Your Client Is Dead, Sam! It's Over | Death Stranding

Hello gamers, how are you all doing? I hope everyone is doing great! Continuing my adventure in Death Stranding and well, as I mentioned in my last post, I had a very special delivery lined up for the Junk Dealer. The mission, Order No. 34, is essentially a rescue and reunion operation: pick up the Chiral Artist from her studio south of the Junk Dealer's shelter and transport her back to him so these two people who have been separated for years can finally see each other again. A beautiful mission concept on paper. In practice though? Disaster. Absolute disaster. Things did not go according to plan at all, and this was one of those gaming sessions that humbles you completely. Let me tell you exactly how badly it went.

I Get My Anti-BT Pistol for the First Time

Before heading out to pick up the Chiral Artist, the game finally hands me something I have been wanting for a while: a proper Anti-BT pistol. Up until now my main tools against BTs have been Hematic Grenades, throwing blood at them and hoping for the best, and the Bola Gun for tying them up and slipping past. Both useful, both limited. But this pistol changes the dynamic entirely because it gives you a direct, precise tool for engaging BTs on your own terms rather than throwing grenades in a general direction and scrambling. It fires Blood Bags converted into ammunition, which means your own supply of blood becomes your weapon, something that fits perfectly into the whole weird logic of this world.

Getting this weapon at this moment in the game feels like the game is preparing you specifically for what Order 34 demands, and there's a reason for that. Transporting the Chiral Artist on your back is nothing like carrying a regular cargo package. She's a living person, which means she counts as a human client, and if the BTs get to her during transport, she doesn't just get damaged, she dies. Mission failed, no recovery, start over. So the pistol arriving right before this mission felt like a generous heads up from Kojima that this next stretch is going to require everything you have. Spoiler: it did.

I Couldn't Escape the Timefall and Had to Face the BTs Head On

So I pick up the Chiral Artist at her studio, load her onto my back with whatever space I have left after clearing out my other cargo, and head north along the coastline toward the Junk Dealer's location. The route isn't impossibly long but it cuts through an area with BT activity, and the game makes this very clear. The plan was simple: move fast, stay low, use the Odradek to track the BT positions, and slip through the zone without triggering anything. Clean, efficient, professional.

Then the Timefall started. And not just a light drizzle either. The kind of sustained Timefall that soaks the ground, makes the BTs agitated, and reduces your visibility enough that you start second guessing every step. The whole BT zone lit up immediately. What was supposed to be a careful stealth passage through enemy territory became a frantic sprint with a woman on my back, the BB going absolutely wild in the pod, and BT hands shooting up from the ground everywhere I tried to run. I got grabbed. The tar pit opened up. And then suddenly I wasn't sneaking through BT territory anymore, I was standing in the middle of a full on BT encounter fight with my client literally on my shoulders, exposed, vulnerable, and counting on me not to get her killed.

Even With the Anti-BT Pistol My Client Died and I Lost the Mission

And this is where the new pistol came out. I had it ready, Blood Bags loaded, and I started firing at the BTs trying to push them back and create enough space to break out of the encounter zone and run for it. And look, the pistol works. It genuinely works well and I could see BTs reacting to the hits and being pushed back with each shot. For a moment I actually thought I was going to pull this off. I had the Chiral Artist on my back, BTs on all sides, pistol firing, BB screaming, and some chaotic forward momentum that felt like it might just be enough.

It wasn't enough. One of the BTs got through and reached the Chiral Artist before I could create enough distance, and that was it. Mission failed. Your client has died. Those words appearing on screen after everything that went into this attempt hit genuinely hard, not just as a gameplay frustration but emotionally too, because by this point you know who the Chiral Artist is to the Junk Dealer. You know what this reunion means to him. You know he's sitting in that shelter holding onto the one piece of hope he's had in years, waiting for this woman to walk through his door. And Sam let her die carrying her through BT territory. Not great.

So I'm going back in. This time properly prepared, which means more Blood Bags, more Hematic Grenades as backup, a solid understanding of exactly where the BT zone sits along the coastal route so I can plan around it rather than stumble into it, and probably a Floating Carrier to manage the cargo load more efficiently while she's on my back. The Bola Gun to tie up any stray BTs before they become a problem is also going back in the loadout because that combination of tying them down and then hitting them with the pistol seems like the most controlled way through. Death Stranding keeps teaching me lessons the hard way and this one was no exception. See you in the next post gamers, hopefully with better news about the Chiral Artist!