mystery and keeping shit from sam. Someone needs to be unambiguously on sams side, fighting for him even if hes not in the room or the conversation and i think dollman is perfect for that. He sees everything sam sees throughout ds2 and it doesnt make sense to me that even after all he sees, he’s happy to maintain the lie that fragile has set for sam.
Deadman
No notes, 11/10 easily my favorite character besides Higgs. Loves Sam, loves his friends, would do anything for them and is generally too good for this world….
Oh you want more? Fine
What id change if i could
My only complaint with deadman comes with his reveals. And also how the reveals are revealed, if you follow me. I was SO looking forward to seeing deadman in Mexico. The fact that he was just a hologram was a bit of a lurch but then the reveal that he was dead??! Fucking died off screen, alone and away from his friends??!?! Crushing, I shall simply never recover. Was happy he found his beach and realised he had DOOMS, good for you man. But this reveal was 1 too many things packaged into the one cutscene and absolutely not the order to reveal them. The fact he had died should have been the FIRST thing he told us, get the gut punch out of the way so the player and sam have some time to simmer in it and then the rest of the stuff about his beach, his dooms and THEN finally, his information about Lou. That's the most important takeaway from this cutscene so leaving it to last ensures it says forefront in the players mind.
That being said, they really did my man dirty with the off screen death. Kill him in a quake gate or make higgs do it, his looney ass gets around enough. It would have been so much more impactful for him to die with Sam at his side, ka passing on with a friend at his side. I know death isn't final in this game but STILL. Poor deadman.RIP, You deserved the world.
Diehardman
Im going to try, really fucking hard to ignore my bias against this man from the first game. I WANTED to like him i really did but I couldn't ignore that if he had just had some spine or was less indecisive, 90 % of the plot wouldn't have happened. If he was loyal to cliff, Sam would have been saved much earlier and never shot and repatriated averting the death stranding. On the flip side if he'd just been 100% loyal to amelie/bridget and shot when ordered, sam would have been used in the bb experiments and the death stranding wouldn't have happened. Alternatively, if he'd been loyal to sam it could have saved ME from being fucked around for the back half of the game. The long and the short of it is I have no faith or trust in him. I don't care how sorry he is, he can't be forgiven just because he beats himself up about it. He needs to do something to earn that forgiveness, to show that he’s learned from the mistakes he made.
Which i HOPED would be his actions in ds2 .But even then, he has to hide it behind subdrifuge and obfuscation. What on earth is this man's problem with just being honest from the outset? its like he thinks hes in a spy game and not an action adventure.
I really thought we were going to have SOME sort of twist where the diehardman voice for Charlie was a red herring. Maybe it was secretly lockne, using his voice, maybe charlie was secretly apas wrong footing us to do their bidding by using the voice of someone the player is (meant to at least) trust. But nope they played it TOTALLY straight.
It really reeks of having no respect for the audience's intelligence, thinking we would be fooled by that pitiful display of mystery and then shocked at the reveal. If it wasn't for the rest of the game also playing its non surprises totally straight id be tempted to say they're only doing it as a piss take, the joke being its so obvious its trying to reverse psychology you into second guessing yourself. But nope charlie can only be diehardman and diehardman he is.
I have other questions about this man that are never answered or addressed. Why didn't he just reveal himself from the start? Because of apas? Ok just hide from them, tell the player and sam so the reveal actually means something, if only to apas. How did he get to the beach with apas and Sam? He has no DOOMS, fragile couldn't send him. Why was he shirtless and covered in tar? WHO TAUGHT HIM SAMS LULLABY??? All of this I could have lived with if the reveal hadn't sucked so much ass.
What id change if i could
First of all I'd turn his ass into pinocchio . you lie to me ur nose grows, lets see how you feel about the truth now mother fucker. Second of all, I'd do a FAR better job of hiding his identity and stop acting like this obvious mystery was so bloody clever. I'd have kept the og charlie voice and had diehardman pretend to be an ai, slowly revealing himself over the course of the game and repeated interactions as you built your relationship with him. Id also have some fucking respect for the intelligence of the players and have an actual mystery. Ok fine you REALLY want diehardman in this game? make him use his real name as an alias on things. Not every player is going to remember his name is John McClane. Or use something else all together like bridges marked messages and files from Charlie so that we can only figure it out if we’re observant . Anything would be better than what we got. The only way someone wouldnt see charlies reveal as diehardman coming is if they're playing during a rave and can't hear the voice or they've been recently lobotomised and have no functional short term memory.
Heartman
Another precious soul of a man who deserves the world, if it weren't for heartman being a little condescending and treating Sam like a carrier mule in a few missions he’d probably be fighting deadman for top spot in my heart. I have no real problems with him, he's fine as he is but there are maybe 1 or 2 things that I think might work better instead of just ok.
Something i loved that i need to point out is the sweetness of him carrying deadmans heart around in the backup aed box. That is just??? So sweet??? The ultimate expression of love??? I'm dead but I want you to have my heart to keep living even though I know you want to die too, because that's how much you mean to me???? Actually screaming, crying, throwing up over this. . if deadman is frankenstein then heartman is mary shelly, carrying her lover's heart around in a purse for the rest of her life.
Oh I also liked him continuously giving you likes and thumbs up. One for the praise kink guys out there. Him docking higgs 1000 likes for being an arse was one of the funniest moments in the game, if he did that to me id die of shame.
What id change if i could
Honestly im perfectly fine with heartmans obsession with the beach. Ive seen people say they wish he'd stop because it's killing him and it's unhealthy to not be able to let go. But that's kinda the point? He's a deeply troubled man who still has a wealth of knowledge and experience to give to the world and so much kindness and love in his heart for the people around him despite his pain. I think they should have played a little more into this aspect of him over the, well lets call it what it is, grotesquery of his malformed heart.
He and Sam have again, very similar backgrounds with the loss of a wife and child. You could even argue he's the closest thing Sam has to a fellow repatriate given how many times he's “died”. I think the two of them could be an even better support system for each other. I know heartman is quite firmly in the camp of the explainer character but you could have evened the spread a little. Everyone in this game including npcs are specialists in something or another, one of them could have had the occasional story relevant exposition dump and left some space for heartman to be heartfelt if you'll pardon the word play.
Rainy
I have even less to critique on rainy. Kojima ATE with rainy. She's cute, she's useful, she's a great mom and a great navigator. My only issue is her flashback story. I dont even know if it's worth changing it, maybe just dont show us her background at all, just have her explain it to us in a quick dialogue tree ? My issue with it was the use of the word “witch” to describe her powers and the fact that bridges abandoned her and her baby when we already KNOW the lengths Bridges will go to to get their hands on a child they deem useful. Make it make sense???
Her backstory was a little nonsensical, i hate stillbaby syndrome and i wish she interacted with sam more as parents. That's literally all I have to bitch and moan about here. I think she could have carried a game by herself that's how much i love her.
Tarman
I'm really undecided on my feelings about tarman. I feel like I should like him a lot more than I do. He's a geophysicist AND a medical doctor AND the ships captain AND he has a cool tar hand. Like what's not to love?? He also has my favorite scene with Sam; the one with moby dick and his son. I loved everything about that cutscene and it honestly might have been my favorite in the whole game bar, some with higgs. It was peak storytelling and planting little seeds for later, that pay off oddly enough, with Higgs.
I cant think of anything about tarman id actually change that doesn't also have to do with the magellan itself and not his character? Maybe more interactions with Sam and the others? He is also a parent who has lost a child, the crew of the magellan is practically a ‘my kid died’ support group + their token adopted child Tomorrow.
Speaking of.
Tomorrow.
Again. Really not sure of my feelings for her. She's cute, she's a badass and she's the best girl. I think it was a massive fault on the writers part to not have her go back to her baby form after the lou=fragile reveal. She just isn't well characterised beyond “weird lost kid” and then “sams kid” so it would be nice to see her grow up and develop naturally, have her life shaped by her experiences and not one traumatic event. And THEN in the 3rd game we can learn about those things retroactively . I think my major problem with her is the fact she's so very underutilised in the story. She is essentially the princess of this game we have to rescue, and despite very clearly being able to hold her own she's reduced to a thing in a pod for higgs to use. How'd she feel about that? Not well I'd imagine. Might make one put their boot up higgs’ ass, which is what id really have liked to have seen. The reveal that she was an EE was also absolute bollocks the game pulled right out of its ass so higgs could do his final stranding thing.
What id change if i could
Well I mentioned above that I would have liked the crew to have been companion characters and not just trapped on the magellan or off on their own missions without Sam when he could have used backup. I think tomorrow would have benefited most from this change. Failing that, I'd have liked to have seen her give the viewer some hints towards her being lou. Maybe she's having nightmares about the events of the first game? Most of the people I've talked to clocked that she was lou right as she opened her eyes in the chrysalis so it's not MUCH of a reveal but it would still add to the intrigue for her to drop some hints. part of this games problem is its so obsessed with out of left field reveals that it makes the player feel stupid for not seeing it coming. none of the reveals feel earned by leaving breadcrumbs for the player to pick up on and something like this would really help.
Secondly if having her as a permanent companion was too much, a few set field missions with her would have been a nice change of pace. She seems to already know how to pitch ladders and climbing anchors. Why couldn't we have taught her? Would have been a nice little bonding moment for her and Sam.
As for the ee thing? That I really have no idea about. Might have made more sense if apas formed into a singular EE and tomorrow and sam were the ones who had to defeat it. I'm really not sure, it was a baffling story choice that I really could not get behind. I'll talk about it more in my issues with the story pacing but going from the reveal of lou=tomorrow, higgs kidnapping her, jumping to the beach, fighting higgs and her ee reveal in under 2 chapters was… a choice. Not a good one, to be clear, but still. A choice ™
The crew as a whole
This I think is probably my biggest problem besides fragile. I won't dwell too long because you can probably apply my other fixes to this issue and it would totally negate it. In short, i dont buy the Magellan crew as an actual crew. They all have so much in common but they just don't gel together. They feel like paper dolls acting parts at each other. I don't get the sense any of these people could be trusted with a grocery trip together. I don't see them having movie night or watching sports together . They function well as a unit in the cockpit but they're meant to be friends not just coworkers. You don't have to like people to work with them but given the stories emphasis on connection and relationships i DO expect them to like each other.
Instead I get the vibe that they just tolerate one another the way room mates do. If something happened to one of them the land lord (fragile) would just replace them with another person that they just work with. Their connection is Australia wide but an inch deep and their superficiality in face of their insistence on togetherness just rubbed me the wrong way.
HOWEVER
If you take SAM out of the equation I WOULD buy them more as friends. Not entirely, just a bit more towards believing them. I watched all the cutscenes except the last 15 mins with lucy and neil because i fucking hate lucy and in all that time i really got the sense that these guys were having conversations and meetings and fun even, behind sam's back. Like they had their feet up by the fire while their pet porter Sam slogged around in the snow outside. Maybe it was sam's awkwardness, maybe i was doing something wrong. Make of this information what you will
What id change if i could
Yall need to respect sams boundaries for a start. For a game about connection not one person seems to respect the connection on sam’s end. No one ever checks in on him, never initiates anything unless it's more work for him to do. And even when he does it , he usually gets more work piled on with a half assed apology as a reward. His vent sesh with higgs at the end of the game is proof enough they don't respect him enough to value his time and feelings on what they're putting him through.
Secondly I'd like more organic moments of relationship building. By the end of the game I got the feeling everyone was friends simply because the story decided they were. I didn't see much relationship building outside of a few cutscenes, some good cutscenes mind but still just cutscenes, non intractable and over far too quick. None of these colourful characters ever came with me on short missions the way mama did in the first game, none of them ever chimed in over the headset just to say hey. It really left me feeling like everyone else in the crew were best buds and Sam was just along for the ride, especially since he was the last addition to the crew. Letting me explore the ship would have been a big help but if you REALLY wanted to cement their friendship and actual usefulness in my mind, they should have been companion npcs on missions. I know that's a lot of work for the devs. But if we had time for 3 fast travel modes and a petting zoo, I feel like we could trim some fat to make it fit. Sam chooses his gear and loadout for each mission, it's the closest thing we get to puzzle and strategy, it would have been great to also decide which npc would be most useful as company on the journey.
Maybe we can't take the pregnant woman on a trip, maybe heartman is too unwell. But they could have been chiralgrams in our pocket: rainy could summon healing rain, heartman could help us see bts at a further range, fragile could let us jump like her and higgs, tarman could do us a little supply drop and tomorrow could be a temporary help in combat, jumping out of tar to kick ass and then jumping back in to return to the magellan. This makes even more sense when you consider the more combat orientated gameplay of ds2 vs ds1 .
Lastly, I'm sorry kojima fans, but their dialogue is in DIRE need of an editor. This is a whole game problem, not just with the crew but it is especially noticeable with them because you spend so much time with them. They explained still baby syndrome to me no less than 4 times, made fragile tell me to go to bed more often than my own mother and lost me in conversation countless times. I really don't know how this happened because the characters are mocapped. The actors acted all of this out, surely to god it had to be better off for that. Unless it was worse and this is the best possible version. In which case god help us all.
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Wow, life sure is beautiful isn't it? Recently a lot has happened in the life of this diehardfan and I sincerely apologize for the lack of posting. I never forget about all of you though, just as Diehardman never forgets about the United States. Mondays can be rough, but just so you know the Diehardman style never sleeps in. I'll be dieharding til i diehardman. Hope all your holidays are wonderful and please bring much love into the world. Remember that you all are loved by someone out there. I sure need that reminder sometimes and im sure Diehardman does as well. Don't forget about your advent calendars if you have one of those too. Got one with chocolate recently and oh man is it good. Thanks diehardmom.
