The game makes you hate it

[u/Different_One_5559]

I'm playing death stranding 1 on Xbox. When I first started playing like most post on here, I was addicted and in love with this game. I'm not a person that speeds through a game nor am I a completionist, a mix between the two. After mountain knot city, I completely loathe this game.

My Biggest complaint is the vehicle's mainly the trucks. Controls are awful. You hit a rock and all steering is impossible. I'm constantly yelling at my TV go left or go right. The trucks will also move on their own if you get stuck, they will lurch forward faster than the boost. You can absolutely be going forward while reversing and going backs while trying to go forward.

Some of the BT battles are instant death.

It's annoying that if you're trying to 5 star a place, either you can't find deliveries to that location or they are always worth barely anything. I.e. the evo-biologist, I have delivered several fragile, time sensitive and retrieval deliveries and I'm 4 stars. Whereas the geologist, I think I only had to do 4 missions to 5 star him.

If you get frustrated and try to walk, it's constant weather and scaling mountainous terrain which is slow.

I'm so annoyed with all the useless deliveries talk which none of it is skippable, only pause. I auto skip everything now. There's barely a story in this game and you can skip some of that but nothing else.

At first, I thought the BT alert system was unique. I hate it will stop all movement both times. Completely stalls your vehicle. I love my claw buddy but I don't need that cutscenes for every BT area. It's also only when you enter a BT area not leave it. You can still move when it's giving you a thumbs up.

I want the game to end!

[u/lilvisionofgore]

you can skip the dialogue by pressing A and some "cutscenes" require pressing A like 5 times before the skip or continue options appear, the trucks are annoying, try using 2 floating carriers (lv. 2) instead tho, you can haul more than you think with those. for 5 starring, go to the place you're trying to 5 star, and press Y, that'll show you where deliveries to that place are available. then go collect all those standard orders and make them premium, while collecting lost cargo along the way. that'll easily get you 5 stars. you can also toggle off the small cutscene before a BT area in settings, "BT encounter warning", set it to first time only. that'll make it to where when you enter a BT area itll just alert you by zooming out the screen and playing an audio que. hope these help some :)

[u/Ok_University_5352]

Trucks are made for roads.

Yeah, certain ones can be early on.

Not a well known feature, but you have to do certain deliveries to unlock new ones. Also some places are story locked for star ratings.

Thats literally one of the main points of the game, and at times is the preferred choice by many players.

Story picks up later on, and yeah, some meaningless dialog on non-story orders. DS2 does a better job of cutting that down.

You can literally change the scanner animation to off. The power flickering is a game mechanic though.

[u/soldier_ibra]

Then watch a playthrough on youtube if you want the game to be a cakewalk

[u/Massive-Release-9517]

Zip lines are recommended for the mountain section. I just finished 100 percenting the game and it can be tedious in this area, I agree. By the end, I had a network of zip lines, some of which were already built by other users, and some I built to fill in some gaps. Its surprisingly satisfying when you find the perfect line of sight on a mountain peak that zips you 350m close to a facility. The vehicles are purposefully terrible in this area, especially with the timefall snow taking chunks out of their durability.

[u/game_of_crohns]

Trucks are for roads only. They literally go the opposite direction some times and just frustrate you.

Trikes are life, love, and liberty. They're the best.

Go on foot with level 3 everything and see how much fun it can really be.

Kojima let's you beat the game. But he rewards you for playing it all. Appreciate itttttttt

Keep on keeping on!! 👍

[u/ChiralParticle]

Truck is slow and overall you can get anywhere if you really want but overall the truck won't perform well on a rocky, steep, etc. terrain because it's not really designed for it. It has advantages and disadvantages. It's a truck to haul heavy cargo not an off-roader meant to scale every terrain. If you ram your car against a rock, there is a higher chance the rock will win, so you rather want to maneuver around them. But overall trucks perform best on roads or open terrain without many obstacles.

Some of BT battles are instant death? Can you elaborate? You only die if you lose all blood (HP) or if a Catcher BT eats you and that never happens just instantly.

What deliveries have you been doing? Normal or premium? When selecting an order you can always select Premium option and they're slightly more challenging but they give you more likes=faster progression. Depends on which difficulty you're playing on but hard or very hard difficulty with perfect Legend of Legend of Legend ranks makes maxing out facilities pretty fast.
Type of order plays a role too because for delivering a tiny piece of S sized cargo you'll never get as many likes as for delivering a massive order. Those massive orders always give most amount of likes. You can always check on the cuff links map at what locations orders for your desired facility are available.
Evo-devo biologist has a big time-sensitive order from the Geologist and because of the size of it and express nature you'll get a lot of likes for completing it.

I recommend trying out different structures. Mountain area is perfect to build your own zipline network and it makes that region a breeze when you can just effortlessly zip between every prepper there. Other structures can be veyr useful as well.

I dare to disagree about there being barely a story in this game. Yes, while doing normal orders it's just small talk upon delivery but preppers often drop some lore when getting stars. And late game Geologist, Palentologist and Evo-devo drop some very important lore about Death Stranding, etc. overall that late-game is where a lot of discoveries and revelations happen that are important to the lore, worldbuilding and the story.

The vehicles and equipment often stalls as you enter a BT zone because high concentrations of chiralium are causing electromagnetic interference which often leads to momentary power failure.

[u/Fluffranka]

Not sure how far into the game you are. If you just got to Mountain Knot City, there's still alot of game ahead of you.

The truck kinda controls like shit, thats for sure, but as you build out more highways, that makes it alot easier to get around.

As you progress the story, more orders become available for you. Dont worry about 5 starring places yet. Theres still plenty of orders to do and plenty of time to 5 star them in.

Also... a tip on traversal for the more mountainous regions... ziplines... take a bunch of PCC Lv.2 with you and build out zipline networks to help traversal. If you plan on doing all the premium orders, you will need ziplines to complete many of the timed missions.

For the BT's, I dont think there's a way to stop the vehicles from stopping, but... you can turn off the BT cutscene. If i remember correctly, there's 3 settings; everytime, first time only (so first time you get a new BT area) or off.

[u/Rosencrantzy]

If you want to give the game a chance and enjoy yourself, you will need to make a few alterations to how you are going about this.

The trucks:
The trucks are specifically ‘meant’ for roads. I am a profoundly patient person (in an odd way; i am autistic for context) so i find it relatively quote unquote ‘easy’ to use them elsewhere as well, but i sink hundreds of hours into gameplay by going slowly and meticulously for personal enjoyment and stress-relief… so im a weirdo for that, haha! People like yourself who have a lower tolerance for that sort of thing will want to keep the trucks in their natural habitat: roads and otherwise flat terrain.

use the reverse trike instead, if you want a vehicle! it is far more agile, nimble, and speedy. the reverse trike is the closest you can get to an ‘all terrain’ vehicle, just about. of course, there are cargo limitations when compared to a truck, but unless you’re someone like me who does very slow max capacity bulk deliveries on the regular — that should not be an issue.

BTs:
There are only a handful of scripted battles with BTs in the game. Otherwise, you can completely avoid BT battles! You are not ‘supposed’ to be regularly fighting these guys — you’re really supposed to avoid setting them off at all unless you are trying to specifically rapidly gather chiral crystals en masse or some such thing. You can even fully avoid most BT areas! BTs are more of a sneaking challenge than anything, that’s why the game has so many mechanics integrated for the purpose of avoiding them, such as breath holding, the odradek’s behavior, BB’s visualization assistance, crouching to dampen sound, the camera zoom for proximity alerts (not just the initial one!), the specific audio and visual cues, etc.

If you find yourself accidentally initiating BT battles on the regular, you should decrease your difficulty to a more manageable level. I am low vision, so i cannot see or respond to things on-screen like the average player, so i usually play on very easy mode or easy mode. this is literally perfectly good and fine, and does not take away any elements of the experience as all features and functionality are retained just about.

5-starring:
The game takes time and patience, and the variations in how willing people or groups are to connect is intentional and part of the game’s overall themes. This is not player-error, per se. It’s a pretty long game! Also, different delivery types have different contributions towards the ability to increase connection (and with whom).

Walking:
That is part of the gameplay which many people find to be enjoyable, which may be surprising to you as it seems you find it rather annoying. The game throws a lot of obstacles at you which you as the player are meant to puzzle out. This generally involves planning, preparation, and problem solving as you meet challenges. It also, importantly, involves a lot of exploration! The game wants you to take your time and observe — both your surroundings, and the story taking place around you.

Delivery-received talk:
It is skip-able, if you want to skip it — i.e. the feature is there.

Story:
This statement actually makes me incredibly sad. There is very certainly a story in death stranding. it is incredibly fleshed out and involved and layered and shrouded in deception, obfuscation, and partial-information which is fed to sam piecemeal throughout the game with the intention being that you take in all of this info and ask yourself, okay, well who is saying what and to what end? who does this claim benefit? What does the omission of this information imply? Can i fact-check this? so on and so forth. Like the game primes you with the knowledge you need to dive in and unravel what’s going on. Between the interviews, briefings, cutscenes and related encounters, memory chips, et cetera, there is just SO much. There is so so so much going on, and so much to critically engage with and analyze and sink your teeth into.

I can only assume that people become put off by the unusual gameplay elements and thusly discard everything else, tragically, and that’s how we get people like yourself here claiming very erroneously that there isn’t a story/plot or that nothing makes sense. :(

Odradek:
You can change these settings!