The Strands that Bind Us.

Thinking back on Death Stranding 1, and reading what I wrote in 2019, I remember a game with some pretty interesting ideas, and the pieces of a compelling story...just put together wrong, and overshadowed by a lot of the bad sort of nonsense. I don't particularly recommend re-reading my spoiler blog from then, because as I literally say up front, it's more a stream of consciousness as I tried to wrap my head around what happened than anything else.

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, conversely, has a compelling story! It has themes I understand, and others I probably don't, but I won't write about them. At one point it almost even got some tears out of me! It's not necessarily the best story that Kojima has ever worked on, but I think it's the one that got the strongest emotional reaction from me.

So, suffice it to say, I'm going to be discussing specific parts of DS2's story in detail, particularly its biggest emotional moments, and the ending.

This is your SPOILER WARNING, turn back now! Go read my non-spoiler blog if you haven't!

But, to properly set the stage here, I need to go all the way back to the first game. One of the most unique, and also unsettling things about Death Stranding is the concept of the Bridge Baby, or BB. A child whose mother died before they were born, thus leaving them with one foot in the world of the living, and one with the dead. A connection to both sides that allows them to sense when the dead are in our world (as Beached Things, or BTs), and to allow for the existence of the Chiral Network.

The internet routed through Hell, as a friend of mine likes to so eloquently put it, is also literally using undead babies as its servers. Well, maybe not “literally,” but they were used in the creation of the Chiral Network.

More relevant to the point I am slowly making, is that to make it across America without dying to BTs repeatedly (because Sam always returns from death, unless he's On the Beach), he's given a BB. Naked baby in a jar strapped to his chest, I found the whole thing really unsettling when I first started the game. I'm pretty sure it's intentional, but it was a deep sort of uncomfort that I remember all too well. And the BB isn't just there for show, they will bawl their eyes out if you fall, take too much damage, etc. Conversely, they'll giggle and laugh if you give them attention. Even if it's just as simple as playing the harmonica while sitting for a quick rest.

As the two journey across America, eventually Sam starts calling the BB “Lou,” and once he's named them, it's pretty clear that he at least has formed an attachment. I don't remember when in the game this happens, nor do I remember at what point Lou stopped being quite so creepy to me, but it happened eventually. At the Moosies that year, I did give the game the award for, “Best baby that ended not being as creepy as I initially thought, but was still kind of creepy.”

Many things happen, few that made any real sense, but eventually Sam's trek across America and back again ends, and it's time to finally decommission Lou. Which to the government means incineration, but to Sam (with a wink wink bit of help from Deadman), it means removing Lou from the pod, and taking her away somewhere she can be safe. Also it's revealed that Lou was short for Louise, thus implying she's a girl. I guess my bad for assuming Kojima used Lou as a boy's name?

Now, six years later in the real world, but only about a year later in universe, DS2 begins. Sam and Lou moved south, right near what used to be the border with Mexico, and have been living in peace. Lou has grown a ton in that year, and looks like a perfectly normal, happy, and healthy baby. It's easy to see how well the game captures the likenesses of the actors portraying their characters, but I think not enough people have acknowledged how impressive the rendering of this baby is.

They not only managed to make a child that looks realistic instead of weird, creepy, or like a shrunk down adult, but I would even go so far as to call her cute! And the number of poses for her in the photo mode when she spends a miniscule portion of the game with Sam is impressive. It's very odd to me that you can still make her appear for photos when she isn't with Sam, but that's more of a game design oddity than anything else (I guess they wanted that time spent making those poses to be worth it).

Fragile shows up on a random day, with one last job for Sam. Make some more deliveries, help connect Mexico to the Network, and the slate will be wiped clean. She claims that Sam and Lou won't have to be on the run from the UCA anymore, fearing what might happen if they found out Lou used to be a BB. So, despite some misgivings about the UCA expanding its territory (which Fragile claims isn't the case), Sam agrees. He heads out, giving Lou one last kiss on the forehead, before leaving her in Fragile's care... Even though she doesn't seem know how to take care of a baby, and just uses an app.

While needing a BB to see BTs in the first game, Sam doesn't seem to anymore, as his “DOOMS has leveled up.” Meaning he can see the BTs, and his Odradek flaps at them just fine. When he says that, it really does just feel like a video game hand wave moment. There's no story reason to give Sam a new BB, and with Lou now a normal baby, it wouldn't be smart to carry her out on this dangerous journey.

This...gave me a really weird feeling. On the one hand, it's undeniably easier to not have to deal with a baby anymore. No more needing to gently shake the controller to calm her down after a bad fall, or a rough fight. Plus like I said, I found the BB situation creepy, and while I grew to be less creeped out over the course of the first game, it was still a little creepy. On the other hand, now that she's just a normal, cute baby, I wouldn't have been creeped out carrying Lou with me. There's a part of me that thinks needing to carry, and care for a normal baby during a trek across a continent could be compelling! I'm sure it'd be annoying to have to keep doing a diaper changing minigame or something, but what's the point if there's no friction in the game?

But this, along with a handful of other changes, felt like DS2 was sanding off the weirder, lumpier edges from the first game, getting rid of that friction in other words. Like, not having the “bodily waste” grenades anymore is fine by me, those were not great and conceptually gross in DS1. Yet making the blood grenades all synthetic blood, Sam wearing pants instead of being nude while in some of the more supernatural realms, other smaller things along the way, but mainly the BB thing felt like the game had lost some of what made Death Stranding the bizarre thing it was. It felt like while PlayStation was more than happy to give Kojima Productions a larger budget after the success of the first game, they had some “requests” to make it more “mainstream.”

As the story continues, it took an even stranger turn. After making the final connection in Mexico, Higgs and his goons strike Sam where it hurts the most, so Sam races back home... To find that Fragile was unable to protect Lou, and she...

In the immediate aftermath, Sam sees a ghostly shape take form in Lou's old pod, so he picks her up, cradling her close... Even as he knows it can't really be her, he even says as much.

Says that she died.

The game jumps forward a month, and Sam is not dealing with the loss of his adopted daughter. I'm not even going to say “not dealing with it well,” he's committed suicide multiple times. Since he can't die, he keeps coming back, and can't escape the pain. And because he lives all alone, with no connections, no one to help him through this, he has self destructed as a much as a person can, at least when the universe itself is physically stopping him from falling apart any further.

This is the state that Fragile finds him in, drowning in alcohol and his all his bullets spent. She has to practically force him out of it, and back to reality. But as she's here, talking, trying to explain that she has another one last job for him, Sam isn't paying attention. He's too fixated on Lou's pod, where he sees octopus arms transform into that ghostly version of Lou again. Fragile has to take the pod from him to get him to follow her outside, and properly listen to her plan.

Once he's sobered up, Sam actually listens to her. Use the newly stabilized Plate Gate to travel to Australia, and keep connecting. Once Australia is fully connected, a new Plate Gate should form, and then they can connect with wherever that leads, and so on. Spread enough Strands across the world, and soon enough everyone will be connected again, like before the Death Stranding ever happened. Sam of course still has misgivings about the UCA's plans, misgivings that to me feel even worse when he learns about the current state of the UCA. Die-Hardman is no longer president, and instead the government is run by APAS, an AI system managed by APAC, a private corporation. A concept that certainly reminded me of a certain other series Kojima used to work on.

Regardless, Sam agrees, because to paraphrase his own words, it seems like the only thing he's good at. But this time he's not going off alone. Dollman accompanies him, alongside... Lou? No one else seems to be able to see her, but to Sam at least, Lou is back, now looking like her old BB self. So, they head off, Dollman not so subtly saying that Sam needs to grieve but keep moving, and so he keeps on keeping on.

For me, I had mixed feelings at the time. The game is deliberately unclear about what exactly is going on here. Is it all in Sam's head? Or is there something supernatural going on? It is absolutely within the boundaries of this universe to have something like this happen. Dollman is literally a character whose soul became trapped in a formerly inanimate object, so why couldn't Lou's be similarly tied to this pod? Then there's the stuff about the other BB-28 (Lou's serial number), and the question of if there's a connection between the two. Is this perhaps that BB-28's soul? Is it Lou? What's up with the octopus arms when Lou's mood bottoms out?

All that is fine, ambiguity isn't what gave me mixed feelings. It's good to have questions, things to keep me thinking, and engaged in what's going on. I know I said the game felt like it was sanding off rough edges without the BB, but just reverting Lou back felt...like a step backwards. Like refusing to let go, like...being in denial, you could say.

Not that I put two and two together in the moment, this is me thinking about it after spending two months with the game, and more time after to properly mull it all over. Rewatching cutscenes to make sure I have the relevant details right (especially after I made some factual errors in my Expedition 33 spoiler blog). As much as I love this game, its structure and length aren't exactly conducive to remembering every little detail across its story. At least when you play like I do, getting lost both metaphorically and literally while making all those deliveries, making all those connections across Australia. Just shy of 250 hours across two months is...a long time!

So, with a new goal in sight, Sam sets out on one last journey with Lou snuggling close to his chest, and Dollman providing whatever support he can. I'm not going into every last detail, or every character Sam meets along the way, because I'm trying not to make this a synopsis of the entire plot. So while I think, for example, Rainy is a charming character, I don't have anything to say about her, so sorry about that, Rainy.

At some point, after being sucked into a spooky realm to fight Neil, or as I like to call him, “Italian Solid Snake” (who ends up being relevant to all of this), Sam finds a mysterious young woman trapped in something akin to a sarcophagus, or maybe a chrysalis. Or, at least she's in that after returning from the spooky realm. Anyway, she ends up joining the crew on the Magellan, and they decide to give her the name “Tomorrow,” since she doesn't seem to have one. Nor does she really know much of anything at all, and acts almost like a baby, even sucking her thumb at one point.

But she's a quick learner, picking up human speech, and everything else she needs to know (like how to shoot guns in VR) from Rainy while Sam is out making deliveries and connections. While she appears human in most respects, she does have the ability to secrete tar that rapidly ages things, just like Timefall, not that she can control it very well at first. After a while she hears what she thinks is an argument about her, so she leaves the Magellan. Naturally Sam is the one sent out to find her, and she ends up saving him from a squad of Ghost Mechs. Sam convinces her to return to the Magellan, and the story goes on.

Sam keeps connecting, and meeting characters both old (Heartman) and new (Doctor Debra Wilson). Higgs and Neil show up some more, and there's plenty of intrigue about what's really going on with APAC, some of which coming directly from its not at all shady and totally trustworthy president. But little of that has to do with what I'm trying to get at here, so I'm glossing over it.

Eventually, when the journey across Australia is nearing its end, Higgs makes a particularly cruel attack on Sam. Coating him with perpetual fire, that burns until Sam dies, then reignites when he repatriates. As much as I like that this scene felt like they were doing the MGS4 microwave hallway again (button mashing to try to crawl through the pain), I felt terrible for Sam. Doing backbreaking labor just for Likes, and the knowledge that he's helping people, this is his reward? Being burned to death repeatedly??

It's a good thing that Troy Baker is as good an actor as he is, because Higgs is a man who exists only to cause problems on purpose. A worse performance would make this character truly unbearable (derogatory), as opposed to truly unbearable (complimentary).

Anyway, Fragile, Rainy, and especially Tomorrow combine forces to rescue Sam and fight off Higgs. I can't do this cutscene justice by describing it, so I won't other than to say I don't know how much of it is Kojima himself, and how much of it is the excellent team he has built, but truly no one else out there does it like Kojima Productions. So, with Rainy's reverse Timefall rain putting out the perpetual fire, they all return to the Magellan, where Sam passes out from exhaustion.

And this is when it happens. Overnight, while Sam sleeps, the others have a conversation about his state. His Ha (body) has healed, but his Ka (soul) went through the ordeal of dying and being reborn again and again and again within a few minutes, a strain no one should ever have to endure. Whether it's because of this, something else, or the accumulation of everything that's happened since the start of this journey, all the way back in Mexico, as I said, it finally happens.

Sam notices something wrong with Lou's pod; she doesn't seem to be there any more. So Dollman, the one who most seemed like he wanted to tell Sam the truth from the get go, finally does. Not only is the pod empty, it's always been empty. Lou never returned to the pod, she died. Fragile explains that she thought it best, or at least better than leaving him broken. That letting him work through this on his own, in his own time, was for the best.

I know I said earlier that the game is deliberately unclear about what happened to Lou, and it is, but this is the moment where reality comes crashing in, and Sam can't ignore it anymore. He could block out reflections with the broken pod, ignore The Doctor telling him he had bereavement syndrome, even sleep through what looked like Lou's ghost floating around outside the pod...

But this is the moment where he can't deny it anymore, the moment where despite all my theories, I couldn't deny it either. It doesn't leave Sam as broken as the initial event did, but he's still devastated.

Still, he has a job to do, so no time to rest. He needs to go all the way back to Heartman's lab, to pick up something, and lug it all the way back. No rest for the wicked.

This is a journey that, having rebuilt the monorails, and most of the roads between these spots, I could have made very quickly, and easily. I could have done it in the blink of a PS5 load time if I opted to use a Transponder to fast travel, but that didn't feel right. I was going to keep moving at the pace I had been, and keep delivering. It's the only thing Sam is good at, right? He couldn't protect his child, he can't even protect himself from Higgs and his mechs without the rest of the team to jump in and save him.

All he's good for, all I'm good for is schlepping this junk around. Whether by foot, truck, rail, whatever, just moving things from A to B to C, that's it. What good is a parent if they can't protect their kid, and can't even give them the respect of acknowledging when the kid is gone? Can't even let them move on, have to still cling to them?

When I played through this part of the game, it took me a few days before I finally got to Heartman's lab, to pick the story back up. During which, I don't know how much of it is from the game itself, and how much was just a cosmic bit of luck of my own life feeling especially pointless, but I fell into a moment of real pointless, aimlessness. What am I doing here? What am I doing with my life?

Sam's a fictional character, I don't know what was going through his head, but everything lined up and I felt about as close as I think I could to him in that moment. Obviously I've never had any children, so I can't truly know what it's like to lose one. But it reminded me of my time with Red Dead Redemption II, where my own chronic illness really seemed to flair up during a point in the story where Arthur's health problems reared their head.

But it definitely wasn't just a coincidence, this game made me care about Sam, and Lou in ways that the first one certainly didn't. Care enough that despite the repeated evidence to the contrary, despite theories I had dating back to before the game released (that I will return to, don't worry), I kept convincing myself that something else was going on. Lou wasn't really gone, not gone gone. Right? She couldn't be...right?

I think the single moment that best illustrates where I was at, was a moment where I sat Sam down to rest. Not that he needed it, it just...felt like a good place for it. And I hit the harmonica button, not really thinking, but hearing those notes again, just without Lou's giggles... I genuinely, really almost started crying. That simple little moment, not anything scripted, not like the game wanted me to, or had anything happen because of it, it was just something I did, and...it hit me.

Even after finishing the game, there were still moments driving trucks where there was some odd noise in there that kept making me think it was Lou giggling, just like when she was with Sam, or he thought she was... At that point, knowing everything that happened, I still missed her. Truth be told, the moment with the harmonica was actually post game too. I wonder if I had thought to do it during that trek back to the lab, if I would have actually cried. I'll never know, I guess.

I think, out of all of “Kojima's Tricks” over the years, this might be his greatest one. More so than the Snake/Raiden fakeout in MGS2, and definitely more than the Venom Snake stuff in MGSV, making me care about this baby and then taking her away has to be the greatest one. Spend two games thinking it's annoying to deal with her crying (making me play super carefully to prevent it), and then when she's actually gone, I just wish she was back.

Of course eventually I couldn't put it off any longer. Both Sam and the story had to move forward, so I did. Now, I mentioned earlier that I had theories before playing the game, some going back all the way to the announcement trailer. Even then, in the first trailer, it strongly implies that Lou was going to die. My thinking though, was that was a fake out, and she was going to end up still alive. And, after the announcement of Elle Fanning being cast, she was not only going to be cast as a grown up Lou, but that this game would pull an MGS2. You'd only play as Sam in the prologue, then the bulk of the game would be Lou.

As DS2 picked up the pace, eventually sprinting toward its conclusion, my theory was a lot closer to true than it seemed in that dark moment where Sam's denial broke. Through flashbacks involving Neil, and Sam's (deceased) wife Lucy, we learn that Lou was the daughter of Lucy, and...Sam. Though Sam never realized he had a child, because of Lucy and Neil's affair, and Lucy lying to protect the child. Now, personally I think making her Sam's biological daughter wasn't necessary. I like to think that family bonds can be just as strong with no genetic connection, and conversely they can break just as easily even if you are blood related.

But the real revelation is that, yes, as I predicted, as I'm sure many did, Tomorrow is in fact, Lou. It turns out that Fragile had managed to teleport Lou to safety, but she received a fatal wound in Lou's place. Due to the time warping stuff that I don't understand, this meant that Fragile was living on what felt like perpetual borrowed time, while Lou grew up to her mid-twenties (roughly how old Elle is). Fragile kept the truth about her dying from Sam, but truly believed herself that Lou was dead, so at least she wasn't “lying” about that to him.

Honestly, I don't fully understand all this stuff, and Fragile's selective amnesia here...feels like a contrivance, but that doesn't matter. I am a firm believer that a compelling enough story will not only let you suspend disbelief, but in the moment you won't even need to. You'll be drawn in enough that it doesn't matter while everything is unfolding. I won't say every aspect of DS2's story is incredible, the stuff with APAC and Higgs felt a little underdeveloped for example, but the emotional hits hit. Also that song and dance from Die-Hardman is fantastic. I love his sash.

And it ends with a suitable bang, once again repeating the MGS4 duel atop a thing, just this time with guitars. It's ridiculous in the best possible way, and it ends with a giant baby eating Higgs. Amazing. I gasped when it happened.

Afterward, when everyone is safe and back from the Beach, Tomorrow finally remembers it all, and shares a long, tight hug with her dad.

Then at the very end, right before the credits, we see Tomorrow now wearing Porter gear, and looking up at a new(?) Plate Gate, not knowing where the journey leads next, just that Tomorrow is as it ever was, in your hands.

I went into a lot more “plot synopsis” type details than I initially meant to, but it wouldn't be a journey if you skipped to the end. Like I've said before, this isn't the deepest, most complex, or even the most interesting story Kojima has ever worked on. It tries to have some MG-esque political intrigue, and that stuff is good, but it's not the draw, it's not what DS2 is really about. It's about a parent working through the loss of his child, and ultimately the indescribable relief at the end of the journey when it all turned out well.

The tagline may have asked if we should have connected, but nowhere in the game does it have any answer other than a resounding “YES.” Connections are what pulled Sam out of his self destructive spiral, and what saved him time and time again along his journey. Whether it was his friends, his family saving him from Higgs, or a well placed bridge across a river, these connections are what got him, got me, got us through this journey. Connections are what keep us going, help pick us up when we're down, and so we can pick up others when they're down. Lift each other up so we can achieve together what we can't on our own.

Whether that's traversing Australia, or working through grief.

These connections are what bind us together, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse, but that's the human experience. And without it, without these connections we may as well just be data rotting away on computers. But we're not data, or computers, we're people. Living, breathing people, who all have our own journeys through life. I know mine has had its rough spots, but I wouldn't have made it as far as I have without the people, the connections in my life to keep me going. Just like I know, however minor it may be, but I've helped others along their journeys. I've probably hurt some too, just like I know some have hurt me on mine, but all I can do is keep helping those I can. Hope that at the end of it all, the good outweighs the bad.

And of course, to keep on keeping on myself.

Six years ago I don't think any part of me really felt like we needed a Death Stranding 2. I certainly had ideas for game stuff that I would have liked to see, but story wise? I didn't want to spend any more time with Sam or Lou, as silly as that sounds now. Now, though, especially with that tease at the end, I feel like we need a Death Stranding 3. Of course, if we do and we just play as Sam again the whole game, that will be really disappointing.

I think Sam should still be in the game, just as a side character. A mentor, or even a father figure, if you will, to Tomorrow/Lou (whichever name they decide to use going forward). I certainly have questions about if Lou Tomorrow Bridges will still have her supernatural abilities, because it would make the game play pretty differently if she does!

Either way, we'll see if we actually get a third game or not. Until then, I think I've said everything meaningful I should about DS2. There's so much more going on in the game, so many layers and layers that I'm sure someone could write a whole book about. But I ain't doing that, I've rambled on long enough as it is.

Thanks for reading, keep on keeping on, and remember...

Tomorrow is in our hands.