Death Stranding has been out for over a month now, so most interested gamers have probably picked it up and completed the story. Sam Bridges’ epic journey through the post-apocalyptic United States is a lot to take in. After the credits roll, many gamers may be scratching their heads in complete bewilderment, or at least they are just a little unsure about certain plot points.
The following list will clear the air about the ten most perplexing parts in Death Stranding. This is a Hideo Kojima game after all, and it wouldn’t feel right if everything was coherent and logical. Obviously, this list is for people who have beaten the game, so look at some of our other spoiler-free content on Death Stranding if you haven’t reached the end yet.
Updated by Jason Wojnar on July 15th, 2020: Death Stranding was previously a PlayStation 4 exclusive. That is about to change on July 14th when the polarizing, unique, and expansive Kojima Productions title comes to PC. To help newcomers sort through the wild story they just experienced, we decided to add five more entries to this list further explaining some of the events and ideas some players may find confusing. The campaign takes between twenty five and fifty hours to complete, so it may be difficult to keep all the events and revelations in order throughout the story.
15 Amelie And Bridget
Characters eventually grow suspicious of Amelie further into the journey. With this doubt also came an uneasiness regarding the late Bridget Strand. As it turned out, Bridget and Amelie are the same person, just inhabiting two different spaces.
The story presented was Amelie suffering from locked-in syndrome, causing her extended isolation. In reality, the young woman is Bridget’s Ka, or soul, and Bridget is the Ha, or body, of the same consciousness. Because she lives on the Beach, Amelie does not age.
14 Mama And Lockne
Margaret Qualley had a good professional year with roles in both Death Stranding and Quentin Tarantino’s highly-regarded Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood. In the former, she plays twin sisters, which is easy enough to understand. Things get weirder when one of the siblings passes away and inhabits her sister’s body.
Their connection was always considered so close, as if they were the same person all along. When they merge, both of their consciousnesses are active in the same body, but they were so similar it’s impossible to notice if it is Lockne or Mama talking to Sam.
13 Sam And The BB
Throughout the game, Sam experiences memories whenever connecting to the BB. For the most part, the game leads players to believe these experiences to be the BB’s memories. Ultimately, however, these turn out to be not Lou’s flashbacks, but Sam’s. Bridges was a BB before his father, Cliff, tried to rescue him from the experiments.
After failing, he and the infant Sam died. Bridget then revived him, making him a repatriate and letting him live as her adopted son. Lou has entirely different biological parents who are unknown by the time the game ends.
12 Higgs
Higgs Monaghan’s motivation throughout most of the game seems to be a resistance to joining the UCA. His final appearances make clear his desire to trigger the Last Stranding and end all life on earth. He wasn’t self-motivated, though.
Amelie manipulated him and gave him his powers. Given his hubris as a successful porter, it wasn’t hard for her to give him the chance to feel like a god. Amelie was always in control, however, which is why he was unable to manipulate her after Sam defeated him and Fragile takes him prisoner.
11 BTs
BTs, or Beached Things, started showing up after the first Death Stranding that put the world into its current state. The game explains what they are, but it can fly over people’s heads if they aren’t listening close enough.
These monsters are the souls of dead people who have yet to cross over to the other side, composed of mostly anti-matter. The umbilical cord is what keeps them connected, which is why they vanish after Sam cuts it.
10 The Expedition
Sam isn’t the first member of Bridges to trek through the country, attempting to re-establish some semblance of order. Amelie led a prior expedition, called Bridges One, through the UCA. Sam was sent in to finish the job, connecting all the country to Chiral Network, and rescue Amelie.
The latter objective was just a ruse, done to ensure Sam would reconnect the country. Die-Hardman knew the idea of a network wasn’t enough to get him on board, but he would do anything to help Amelie.
9 BBs
In the game, Bridge Babies are tools used to detect BTs, keeping porters and other workers safe when outside of cities. Their initial purpose was different, however, and arguably even more unethical than the ideas behind their creation established in the beginning of the game.
When Sam was a part of the program, Bridget planned to use him as the foundation for the Chiral Network, which would have sacrificed his life, preventing him from ever having a normal childhood. This plan went down the drain after Cliff freed him, however. Funnily enough, he still ends up connecting the whole country as an adult, so perhaps Bridget’s plan went off as expected after all.
8 The Extinction Entity
If the reasons behind Amelie’s appearance seem confusing, don’t worry; the game never clearly explains them either. Amelie herself wonders why she was sent to end humanity.
Her best guess is the universe summoned her because it considers humanity a fluke in need of correcting. It’s a logical hypothesis, but it doesn’t explain why it sent her when it did. At the end of the day, it’s all a guess, and no one knows why the extinctions happened.
7 Sam’s Choice
During the epic final act, Amelie offers Sam a choice. He can either shoot her and prevent the Last Stranding by severing her ties to the real world, or he can watch extinction occur with her on the Beach. She warns that the former choice will still lead to the end of life, but it will simply prolong the inevitable.
The wording can make the choice confusing, causing some players to believe the opposite. Confusing or not, the player ultimately has no choice, as shooting her will restart the segment. Sam feels like he owes her for saving his life all those years ago and being with him at his darkest moments. Of course, he tells no one about embracing the apocalypse once he gets back.
6 Amelie’s Isolation
After Sam embraces Amelie, she is moved enough by this gesture to stop the incoming extinction of her own fruition. Unfortunately, her purpose and drive don’t allow her to simply cease the process.
Her only choice is to isolate her Beach from the world, dooming herself to eternal self-imposed isolation. If she stayed, she would have had no choice but to end the world.
5 Beaches
The Beach is not necessarily a literal beach, though in the game it is represented by one, nor is it the afterlife. Instead, it is the place one’s consciousness goes after death and before crossing over into whatever is next. Time also stands still in this mysterious zone, which is why Amelie does not age as Sam grows older. For Sam, the beach is also special because he will die if his life ends on it, despite his repatriate status. It is also not one place, as everybody has their own Beach.
4 Heartman’s Life
Heartman is a strange fellow, though we suppose anyone would start acting weird if they lived in twenty-one minute cycles. He does this because his family died during the Death Stranding. In these moments he was in the middle of surgery and also passed away. While on the Beach he saw his wife and child but was unable to catch up with them because doctors brought him back to life. Since then, he has been constantly triggering cardiac arrest to search for them on the beach every twenty-one minutes. His death cycles are two minutes long, but on the beach, it is almost an eternity.
3 Fragile
Fragile took over her father’s delivery service upon his death and eventually teamed up with Higgs before realizing his terrorist intentions. Unfortunately, it was too late by the time she inadvertently delivered a nuclear bomb to Middle Knot City. She tried to save South Knot City, but Higgs caught her and offered her a deal; walk through Timefall with the bomb and throw it in the tarpit, or teleport out of the area and let the bomb explode. She did the right thing, at the cost of her body rapidly aging due to the Timefall’s effects.
2 How The Chiral Network Works
Sam Bridges’ main goal is connecting the country to the Chiral Network and uniting the broken nation. The titular event severed all connections between cities and made travel between them dangerous, so porters are the only method of transferring things and information across the land. Some people also chose to live outside the city in their own bunkers, relying on porters for supplies. With the Chiral Network, people can once again instantly transfer data and communicate across long distances.
1 Deadman
Deadman’s personality can mostly be attributed to his origins as an artificial human being. Most of him comes from other dead body parts, while the rest was grown. He refers to himself as Frankenstein’s monster, an appropriate comparison considering his likeness is taken from Guillermo del Toro, iconic horror movie director and good friend to Hideo Kojima. Del Toro is a huge fan of Frankenstein, so he was probably thrilled at the idea of his character being like the famous monster from Mary Shelley’s novel.
