I have been entrapped by sidequest hell, which I should have known was going to happen. I'm not feeling much in the way of burnout, so that's a good sign. Granted, I'm doing a better job of not playing until I finish every regions quest, so that may be helping.

I have discovered a quirky NPC known as the Luden's Fan who is minor fourth wall breaking character in that he's obsessed with a game franchises that is thinly veiled to be Death Stranding itself if his name didn't already give it away. He's kind of amusing if only because he's an atypical otaku in terms of interest so almost all of his packages involve toys, figurines, and other memorabilia. Now if he didn't smurfing live on a mountain whose easy path involves taking a stroll through a MULE camp and the rougher path is a nightmare to go through on a vehicle and it subject to being hit with Timefall/BT invasions...

With that said, the game has finally given me a weapon to deal with BTs and I almost feel like the game has used this moment to crank up their appearances. Yet even with a means to defeat them, fighting them is just not a good idea since you have to be close to even see them, they tend to phase out of reality and said weapon is a grenade style weapon, and they always appear during Timefall so spending any extra time to fight them is just adding more damage to your cargo. It's in the engagements with the BTs that this game feels the most like Metal Gear since stealth is important and in the case you screw up and have to face Cthulhu Whale, the easiest way to get out of that mess is actually to try to run away from its zone of influence, so in a way, it's similar to getting spotted in a enemy base in the Phantom Pain where sometimes retreating out of the base was the better option.

Of course this all accumulated into an actual boss fight eventually which was actually pretty fun since the battle involves a bit more platforming than you would think. It wasn't a terribly difficult fight outside of having to fight with the menu screen to get the right equipment, but it has raised my hopes that DS will have good boss fights like the older MGS games. I also met who I imagine is the game's big bad. I know a lot of people think its Mads, and while I can see him as a sympathetic antagonist, Higgs (Troy Baker's character) pretty much reeks of main villain. I'm not saying Mads may not come in and steal the show from him eventually, but so far Mads is being built up as one of the most sympathetic characters in the story. I'm actually going to be sad when I finally exhaust all of the flashbacks about him cause he's been adorable so far.

Also, the Private Quarters sections never cease to amuse me, and I appreciate that. I had an interesting conversation about this with a friend concerning how this game still has a lot of sexual fan service, but for once, it's the guys who are getting the treatment. Some of the shower sequences with Norman's character are probably going to make some people who are not comfortable with their sexuality feel very uneasy. I'm having a blast. I also learned that if you view Norman's crotch region he reacts in a few amusing ways reminiscent to the Easter eggs involving Quiet and Meryl in MGS.

Anyway, I'm suppose to jump into the next section of the plot, but unlocking the new city also unlocked a few new quests and I want to max out my rank with this area before moving on because I get the feeling that getting back here is going to be pain in the ass. Hell, just getting to this place was a pain in the ass. Still, the game has me pretty hooked.