Death Stranding

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to The Other Castle.

The Other Castle, I'm Andrea.

And my name is Tom.

And here on The Other Castle, we do the plot, lore, and more behind all your favorite video games.

Yes, we do.

We're gonna take you through the production of a video game, and then we're gonna take you through the entire plot of a video game.

And that's why this one is so freaking long.

So buckle in.

If you wanna learn more, if you wanna check out the other games that we've covered, especially the long ones, you can check out our website, theothercastlepodcast.com.

That's the othercastlepodcast.com.

And I just wanna say, I'm so especially excited for season nine because we worked so closely going through fan requests and working with everyone who cares about this show to pick out the games that we're doing.

And I'm so, so, so excited.

Yes, we did.

And if you wanna interact more with other fans, you can go through our Patreon, where we do more episodes every single month, even during the off season.

I just covered Limbo exclusively for our Patreon because that was requested and that was a bummer.

Oh, it was.

You can DM us on Instagram or check out clips of the show.

Those are always really fun.

And the thing I'm especially excited to talk about is our Discord because this game is really coming from the heart of our Discord.

And the heart of our Discord is persistence.

We have some really, really wonderful, cool ass gamers in there.

They are absolutely wonderful.

I really enjoy talking to you guys.

If it's not clear, I obviously have notifications on.

So whenever someone posts a meme or is like, Hey guys, it's cold outside.

I'm like, what's up?

You got a sweater?

Like, maybe a little parasocial on my end, but I just, it's really fun getting to talk to people who like the same weird stuff I like, video games, which is not very niche, but I truly enjoy it.

And one thing I've loved on the Discord is the rampant onslaught of requests for Death Stranding.

It's been nonstop, weekly, maybe not so weekly, whatever you want to call it, Tee Calavera.

Yeah.

Don't know if I'm saying that right, but I'm giving you a virtual hug, because this episode is in honor of your persistence, and also not, because I'm not doing Death Stranding.

Now, I've lobbied for bullying, jokingly, of course.

I grew up chubby, so obviously, bullying, not super fun, but loving bullying, where you're like, hey, do this.

Yeah, I get it, man.

There's episodes of things that I've been begging for.

We all just saw Deadpool, Wolverine.

We obviously, as a culture, came together to bully Hugh Jackman, a 55-year-old man, to look like that.

He really did look like that, didn't he?

Baby, he looked like that.

Oh my God, he gave me hetero thoughts.

But same but different here.

Right.

Not at all.

No, no.

We are not Hugh Jackman.

You could be.

Okay.

If you tried.

No.

I'm not going to look like that ever.

Fair enough.

Anyway, this is Death Stranding.

And yeah, it's not an Andrea episode.

It's a me episode.

I got scared.

You got way too scared.

I looked at it was like, you're a postmate?

It's a.

That was my nightmare.

Right.

I hate bringing things to people.

I hate interacting and delivering things.

Why would I enjoy this?

And you went, that's literally not what the game is, though.

You understand that you're being way too literal.

And I was like, well, yeah, you would be one of the 98 percent of the other characters in this game.

Oh, so that's the thing.

There is place for everyone in gaming.

Exactly.

And to that point, I want to circle it back to bullying.

Oh, my gosh.

Guys, don't bully people.

Right.

But, you know, lovingly suggest games.

So that's the core of this value is that like this whole season is either games we've been suggesting on the Discord, games we've gotten emails or DMs about, games that we've been curious about, and people have said like, oh, no, no, yeah, you should do that like in real life.

I know people in real life that listen to the show and it is strange every time.

Regardless, I am so excited to get into this.

And thank you for the bullying, I suppose.

But maybe we'll rebrand bullying to loving suggestions.

I was just surprised they chose you.

Yeah.

Why me, guys?

You always ask for games that are straight vibes.

You do?

You do.

You have a tendency to ask for games.

You're like, I want a game that's just like vibes.

I do love a good vibe.

This game is pure vibes.

Really?

It is.

And this is probably why they suggested it to you.

Well, it's its own genre, right?

It's very much so.

And we'll get into all of that.

Maybe I'll play it.

I think you might after this.

Death Stranding, as the credits will inform you several times, comes from video game living legend, Hideo Kojima, the guy from Control.

I guess so.

He's in control.

Well, he was born in 1963 near Tokyo, Japan.

He grew up in a working class home where both of his parents worked full time.

He usually found himself home alone after school, having to fend for himself from a young age.

Was he a latchkey kid-only child situation?

Yes, very much so.

Oh, no.

Same.

Yeah, same too.

Yeah.

I had a little sister included, but yeah, it was just the two of us.

I had a lot of imaginary friends.

Yeah.

Every day, he would turn on the television to drown out the silence, making him feel like someone else was there with him.

Oh, my bones.

My hair is on my armor sticking up, and we barely got into this.

You're relating to him a little bit, right?

Yep.

Yeah, this is a practice.

He still performs to this day, especially in hotel rooms.

I mean, I do the same thing.

Oh, no.

Am I Hideo Kojima?

Well, his parents were film nerds, as are your parents, actually.

And Family Bonding Time was the nightly movie, where they would watch a film, then dissect and discuss the themes, as well as the storytelling motifs and techniques.

His dad passed away when Hideo was only 13.

Oh, that's too young.

Yeah, and he was raised by his mother from there out.

Naturally, he wanted a career in film.

His uncle had tried to make it in Japanese entertainment, but failed kind of miserably, struggling for years.

Most people do, unfortunately, in entertainment.

Yeah, the Japanese version of Hollywood runs on more nepotism than the US version of it.

I can't wrap my head around that statement.

Exactly.

So he was advised to pursue another career.

He decided to play it safe and went to college where he majored in finance.

Oh, that is the most heartbreaking thing to be like, I'm going to be a creative.

And then it smash cuts to you being like, all right.

And here's how you balance a check.

Doing fucking math.

While in school, his roommate had a Nintendo Famicom system, introducing Hideo Kojima to his first ever video game.

In his senior year, he pivoted to video game development.

He spent three, three and a half, four years on like boring ass business shit.

And then it was like, what if I was majoring in Pong?

Yes, exactly.

Well, he saw video games as a way to tell stories.

Hell yeah.

Every single person he spoke to told him that was the worst fucking idea imaginable.

Well, you said he was born in like the mid early 60s, so this places us around the 80s or so.

Yes.

Yeah, not a super encouraging time for the arts of video games.

This was all shortly after the video game crash of the early 80s.

Ah, yes, there it is.

So the idea of jumping into a dying medium was just an awful fucking decision.

Us starting a podcast in 2017.

Well, there was one person who told Hideo otherwise and encouraged this switch.

His mother.

Oh.

She didn't give a shit about money or fame or even security.

She just wanted her son to be happy.

That's...

wow.

A mom who gives a shit about her kid's happiness?

Right.

Wait.

That's where our paths diverge.

Well, this was all Hideo needed to follow his newfound passion.

He was hired on at Konami shortly after graduating school.

Okay, that's a flux.

First of all, getting a job out of college.

Right.

Same old with Konami.

Shit.

It was larger than Nintendo at the time even.

Wow.

His first game release being 1987's Metal Gear for the Famicom in Japan and the NES in the States.

It was an isometric 2D shooter.

Think Legend of Zelda meets Contra.

After a couple more titles, Konami released Metal Gear Solid in 1998 for the PlayStation 1.

Then following Metal Gear Liquid, Metal Gear Gas.

Yes, exactly.

No, that is not how it went.

This is a game that reinvented the stealth shooter genre.

Metal Gear Solid officially introduced the world to Hideo Kojima's bizarre and mind-bending take on storytelling.

And the concept of snakes.

No, I don't think that's what introduced the concept of snakes.

No, this is what started it.

OK.

It is the gaming Bible.

This continued the series through to Metal Gear Solid 5, The Phantom Pain in 2015.

Just before the release of Metal Gear Solid 5, things began to get murky at the parent company.

Konami, no stranger to taking people's last dollar being a slot machine producer already, had recently tested the waters in the free-to-play mobile game market.

Microtransactions from just two small titles brought in an exorbitant amount of money, and they had cost Konami a fraction of a single Metal Gear Solid title.

And they went, oh, this is easier, let's do that.

Well, Konami is a publicly traded company, and has investors that need to keep happy, meaning growth and profit margins are the only thing that matters.

Ironically, exactly what Hideo Kojima studied prior to moving into video games.

Exactly, right?

He's like, actually, I understand where you're coming from, but what the fuck, guys?

I don't agree with it.

Yeah, I left this life behind me.

Well, whether he was asked to leave, or it was a situation of creative differences that forced Kojima to walk away in 2015 is really anyone's guess.

I guess it was bad.

Yeah, it didn't turn out great because he was knee deep in development on a new Silent Hill game when it all went down.

Is this the PT situation?

That is the PT situation.

Oh shit.

Konami then went on to remove his name from Metal Gear Solid V as his exit occurred just before its release.

Oh, that sucks.

It's bullshit, right?

That's honestly, that's just disrespectful.

Oh, it is.

He was not even allowed to accept an award for Metal Gear Solid V at the Game Awards.

Stop.

As Konami forbade him from representing their game.

There's no way in hell Jeff Keighley didn't just FedEx him an award, though, you know, like that's fucking bullshit.

Actually, to his credit, Jeff Keighley informed the live audience exactly why Hideo Kojima wasn't allowed to be there.

I just got chilled, shut the fuck up.

I respect Jeff Keighley, I think he's done a lot for the industry.

He is a nepo baby.

Yeah, I mean, there's so many people that are, you can't blame them all.

Yeah, but that is some fucking balls.

Yeah.

Good for him.

This made his appearance the next year, all that more special.

Hell yeah.

Hideo Kojima walked on stage with a very simple, hello everyone, I'm back.

Hell yeah.

There to announce he was working on a new project under his newly formed studio, Kojima Productions.

He said, you can't take my name off the studio wall now, bitch.

Well, leaving Konami, he had to start from literal scratch.

Not a single piece of office equipment, let alone an office to put it in, nor a team to fill it out.

He basically leaned on his celebrity status to get shit moving.

When looking for an office, he found a building that had a fan who was in charge of leasing office space.

Oh, that's cool.

When he needed money, he found a fan who worked at a bank as a loan officer.

I can see him like profiling people, walking in and going, nope, nope, nope.

You have a Funko Pop on your desk.

You and I could be friends.

It was actually a lot of people saying nope, nope, nope to him until he found a fan.

Oh.

Yeah.

Team members joined just to work with the legend himself quickly filling out to 80 people.

Hideo had an idea and he needed to get it out, bringing together amazing talents such as Yoji Shinkawi, the art director on Death Stranding, who has worked on every Kojima project since Metal Gear Solid.

Oh, so they go way back and he followed him.

Yeah, he's been together for the entire time.

Hell yeah.

As well as Ludwig Forsell, the composer and audio director who truly brings this strange and beautiful world to life with music as cerebral as Kojima's storylines.

There's an alarming number of composers named Ludwig in the world.

More than one.

Name two.

Ludwig.

This one and the other one.

And the other one.

Now, there's also one that worked on a lot of music and has worked with Childish Gambino.

He worked with him on Community and then came over and did some cuts for a Childish Gambino mixtape, I believe.

It might just be in the ether that if you get that name, you got to do music.

You got to do it, man.

For the game's engine, he didn't want to build from scratch, but he did know what his needs were going to be, so he shopped every single engine available, essentially.

His search landed him at Guerrilla Games to try out their Decima engine.

I haven't even heard of that.

You actually have.

Guerrilla Games is a Dutch studio whose logo you would instantly recognize as their engine has been used for mocap-heavy photorealistic games such as Season 5's Until Dawn.

I've heard of them, yes.

The motion capture technology being very important for the over seven hours of cutscenes Death Stranding would contain.

When Hideo went to visit Guerrilla Games, the head of the studio presented him with a hard drive.

On it was the entire source code for the Decima engine.

Oh, that's cool.

Telling Hideo Kojima, do whatever the fuck you want with it, free of charge.

Damn, he put his dick on the table and they said thank you.

Exactly.

Fuck yeah.

After he had everything he needed to make his game, he just needed to put the pieces together.

He's quoted as saying, the first enemy of every project is my team.

That's not a great leadership stance.

I know.

I hate the quote so much because it sounds so awful, but once you hear his reasoning for it, it makes perfect sense.

Can you imagine like in The Bear, them giving that pep talk?

It does not work, right?

It doesn't work in The Bear.

The first enemy you must overcome are your partners.

Are all you motherfuckers.

I have hired to support me.

It's just that his ideas are so fucking weird.

It's an uphill battle getting his creative leads on board when making a new game because he constantly wants to push the boundaries of gaming and invent entirely new genres.

It's a lot of trust the process.

Exactly.

Just like he did with the Metal Gear Solid franchise for stealth games, Hideo wanted to reinvent social gaming by isolating the gamer.

OK, so some problems off the bat.

He's a complex man, you know, I gotta take my own advice.

Trust the process.

Yeah, people didn't really understand what he meant by that, and it took a ton of convincing to get his team on board with his vision.

Because he was also going to reinvent the exploration style walking sim while they were at it.

He's going to reinvent walking.

Everything.

Walking.

Walking.

He genuinely reinvents walking.

All right, man, I guess he reinvented snakes once before, so, like...

I don't think you know what happens in Metal Gear Solid at all.

Wow, what do you mean?

Was that not a comprehensive overview of what happens in the entire Metal Gear Solid franchise?

Yep.

I think it's a character named Snake.

Yep, that's the Snake.

Obviously.

Well, fortunately, Hideo was the boss, the absolute top of the ladder, and he had nobody to tell him no, so people slowly but surely fell in line with his vision.

Can I just say, he seems like he's not a dick.

Right?

It doesn't seem like it at all.

You don't hear people complain about him.

He carries himself in a way that feels kind and approachable, so I'd like to have good faith that he would do this well, and that he wouldn't approach with anger or aggression.

And frankly, that statement shows the wherewithal of like, I understand that this is a wild concept that I'm going to have to earn your trust on.

Yeah, right.

And taking that energy into a wild project like this, or frankly, anything that sounds like he's ever done.

There's a certain patience that he holds to his presence that I really appreciate.

Yeah, he's very goofy.

He's a silly man.

Yeah, his whole deal, the way he seems to live his life, you know?

I love that.

So I can't imagine him being like a tyrannical asshole.

Is this what happens when your mother supports your dreams?

Yeah, probably.

Yeah.

Now, I'm Jen one and my mother is from the Philippines.

So the fact that I have never studied nursing was an issue.

Oh, I'm so sorry.

It's fine.

You know, did she?

Castor.

Yeah.

I've been in weed marketing for the last six years.

I sell drugs and do video game podcasts.

And my mom is like, well, we can't raise her again.

So might as well deal with it.

But at the time, it was a little rough.

Yeah, at least she accepts it.

She really was like, Jesus Christ, just take biology for fuck's sake.

And I was like, I'm going to take poetry.

Sorry, Mom.

Sorry, God.

That's how we met.

So anyway, again, thanks to his fame, Hideo was able to get a shitload of support outside the gaming industry as he scored talent out the ass for the cast of this new game.

This cast doesn't make sense.

Most of the cast I'm going to introduce during the story portion of the episode because the game has a fun way of introducing them.

Oh, cool.

However, since he was in all the trailers, we may as well talk about the main character, Sam Porter Bridges, as they cast Boondock Saints and Walking Dead star Norman reedus.

Oh.

Do you have opinions on him?

I have no opinions on this man, actually.

I've never seen the Walking Dead.

But you have seen the Boondock Saints.

I have.

It's in that Chuck Palinuk bucket.

Yeah.

Damn, this is crazy.

And I'm 19, you know?

Yeah.

I'm half Irish.

I get it.

I love Less Than Zero and every Brad Easton Ellis book.

Yeah, it's in that genre.

Definitely.

I don't know.

The Walking Dead seems sad, so I'm not interested in watching it.

Well, the reason Norman was cast was mainly because he was supposed to play the lead in that canceled Silent Hill game, but never got the chance.

Norman reedus was revealed to be the playable character at the end of the playable teaser experience PT, that I did play once, making it my actual first Hideo Kojima game.

And you're one of the few, because that is an inaccessible game now.

It's inaccessible because of the fact that he got fired or was let go from Konami, and then that game never was going to come out.

So it's sad when things get lost to divorce.

Yeah, so it is lost media now.

With Death Stranding being my first actual Hideo Kojima game.

Kojima believes that one day, movies, TV and video games will all merge into one medium essentially.

And across the pond, there's Sam Lake going, I know man, I've been trying to fucking do this since Quantum Break.

And he thinks it's all just going to be accessible on your phone.

He wants to be at the forefront of that revolution by creating long form narratives that include captivating gameplay.

I can't wait to play this game on an Apple Watch.

You probably will one day.

From leaving Konami up to the game's release, Death Stranding was delivered in just over three and a half years.

That's very fast for a video game of this magnitude and of this detail.

Breakneck speed, but I think not having to reinvent an engine really helped.

Totally.

It released on November 8th, 2019 exclusively to PlayStation 4.

Just in time for the holiday shopping season.

Smart work.

Just as the world began to hear about a terrible disease with the potential to cause serious problems in the world.

Oh, God damn it.

You said 2019.

Yeah.

Oh, no.

It debuted as the second highest new IP of that year on PlayStation 4.

Wow.

Right behind season eights, Days Gone.

Days Gone beat this?

It beat Death Stranding.

I'm sorry.

That's embarrassing.

What the fuck did you just say to me?

Oh, no.

Also, the kind of irony of like this star from a big zombie franchise getting beat by this kind of bullshit zombie franchise.

Right.

That went nowhere.

I say that lovingly as someone who has played and enjoyed Days Gone, it's embarrassing to say I had a good time playing that.

I don't think it is anymore.

I think it's really starting to come around for people.

Do you think so?

Yeah, I see it on Reddit all the time.

People be like, what the hell happened to Days Gone?

It was like, sure, it had a slow start, but it fucking ends.

Awesome.

It does end awesome.

Act one does suck.

You guys know about this.

I've already covered that.

But what the fuck?

I'm embarrassed.

Well, I've heard people say almost the exact same thing about Death Stranding.

Oh, OK.

Kojima fans came out for this new game, despite not really understanding what they were about to play, because the trailers were fucking weird.

I didn't understand it, which is probably why I was a little hesitant to jump into this and went, hey, Tom, what if you did this?

Yeah, there was a baby inside a guy's throat.

Everything looked dark and dreary and depressing.

People were like, well, I guess this is Kojima Unleashed.

This is what he did without the corporate backing?

Okay, man, we always knew he was weird, but now he has nobody saying no.

The best art comes out of weirdos.

Uh, what did we just do?

That's what people said about Picasso when he started going off though, you know?

Yeah, exactly.

This is his cubism.

Reviews for the game were generally positive, with only a few complaints from people who really just didn't get this one of a kind experience.

Then that terrible disease became a global pandemic.

Oh, so this is coming out, launching November.

We have our holiday season.

We're starting to see it, like SNL does some sketches about coughing and being sick.

There's rampant xenophobia, unfortunately.

And then everything hits in about March.

In about March, right.

And suddenly people had time on their hands and wanted something fun to play.

And they are stuck at home.

The Death Stranding fans spoke up, telling all these people locked in their homes to check out this game about a bunch of people locked in their homes.

And they're looking at it, they're like, what came out last year?

Day's Gone.

You don't want to hear about what happens when an outbreak overtakes the world, guys.

That's going to be a bummer.

But they were also talking about the positive, wonderful, uplifting community they create.

I have heard that this is the feel good game of 2019, which boggled my fucking mind.

Well, people looked at this dark and sad looking game called Death Stranding.

And we're like, I'm sorry, did you say positive?

Fully, I'm in that camp.

Yeah, me too.

I found that category of curiously confused.

Curiously confused was me as a teen, honey.

I get it.

I mean, that was through to college, but.

Oh, I wasn't confused.

I knew exactly what I liked about that.

Just messy.

Well, for me, Kojima is the king of stealth games, and I don't really care for stealth games, so I didn't touch it for a long time.

Wait, on the inverse, I really enjoy stealth games.

Oh no, am I going to fall in love with this?

You might.

Eventually, A Director's Cut was released for PlayStation 5, updating the graphics further and adding a bunch of quality of life changes, as well as a side mission that isn't quite big enough to call an expansion, but it's still a solidly fun bit of inconsequential gameplay.

Does this continue to be a PlayStation exclusive?

It is, yeah, and PC.

The Director's Cut also lost some sponsorship deals in the upgrade, as this independent studio needed to make money somewhere.

Sponsored, you say?

I love marketing.

Well, you definitely hit the marketing hard with the Alan Wake episode last season, because they had Energizer Batteries.

Energizer Batteries and Verizon Wireless, helping you escape the dark place of not having coverage.

That resulted in the original version having some hilariously out-of-place product placement.

Oh my god, there's nothing I love more than poorly shoehorned product placement.

Nathan Drake eating a subway foot long, you know?

I selfishly enjoy the shit out of that.

Well, Word of Mouth and Time have been extremely kind to Death Stranding, and as of this recording, it has sold over 13 million copies across two Sony console generations and PC.

Holy shit, that is monumental sales.

Just about outselling Metal Gear Solid 1 and 2 combined.

What I would give to be in the Konami boardroom watching these numbers fly.

Just all of them going, that fucking weird dude.

Oh, the president of Konami has come back out saying, like, we would love to work with Hideo again.

He doesn't need your money, honey.

He made his own.

Oh, that is when you dump someone and they just go on the fucking globe and you're like, damn, are you hot now?

Yeah, right.

Death Stranding 2 On the Beach is in production and has a teaser trailer.

I saw that.

It does open with a spoiler for the first game.

So if you haven't played it or at least listen to this entire episode yet, don't watch it.

In eight hours, you're allowed to watch it.

Yeah.

Hideo Kojima says he began writing Death Stranding 2 prior to the pandemic, but rewrote the entire thing because even though the experience he created in the first game was eerily accurate, he discovered a whole new perspective that he plugged into the sequel.

I love that though he took his world view and was able to adapt it based on new information.

I'm surprised he had to adapt much because fuck, he nails it.

He doesn't know how many games he has left in him.

He is over 60 years old, but he wants to keep going because Kojima Productions is privately owned.

He doesn't have anyone telling him he must grow for the sake of growth and profits.

His name is on the fucking wall.

He can do whatever he wants.

He can finally just make whatever he wants, and will keep doing that for as long as he can.

That's the dream.

That's what happens when your mom gives a shit about your dreams.

Yeah, right.

If you follow him on Instagram, you'll see he is having the time of his fucking life.

That's for damn sure.

His Instagram is fucking feral.

It really is.

It's always presented without comment.

Or context, nothing.

Zero, not a crumb of context.

And we're just seeing him like, I'm at the premiere of all these movies.

Look at me.

I'm on.

I'm in space.

Like, we're going to see him on the International Space Station.

At some point, everyone will go, yeah, of course, it's Kojima.

He just does shit.

He's out here drinking coffee with Sam Lake.

He's in a Hollywood red carpet.

He's just like getting his feet done, you know, like he's living his best fucking life.

Yeah, he's like man can go anywhere.

Might as well go to space.

Yeah.

He's also currently producing an Xbox exclusive with Oscar winner Jordan Peele called OD short for Overdose.

Oh, that I loved that.

Oh, that was so fucking thing when he came out.

They had I got five on it playing with Jordan Peele has somehow had become his anthem, which is such a cool fucking thing.

It's horror, it's hip hop, it's classic, it's novelty.

It's still so relevant.

It's fucking great.

I think Hunter Schafer's in OD as well.

They have some really great talent coming in for that.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

I think it's going to be an excellent, excellent game.

But make sure you leave a like on his page.

And leave one for us as well because we're also on Instagram where we post reels, pictures, stories and fun facts constantly.

I love shoehorned in product placement.

One of the best and yet simultaneously most frustrating parts of this game is that it throws you into its world as if you've been living in it your whole life.

Mainly because your playable character, Sam Porter Bridges, has been living in this post-apocalyptic world since birth.

So he doesn't really need things explained to him as if he was born sexy yesterday.

There's no clunky exposition of like, hello father, I am your son.

There's very minimal versions of that.

Okay.

So there's some for the audience, but it's not hand-fisted.

Right.

Exactly.

But there's just a lot of shorthand and slang terms.

If you the player want to learn more about it, you have to read random emails you receive or files you find throughout the game.

Or listen to the rest of this episode, theothercastlepodcast.com.

Not how that works.

What?

I do feel like one of our duties on this show is not just to transcribe the stories of these incredible narrative heavy games.

It's also our job to help these stories make fucking sense.

Yes, please.

Yeah.

Sometimes this shit is confusing as hell.

So I did the legwork for you.

Everyone say thanks, Tom.

Oh, you're welcome.

We don't always do this on the show and have only had to do it about three or four times before, but this is going to be a game where I'm going to give you some backstory and a bit of vocabulary lesson before we officially begin as it's all information Sam already knows or isn't like a big shocking reveal when he finds out, but will help everyone listening understand just a bit easier.

I love as a player when you discover information and the protagonist like, that's some old shit.

Catch up.

You already know and then they give you all that information.

I'll start with two simple terms, ha and ka.

Your ha is your body.

Your ka is your spirit or soul.

Next up is a place called the beach.

The beach is essentially purgatory or limbo.

I'm familiar with a beach, but good to know that the beach here is like a metaphysical beach.

It's a specific place.

Yeah, it's the place between life and death.

A beach is specific to an individual.

How, when and where you die all contribute to the creation of your personal beach.

Oh, but when multiple people die and say a massacre or disaster, they will all share the same beach as their how, when and where are all the same.

There's a fantastic adaptation of this concept in an episode of Berry.

Oh, yeah, there is.

Your how, which again is your body, remains on earth, while your ca or soul is sent to the beach upon your death.

From there, you either cross over or become what is referred to as a beached thing, or BT for short.

BTs are an invisible entity on earth that are highly dangerous.

They're essentially what caused the post-apocalyptic setting of this game.

Simplified, BTs are ghosts.

I do mean simplified because it's a lot more nuanced than that.

They are made of anti-matter and they are a person's cause-spirit stuck in our world instead of on the beach.

Oh, interesting.

So their body obviously has expired.

Their ha has expired somewhere on earth, and their beach got them all fucked up.

Right.

To put it in scientific terms, and their ka becomes a real angry ghost.

Yeah.

They're distinct from a traditional ghost in many ways, but the biggest is that they are tethered to a location by an umbilical cord.

Oh, interesting.

They come in all shapes and sizes, including the BTs of animals and other eldritch horrors from the beyond.

The reason we know what they look like is thanks to a device called a BB, but more on those in a moment.

BTs are like ghosts in that their creation first requires a death.

When something or someone dies, instead of crossing over while on the beach, the ka goes out looking for its ha instead.

After death, the ha body undergoes a process called necrosis, where it essentially calls out to its ka.

Once reunited, typically after about 48 hours, the ka spirit consumes their ha body.

Oh, so physically the ha is eaten up.

Correct, yeah.

This causes matter and antimatter to combine, creating what is known as a void out.

A void out vaporizes everything in a several mile wide radius.

Oh, shit.

Leveling cities like they're nothing, deleting humans and BTs alike from existence, leaving nothing but a crater in their wake.

I feel like a lot of cats ended up as beach things.

It's not, you don't see a lot of cats, no.

It gives cat energy to be like, you know, I think I have 10 lives, bitch, going out and then leveling a city.

It's giving cat energy.

The only way to avoid a void out is to cremate the dead body within those first 48 hours.

Even so, a body must be cremated far from any settlements as their fumes are toxic from the necrosis process.

If a person's ha returns to the location where they died and the body is destroyed, the ha remains there as a BT, waiting for someone else to consume as they'll take any body they can get.

Oh, that's scary.

The only good thing to come from this is that the murder rate dropped to basically zero.

I mean, I hate you, but I'm not trying to ruin Cincinnati, so.

Yeah, people no longer use lethal force for any reason as they do not want to risk another void out.

So ironically, this has created a very peaceful person-to-person environment.

A bit, yeah, except that what you're gonna find out is the people are not interacting with each other at all.

The very first void out occurred when a doctor was saving the life of a newborn baby whose mother had died during childbirth.

As the doctor grabbed the umbilical cord of the living baby to sever it, the last thing recorded was the doctor saying, who the hell?

And then the void out occurred.

It became theorized that a BT was in the room and consumed the dead mother.

Scientists were captivated by the who the hell of those final moments.

They came to a conclusion that the doctor could see the invisible BT the instant he touched the umbilical cord.

After the first void out, they tried to safely recreate the conditions that caused it the first time.

There doesn't sound like there's a safe way to recreate that, though.

There's really not.

They didn't want a dead body to necrotize while they experimented, so they found a workaround by finding women who have gone brain dead during childbirth, not all the way dead.

Oh, God.

They referred to this type of brain dead mom as a still mother.

This is horrific, and we haven't started.

Not yet.

No, we haven't.

Being brain dead meant the baby it was producing would be connected between the living and the dead via their umbilical cord, like a bridge, giving them the name Bridge Babies or BBs for short.

Can I tell you why this is hitting me in the guts?

OK, please.

Oh, God.

No, I already know.

The audience doesn't.

Yeah.

My name is Andrea.

Yep.

I was born nine months after the San Andreas earthquake in San Francisco.

Where did they get the name?

My parents named me like a Hideo Kojima character.

During the San earthquake, do you know where my father was?

My father was on the Bay Bridge.

Do you know what middle name is?

It's Bridget.

Her name is Andrea Bridget.

Your dad's not a creative man.

Hideo Kojima is, though, and he clearly names things the same way my parents did.

Oh, my God.

It's going to get so much worse.

Don't worry.

You're not wrong.

His naming conventions are awful.

So nine months after this horrific earthquake that claimed tons of lives, millions of dollars of damage, truly ruined families, I'm born.

The San Francisco Chronicle publishes a list of what were called earthquake babies.

Oh, my God.

People with names after the earthquake.

People that were born one pregnancy length after the earthquake and were deemed earthquake babies because we were, oh, no, we're about to die babies.

Oh, my God.

I'm a bridge baby.

You are.

My life only exists because of all this death.

Like, I'm, I'm, is this why they wanted me to play it?

It's OK, baby.

What the fuck?

I'm going to the beach.

Well, following several failed attempts that leveled a couple more cities, God damn it.

as well as killed a sitting president, a successful recreation of the conditions was achieved.

They hooked these babies up to some machinery and voila, BTs were now visible to the naked eye.

Whoa.

The biggest downside being, the BB needed to keep their umbilical cord for the bridge to work, so they have to spend their entire existence in a sort of makeshift portable womb.

This portable womb connects to a device called an Odra Deck.

It's a sonar-like device with five individual foot-long articulated appendages that shine light, looking kind of like a Doc Ock arm coming up and out of your backpack.

Oh, cool.

It sends out a pulse that can tell you information such as elevation of the ground, depth of the water, as well as where BTs are located.

It gives you a geographical readout and a ghost reader.

Yeah.

But only when connected to a BB.

Honestly, very handy.

Very, very handy.

When BTs are close, it starts spinning, clapping and glowing bright to warn you of a danger.

BBs only work for the person wearing the portable womb, and the person wearing the BB must wear a sort of fake umbilical cord of their own to connect to the BB as well.

So that they're able to catch everything that's happening that the BB is alerting them to.

Exactly.

Got it.

They're unfortunately only operational for a short period of time, as after about a year or so, they become too large for their pods and they're disposed of as a result.

Oh, no.

Most people find it easier to see them as tools, rather than living beings, as the world would be a lot worse and far more difficult without them.

However, after a few years, the woman who replaced the dead president put an end to the bridge baby experiments, despite their success.

Because usually you guys, this is fucked up.

Yeah.

BBs aren't completely gone, but they're extremely rare.

Another term is the game's title itself, Death Stranding.

It's in reference to the fact that the dead are being stranded on earth in the form of BTs.

It's a fairly new occurrence happening in the last 40 years or so.

Before that, the earth was as we currently know it today.

The void outs are what caused the end of society and sent the majority of people into underground bunkers for safety.

I want this to be the media that the aliens study.

To think that's what happened to us.

Yeah, and they're like, ah, the historical documents.

Oh, no.

Well, the BTs weren't the only thing driving people underground.

The Death Stranding also brought another awful thing with it as well.

A horrible substance called timefall.

It transformed rain into a serious fucking problem.

Rain?

Just like, I mean, it's not going to be regular smegular ass rain, but we're talking about rain that I know of, right?

As you know it, yes, but not at all.

Okay.

Raindrops now rapidly age anything it lands on.

That is a literal dream I've had.

I'm sorry.

Sounds like a nightmare.

It is a literal nightmare I've had, yeah.

I get wet and I age?

Nope.

Yeah, same goes for snow, too.

Once it lands, though, it becomes normal water, so it's perfectly safe to drink once it has touched something.

Oh, so just the process of it falling is like really horrific anti-Benjamin Button thing.

Yeah.

And then you're like, oh yeah, alpine spring water.

This is great.

Well, if it touches your skin or anything else that can be affected by aging, it deteriorates extremely rapidly.

Oof.

Pretty much only metal, glass, and hefty fabric can protect you from the timefall.

The last thing the Death Stranding brought with it is a substance called chirillium.

It's a crystalline structure that sprouts in places where voidouts have occurred, presumed to be the remnants of a BT that got vaporized in the blast.

Oof.

Its use has proven quite versatile, and scientists have made many advancements in technology thanks to it.

People use it for different purposes we'll discover as we go on our journey.

It can be toxic to regular people, however, with prolonged exposure.

It's not toxic for people, with a condition called dooms.

A very select few people have dooms, and they refer to it as suffering from dooms.

Dooms gives a person some level of access to the beach.

There are several levels of infection, with the playable character Sam being level 2.

This level allows Sam to sense, but not see BTs when they're near.

He would need a BB unit to see a BT, but the ability to sense them keeps him at an advantage over most every one.

I got that vibes disease.

Yeah.

It also gives him another ability that we'll talk about when we get into the story.

Regardless of level, proximity to Kyrielium causes people infected with dooms to cry, as does using one of their dooms abilities.

The other added bonus of being infected are the night terrors every single time they go to sleep.

Do you understand what benefits are?

This is why they call it suffering from dooms.

All of them sharing a universal vision of the end of the world.

Oh, it's a universal vision?

That's terrifying.

Yeah, they all share the same nightmare.

That's some final destination ass like we are all in this together.

Oh, no shit.

Oh, it is definitely the final destination.

You can't increase in level and they stopped putting a cap on the number of levels as people with higher levels keep appearing as the years have gone by.

We'll learn the different things higher levels can do as we meet people with them.

Of which, there are many people to meet in this game as we are about to embark on one of the longest distances traveled I think we've had on this show so far.

I've been worried about this episode because I have to be honest.

Hearing the gameplay described, watching the game be played, you'd probably call it a slow-paced walking and climbing simulator.

We've already played Firewatch.

Right.

You'd be wrong though, as it's not even remotely a walking sim.

I'll tell you, Andrea was even sitting next to me while I played saying, I don't get it.

As I had some of the most fun I've had in a game, just running down a hill while straight vibing to the outstanding music.

See, you get that that doesn't sound fun off the bat.

It doesn't.

Surface level, not great gameplay.

The gameplay is completely original and yet strangely familiar.

The challenge level is non-existent until it's pushing you to be better.

There's a sense of community in a desolate world where you're all alone.

Then ultimately, the gameplay turns out to be the prequel to a movie that essentially plays at the end as the final semi-playable cut scene is about an hour and a half long.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

I am not exaggerating.

The best part is, it was worth every second.

I'm so confused.

This was the game I was least excited to play this season.

Now, I will have Death Stranding 2 downloaded on day fucking one.

Sheesh.

But I will not pre-order it because pre-orders are a fucking scam.

So grab a Monster Energy drink.

What?

Strap on your BB.

I am the BB.

Let's go for a ride with Norman reedus Goombas.

What the fuck?

Because this is Death Stranding.

Using white lettering on a black background, the game opens with a quote from a short story by Japanese writer Kobo Abe titled Nawa, which translates in English to the rope.

The rope, along with the stick, are two of mankind's oldest tools.

The stick to keep the bat away.

The rope used to bring the good towards us.

They were our first friends of our own invention.

Wherever there were people, they were the rope and the stick.

The voice of our main character Sam is heard over another black screen.

He describes what sounds like the Big Bang and how it gave birth to everything after a giant explosion, setting the planets and everything on them into motion.

Then the opening credits play over shots of the unparalleled realistic landscape that this game has to offer, along with one of the dozens of perfectly crafted mood-establishing songs.

We'll link the playlist in the show notes because it is pure vibes.

Vibes.

As the music plays and the environment scrolls by, you see occasional wisps of smoke rising from the dark and dreary gray world of Death Stranding.

Fog rolls along and you eventually see a motorcycle-like vehicle tearing ass across the barren ground.

A man is on the electric bike, an extra set of boots hanging off the side, with briefcase-looking packages attached to the sides of the bike, as well as on his back like a backpack.

His medium-long brown hair flaps in the wind, and he's wearing big-ass sunglasses that are closer to snow goggles than sunglasses.

The bike pulls over and stops in a cloud of dust.

Overhead, birds start flying, clearly away from something.

A drop of rain lands on a patch of that medium-long brown hair, and it turns gray instantly.

The hoodie on the jacket goes up, then the motorcycle takes off in the direction of the birds, as rain begins to take over the area.

In the mud where the bike had been resting, an invisible entity creates a handprint.

The motorcycle approaches a cliff, but there's nothing on the other side, so it stops.

Looking at another ridge nearby, two deer can be seen jumping from one cliff to another.

With a little backtracking, it's possible to get there, so the bike takes off in that direction.

Looking up, the rain can be seen coming fast in a sheet, as both raindrops and birds fall from the sky.

Oh, fuck!

The camera lingers on one of the birds, as it rapidly ages and turns to bone in a matter of seconds.

Like one of those time-lapse videos far too many of us have watched out of morbid curiosity as a child?

A line of what appears to be oil splashing up from the ground chases after the motorcycle, which flies off the cliff those two deer had jumped from, landing on the other side, far away from the oil slick.

Standing right in the landing zone is a young woman with very short blonde hair holding an umbrella.

The bike crashes right into her, sending the rider and the umbrella flying high in the air.

Standing up in the now torrential downpour, you take control of Sam Porter Bridges, as you watch your motorcycle slide over the edge of the mountain.

Fortunately, your clothes protect you from the timefall rain that has turned this mountainside from a lush green to a dead brown.

Your only instructions being to recover your cargo and find shelter from the rain.

Looking around, you don't see the woman you hit anywhere, not even her umbrella.

But no time to worry, as you need to get out of the rain ASAP.

You learn the basic controls from here, but not through tutorial.

More of the very basic, push this button to perform said action, and you go from there.

However, the thing you'll notice very quickly is that walking in this game is unlike walking in almost any other game ever.

You don't just move like the left stick?

No.

As you put cargo on your back, the weight of your pack shifts.

Using the R2 and L2 buttons, you have to balance your pack by shifting your weight as you're walking.

This goes on to become one of the core mechanics of this game.

And it's what keeps it from being a walking simulator.

It gamifies the walking in a way that seems so simple and honestly kind of stupid.

But once it's in your hands and you're the one controlling that balance, it changes everything you've ever thought about traversal in a video game.

I have another couple of games coming up later this season that have big, vast, open worlds like this one does.

And I'll tell you, I played them after I played Death Stranding, and the traversal in those games felt kind of boring in comparison.

Wow.

So because of the innovation in this game, it's almost infantilized other movement in other games.

It really kind of did for me.

Adding just that little bit extra to the movement genuinely changed my brain chemistry and how I view movement in a video game.

God damn.

Fortunately, the game's menu screen has an autosort feature that distributes the weight as best it can on your body and in your backpack to make it more manageable.

But you will need to take the time to reset your pack very often, as you'll be picking up shit and carrying at great distances through the course of the game.

But first, you need to find shelter, as your cargo can take damage if it's in the rain too long.

I ordered eggs, it got wet, and you delivered chickens?

Come on.

If only, right?

Using your Odra Deck, which is that dock-ock arm that scans an area's topography, you look for a cave, which you find not far from where you are.

You get inside and remove your hood, revealing your face in its entirety for the first time.

On screen, we see the name Sam.

Under it is written Norman reedus.

Oh, there's just like not even a semblance of like, oh, the mystery guy.

They're like, here's the opening credits.

Yeah.

Let's give him flowers.

He is walking dead amongst the BTs.

You boondock.

I'm surprised nobody said that.

It's too easy.

Don't give me that.

In an attempt to get dry, you start to remove your clothes.

Yeah.

Your back, arms and chest are covered in bruises that appear to be the outline of hands.

A photograph falls from your pocket and blows to the mouth of the cave.

It's a group photo, and a raindrop lands on one of the faces of the people in the group, aging that spot to the point of being unrecognizable.

Oh, that sucks.

You bend down to grab it, but a raindrop hits your hand, and your skin wrinkles up just above a little skull tattoo.

As you begin to bend down to grab it once more, you freeze up as goose bumps erupt on your arm.

The goose flesh spreads as your breathing becomes more controlled and you stop moving.

In the mud next to the photo, a handprint appears, filling in with oil from underneath.

The handprint continues left and then right in the mud, as if an invisible person were walking on their hands.

After it passes, you bend to pick up the picture, but someone grabs your wrist, stopping you.

Looking up, you see it's the woman you hit with your bike.

Oh, you're alive.

She's completely fine, wearing a black rubber and leather outfit, almost like a motorcycle racer's uniform, only with spiked shoulders.

That's so punk.

She holds her finger to her lips, gesturing for you to stay quiet, as the sound of the invisible creature growls nearby.

The two of you watch the hands move up the cave wall, traveling in an arc overhead, then dropping down behind.

The woman grabs you and pulls you out of the way, just as a handprint appears where your footprint once was.

The two of you move to the cave wall and try to become one with it, watching the handprints move closer and closer.

One of the deer from before runs by and out of the cave, which seems to cause the handprints to turn and follow the deer, leaving the two of you relieved.

As you relax, a handprint appears inches from your head on the wall.

It crawls around you, outlining your body and handprints on the cave and grout.

But it eventually leaves, and tears pour down both of your faces.

Y'all got the dooms.

Looking out at the sky, you see the rain coming down hard.

You can make out the silhouette of five people floating high in the air above the rain.

The storm passes, and the bodies vanish.

Taking us into the prologue titled, Porter.

The game does have 14 episodes plus the prologue.

And they're each named after a person or a thing, so I won't really be calling out chapter breaks, as they're just there to tell you who or what you'll be learning about in that chapter.

The woman breaks the silence first.

Her spiked shoulders now retracted to little nubs, saying that they seem to have finally gone.

You pull your arm away from her as she's still holding on to it, and she apologizes, saying she didn't think she had been holding you that hard.

Seeing your tears, she says, that's a chiral allergy, isn't it?

So you have dooms like me, but you couldn't see them, so that makes you a level two, doesn't it?

You ask what she's doing there, and she says she's just trying to stay dry like you.

She holds out her hand, introducing herself by the name Fragile, which appears next to her head.

With the name Lea Seydoux appearing underneath.

Lea Seydoux is a French actress who appeared in many French and Hollywood movies, having worked with Quentin Tarantino, Ridley Scott, Sam Mendes, Wes Anderson, and recently joined the Dune franchise appearing in the most recent installment.

Oh, she gets work.

Oh, she very much does.

She's beautiful too.

You refuse her handshake saying that you've heard of her.

Yeah, Fragile, it's Italian.

As you go to gather your shit, she says, and your Sam Porter Bridges, the man who delivers.

Moving her own stuff, she drops a bag and some little grub looking creatures start flying up from one of them.

She grabs one in between her thumb and pointer.

It's squirming in her fingers.

She offers it to you, but you refuse.

I would never, eww.

She looks at it wriggle and says, a crypto bio today keeps the time fall away, then tosses it into her mouth.

There's got to be a Flintstone vitamin equivalent of a grub.

Come on, bitch.

You would hope so, right?

She asks if you want to come work for her, and you tell her that you heard Fragile Express had plenty of employees already.

She says that, well, most of them are traitors.

Okay, so Kojima leaves his old job, starts a company that's just called Kojima.

Yeah, you're going to see a few.

His first statement is, you cannot trust these motherfuckers.

Yeah, if you want to draw some parallels, you're not going to be wrong.

Okay.

Removing a glove, she tells you there's not much left of her anyway.

She shows you her hand, and it's that of a very old lady.

She got wet.

She says that she got caught in the timefall and got soaked neck to toe, so she's not as spry as she used to be.

You tell her you're freelance as you get your pack loaded up and get ready to head out of the cave into the sunny beyond.

You get a radio call asking for an ETA, which you don't answer.

Fragile tells you to be careful as you head into town.

Those things don't stay gone for very long.

With the timefall rain finished, you bend to pick up that picture finally.

It's of you and two women.

One older blonde woman wearing glasses, with her arm around you and the other woman, who is pregnant and whose face has been blurred by the raindrop.

Oh no.

Fragile says it's interesting how timefall fast forwards whatever it touches, but it can't wash away the past.

She says she'll see you around, and literally vanishes before your eyes.

She's a lot.

She is so much, right?

You look around like, what the fuck?

Then head to your destination, central, not city.

Not spelled K-N-O-T.

Despite the word city, there's nothing city about it.

It's a big flat cement slab with a bunch of hard light fencing surrounding it.

There's an opening that allows you to descend a single floor into a garage-like area.

From there, you push them buttons on an access terminal, which opens up a hatch in the wall, where you can place your deliveries to be taken to the respective owner inside the bunker city.

Fortunately, every city is designed pretty much exactly like this one, as it's the safest way for people to live in this world.

After your delivery, you turn around to find a hologram of a woman standing behind you.

She's a white woman with dark brown hair, wearing glasses, a white tank top, and some khaki pants.

She asks what took so long.

It's not like the legend himself to be late.

You tell her you lost your bike and had to wait out the storm.

She's like, damn, that sucks for you.

Sucks you were late, too, but thanks for the supplies.

She's like, you're also on the clock, dipshit.

Then she logs out and vanishes.

As soon as she does, you get a priority one delivery notice.

You check to see from who, and you roll your eyes stepping outside the delivery shelter.

A yellow delivery truck approaches, but it's futuristic, so it has like hydraulic lifts that can raise it up really high.

The hydros lower the truck down and you can see the word bridges painted on the side.

It's logo is that of the United States, with a spiderweb stretching across it from the East Coast to the West Coast.

Spider America.

Yeah.

A man hops out and introduces himself as Igor, of Bridges Corpse Disposal.

Wait, that's really funny.

So Dr.

Frankenstein's assistant, famously named Igor, Right.

Dealing in corpses and trying to kind of, you know, identify how to bring them back to life, but kind of ironically, this one's getting rid of them, so they don't come back to life.

I see you Kojima, that's funny.

He tries to shake your hand, but you refuse.

He says, Oh, right.

Your file said you had a phobia of touching or some shit.

Whatever.

He needs your help with a disposal.

He's just a little neurodivergent.

He doesn't like touching.

That's fine.

Like valid.

I don't love touching people either.

And Igor respects that.

In the bed of the truck is a body bag.

You ask how long since they died?

And Igor says it's been about 40 hours.

Oh, shit.

You better flame that motherfucker up.

The closest incinerator is north of here, and he needs you to come on that delivery because the area between here and the incinerator is crawling with BTs.

And if we don't do this, we could ruin Not City.

Igor doesn't have dooms, so he has no way of sensing them, but you do, so they'll have a better chance with you along.

You hold your hand out over the body, and the straps of this body bag reach out for your hand.

You say that the body is already undergoing the first stages of necrosis, so the clock is ticking.

You agree to go as their guide, telling him that you can only sense them, not see them.

Igor says that's why he came prepared.

Igor plugs a cable into a port on his suit.

A pack he had been wearing on his chest goes from a black nothing to a translucent glass container.

Oh.

Inside the glass is an amber liquid.

Floating there is a fetus.

The fetus wakes up as the container changes from black to translucent, doing a backflip.

Igor says plugging into bridge babies always freaks him out.

Yeah, man, core concept.

I don't love this idea either.

Yeah, you're plugging into the other side.

It freaks you out too.

Oh, I was just mad that it was a baby.

Yeah.

The fetus looks more like a whole ass baby than an underdeveloped mess of limbs.

The baby swims up to the glass, hands and face up against it, headbutting it gently.

Oh, he's a little ham.

You recoil, weirded out by the BB.

Igor says to roll out, and the van drives off with you riding in the bed with Igor and the body.

On the way, Igor laments about the way things used to be.

Back in his day, America was one big, united country where you could move about freely with ease.

Then the goddamn Death Stranding happened and those damn BTs came and fucked everything up.

The world ended, and now delivery boys like you are the most essential people in the world because everyone has to live underground now.

Talking about the post-made essential workers during a pandemic is crazy for a 2019 game.

Hideo Kojima, the prophet, everyone.

It's wild, isn't it?

Yeah.

Thunder rumbles in the distance, indicating that timefall and BTs are ahead.

Looking down at the body, you see black, oily ooze rising up from it, reaching out.

You say you have no time and need to get to that incinerator now.

As rain begins to fall, your hoodie automatically deploys over your head.

Igor's Odra deck pops up, and being connected to his BB, it scans the area for BTs.

The truck's engine stalls, and the driver begins to panic, saying they have you all right where they want you.

Looking down again, the black ooze is pouring out of the body, reaching higher up.

The truck lurches forward, once again driving.

The sound of BTs surrounding and chasing can be heard.

Igor hits his BB unit, saying this stupid thing must be broken.

This baby is broken!

From inside the cab of the truck, the driver is going as fast as he can in the very little visibility he has.

Suddenly, black hand prints appear on the window, and the truck slams onto its side, crashing and sending everyone flying.

Oh shit.

You wake up face down in the mud.

Surrounding you is dead plant life, destroyed by the timefall, as well as dead crabs littering the ground.

In fact, this game will have a lot of sea life imagery in places it doesn't belong.

Because the beach?

Yeah, it's both a metaphor and has practical reasons for being there.

A beach is created in the location of someone's death on another plane of reality.

Since those two realities are having crossovers due to the death stranding, then from time to time, things from the beach will appear anywhere a death has occurred, regardless of its distance from an ocean.

I totally get that this is meant to be like biological, but my dumb ass auto filled it with like beach balls.

No, animals and shit.

Just a loose fold up chair.

So yeah, you'll even see like whales out in the middle of the country.

Wild.

Looking around, you see Igor laying near the wrecked truck, but can't see the driver anywhere.

The dead body is near you, so you approach it.

It's almost all black, and a gold crystalline substance has begun to sprout from the darkest parts, such as the face and stomach.

You hear a struggle nearby and look up to see Igor trying to help the driver.

He's pinned under the truck, hoodless, as Igor hovers over him to keep the timefall off his unprotected face.

Igor's BB activates and he says, They're here.

Igor looks around for the BTs.

This leaves the 20-year-old driver's face unguarded from the timefall, and he ages 30 years in the few seconds he was unshielded.

Igor apologizes, saying he can't get him out.

Igor calls to you to help, and you tell him not to breathe.

Igor and the driver both cover their mouths and go as silent as possible.

Hands appear in the mud around them, as they lay there still and quiet.

The hands circumvent them and head around to the other side of the truck.

Igor gives you the thumbs up, so you stand to go help.

You look at the necrotizing body as it begins to convulse and shake.

The golden crystal, now the image of a faint skeleton upon the black ooze.

The ground around it turns black and the body sinks into it, the gold dissolving as it does.

From the truck, the driver begins to panic, yelling out.

The handprints appear and quickly approach the driver, who is getting older by the second.

Igor yells out that they're surrounded.

You look up into the sky.

Lightning flashes, and you see the faintest outline of a giant standing over the scene, but it vanishes as the bolt's light fades.

Black Tar begins to surround the driver, who is a shriveled old man now.

Dark arms come up from the oil and grab him.

He begs Igor for help, saying, don't let them take me.

The arms begin dragging him up and away.

Igor apologizes as he pulls a pistol and shoots the driver in the head, killing him.

The arms release the driver, and his body lays there in the rain.

You come up behind Igor, and the two of you look over as a person comes floating down from the sky and lands on the upended truck.

We don't see him above the neck, but we do see him plug a cable into his chest, and a BB unit of his own activates, but his liquid is red instead of yellow.

Igor's BB starts doing flips, which makes Igor look down to see the black ooze surrounding him.

Turning back to the truck, the man has vanished, and the truck begins to sink.

Igor pulls his gun and begins shooting at an entity that only he can see thanks to his BB unit.

Arms grab onto his legs, and they begin to pull him down.

Igor rips his BB unit off his body and tosses it towards you, landing in the muck.

Igor nods his head at you, then puts his pistol under his chin, and pulls the trigger.

This was the feel-good game of 2019.

What the fuck?

A black tentacle grabs his hand at the last moment, causing him to miss his shot.

Another black tentacle grabs his leg and begins to lift him high into the air.

Igor kicks and struggles, trying to break free.

Gravity appears to reverse as he begins to rise up into the air by an unseen force.

Igor pulls a knife from his ankle holster and begins to stab himself as many times as he can in the chest and stomach.

That's like the worst way to go.

Oh my god, right?

Oh, I know he's desperate, but Jesus Christ.

You pick up the BB unit, cradling it in your arms like the child it is.

Looking up, you can see the giant BT from before, 40 feet tall and is controlling the tentacles pulling Igor, the driver, and the other dead body you brought with you high into the air.

Is it fucking Cthulhu?

Yeah, basically.

Oh god.

A bright flash comes from the head of the giant.

You turn to shield yourself and the BB from the blast and everything goes black.

You awaken on a wet sandy beach and can hear the sound of a baby crying nearby.

Oh, you fucked up, Sam.

You're completely naked and you find the newborn laying on the sand nearby, umbilical cords still attached.

You pick the baby up, revealing that the only thing you're wearing is a set of six dog tag looking things and a set of handcuffs with only one wrist cuffed.

You hold the newborn close, crying along with the baby, then it vanishes from your hands.

Looking down, your hands are black and little invisible baby hands appear on your leg, crawling down into the sand.

Oh, poor little guy.

You stand to follow the prince as they head toward the water.

In doing so, it reveals you do not have a belly button.

In its place, there's a scar that appears as if you had a surgery that requires a cross cut open over your belly button, and in sewing it up, the scar tissue essentially removed it.

Standing alone on the beach, you look out at a gray and desolate ocean.

Whales, sharks, fish and other sea life beached and dead on the shore.

High in the sky, five bodies float above it all, looking down on the scene.

The bodies vanish, replaced with the words, Death Stranding.

Oh God, that's right, we're in the prologue.

The letters dropping down strands of smoke down into the water below.

A woman's voice can be heard singing the song, London Bridge is Falling Down.

A white woman with medium length blonde hair walks by you in a red dress, and four inch heels singing.

Perfect beach attire.

Right.

It's the most unrealistic thing in this entire game, is the fact that she is on this beach in heels.

It's ridiculous, I love it.

She walks into the ocean in front of you, and you follow behind her.

She's many feet ahead, with the water rising up to her knees.

On one of your steps forward though, you drop into the water, which is hundreds of feet deep.

Oh God.

You sink into the water, and look up toward the surface.

Bodies can be seen sinking down with you, dozens of them.

The camera settles, and you once again are in control, floating here beneath the surface of the water.

Looking around, you see yourself, fully clothed in what you were previously wearing, lying there seemingly dead.

This introduces you to the concept of repatriation.

Being a repatriate is a power Sam has because of his dooms.

It essentially makes you immortal, as you have the ability to come back to life.

Is this something that happens with every case of dooms?

No, this is very, very rare, even amongst people with dooms.

Oh, okay.

But it's very useful in a video game.

Ah!

The underwater here is called the seam.

It's the thin veil between the beach and reality.

Where BTs have a smoke-like substance called a strand that flows downward toward the ground, your body here in the seam has one that flows upward toward the surface of the water.

When you swim to your body, it allows your ha and ka to merge back together safely, bringing you back to life.

The visualization for it, though, is rather disturbing.

Your body's mouth opens, allowing you to swim inside it.

You go down your own throat until you encounter a fleshy blockade.

The blockage starts to move, revealing it to be the bald top of a baby's head.

The baby is sucking its own thumb, then pulls it out and gives you a thumbs up.

From there, you travel into the mouth of the baby, now traveling down its throat.

You come out of it in some strange environment.

You're clearly still underwater, but also inside a building, as if you're floating in a tank of yellow liquid inside a science lab.

A man in his early 50s is staring at you, panicking, saying, Bibi, it's daddy.

Can you hear me?

He picks up your container and begins to run.

But the vision ends suddenly, and you come flying out of the mouths of babes as you awaken back in reality, with the darkened Bibi unit you obtained from Igor held tight against your chest.

You stand up and vomit black goo, causing a few cryptobiotes to fly into the air.

Just like when Andrea resurrected Simon in Cult of the Lamb last season.

All hail Simon.

You stand up, tears running down your face.

Looking out, you see a several mile wide crater from the void out you just semi-survived.

You once again begin talking about a large explosion that created everything in the universe.

Then came the next explosion, and it changed everything once again.

Another explosion, and it may be our last.

Suddenly, you wake up in a bedroom, with the handcuff you were wearing on the beach locked to the bedpost.

You panic trying to get out, when a voice welcomes you back to the land of the living.

He says, not to worry, he's a doctor.

Well, coroner actually, but not much difference.

There is, but okay.

It's like a dentist saying, I'm basically the same thing as a doctor.

No, it's like an archaeology professor saying, it's basically a doctor.

Because my shit says PhD.

Right.

Close, but no.

But different.

He introduces himself by the name Dead Man.

I don't like that.

The name appears next to his head with the name Guillermo del Toro underneath it.

I love Guillermo del Toro.

Along with the parenthetical special appearance underneath that.

In his intro, they get the with.

Yeah, right?

That's cool.

Further down is the name Jesse Corti.

Guillermo del Toro only lent his likeness to the game.

Jesse Corti provided the voice.

Got it.

Which, yeah, Dead Man looks like Guillermo del Toro, the director, if Guillermo del Toro had a giant scar running across his forehead.

He was punk as fuck.

Yeah.

He laughs about his name being Dead Man, considering he's talking to a repatriate.

Dead Man's never actually died despite the name.

He releases your cuff from the bed, but not your wrist.

You try to remove it, but he stops you, saying they're not like regular handcuffs.

These are a communication device that allows you to talk with everyone on the bridge's network.

Dead Man holds his own up, and you see it's glowing with a blue light.

You hook the dangling end of the handcuffs, so both are attached to the same wrist.

The whole thing lights up like a futuristic smartwatch, projecting a holographic display of your vital signs, as well as the bridge's logo.

Looking at the date, you're like, I was out for two days, are you shitting me?

Oh God.

Deadman says they weren't sure what to expect, so they took some blood samples, as well as some other fluids, while you were out to analyze.

Dude.

Even if that happened, don't admit it, that's weird.

Deadman's never had a chance to study a repatriate before, so he wanted as much data as he could get from one.

So I must have his ass sweat.

Right.

He tells you that all of Central Knott City was destroyed in the Void Out.

They lost everyone from research teams to body disposal.

He says the new base for Bridges is now Capital Knott City.

Fortunately, the director and some of the other higher ups were out of town when the Void Out occurred, so they're reconvening there.

Deadman says he hates to ask so soon after you being brought back to life, but he has a job for you.

Before telling you about the job, he sees the hand marks all over your body.

He points to a tiny one that looks fresh and asks if it was from the repatriation, which you confirm.

Then he points to another on your forearm, saying it looks fresh, but not as fresh.

You say it's from a clingy woman in a cave.

Deadman goes, ah, affenphosmophobia, the fear of being touched.

Goes on tight.

Oh, thank you.

I had to type that out phonetically.

Yeah, I don't blame you.

That's why you work alone, which I don't know why they call it phobia, when it physically marks your body.

That's more an allergic reaction, if you ask me, but.

It fully undermines, like, oh, you're just nervous.

Like, no, dude, I'm getting a fucking rash.

Yeah, I literally bruise anytime somebody touches me.

Deadman says he needs you to bring the president morphine.

You say that America is dead.

There is no president.

Deadman says, no, America is not dead.

It absolutely lives on, and the government is trying to reestablish itself as we speak.

But the president has cancer because fuck cancer, and they need morphine to get through the final stages.

That's hard.

You ask why he can't do it.

To answer, Deadman walks towards you, and then through you, revealing himself to be a hologram.

Like Tupac.

Saying, because I'm not really here, Sam.

He explains that it's a really good hologram because it's powered by carillium, referring to it as a chiral gram.

You say that you still think this is all bullshit.

There's no way the president doesn't have morphine at the capital.

Yeah.

Deadman says, America's final president wants to see you personally, Sam.

Why are you arguing?

Just shut up and take the job.

With a flash, Deadman vanishes, and you take a briefcase full of morphine on as a delivery.

You leave your room with instructions to meet Deadman in person at an underground facility in Capital Knot City.

Now, the good thing about delivering drugs is you're kind of legally allowed to skim a little off the top of yourself.

In my experience.

Oh my god, don't be stealing.

I'm not.

It's a tip.

What are they gonna do?

Yeah.

When you get there, people scurry about doing science shit.

Deadman greets you, and you hand off the morphine.

Is it still his hologram?

No, this is the real Deadman now.

Oh shit.

He thanks you, saying the president will be happy to have her pain relieved and that she wants to speak with you in her final moments.

You're all, I'm sorry, her?

Deadman says, yes, her, the last and only female president of the United States.

Oh, man.

You know, the woman who raised you.

OK, so there is some.

This is the ham fisted exorcist you're telling me about.

Kind of.

It's not as bad as you think.

OK, because that was pretty hammy.

He tells you that you are not dressed for a reunion and a change out of your delivery gear.

He's being a little demanding.

I know you were dead for two days, but I literally just woke you up and then demanded to know the backstory of a bunch of bruises on your body.

Also, I need you to run some drugs for me.

Oh, my God, why are you dressed like that?

Dude, get off my fucking back.

Entirely, right?

Dead man is on your back for a minute one.

Jesus.

Having changed into a much more formal black tank top.

I didn't think you'd say tank top and now I'm on.

Fuck you.

Well, I'm going to go meet the president.

I'm going to dress like Vin Diesel in the Fast and Furious movies now.

Jesus.

You enter the Oval Office of the White House, where the president is hooked up to a hospital bed, wires dangling from the ceiling like preemptive BT strands.

A man stands next to her bed.

Dead man explains that he is the director of Bridges and the right hand to the president.

You say, that's Die Hardman?

Dead man says he forgot, your last name is Bridges after all.

Dead man approaches the president and Die Hardman comes over to you to talk.

I love the name Die Hardman so much.

Oh, it's so good, right?

Asking how long it's been since you last saw each other.

His name appears next to him with Tommy Earl Jenkins underneath.

Tommy Earl Jenkins, having appeared in a bunch of video games and television.

Games include World of Warcraft, Elder Scrolls, Bayonetta 3, many others.

Oh shit.

Die Hardman is a tall, muscular black man with tight cropped gray hair.

Over his face, he wears a black carbon fiber skull mask with a barely articulating jaw for when he talks.

That's cool.

He says, it must be weird being a deathless freak like you having to sit through someone's actual death.

I don't love his energy.

Right?

Calling you a deathless freak.

Immediately.

This is the first time you're meeting him.

Rude.

He tells you that your mother, Bridget, should still recognize you after all these years.

So, your last name is Bridges and your mom's name is Bridget?

Yeah.

It's a lot of bridging.

Fuck off.

Then he gestures for you to go talk to your mom, who you had no idea was the acting president of the former United States.

How long have you been gone?

He said it was two days, but it feels like longer.

Well, he said, I haven't seen you in about 10 years, so you can assume.

Okay.

Dead man and die hard man leave the room so you can talk to your mother in her dying moments.

Her name, Bridget appears along with the performer's name, Lindsay Wagner, a long working actress, having been active since the 70s in TV and film.

Wow.

She's glad you're here, even though she knows you hate her.

That's a little hammy.

She says she needs to talk to you about someone you know named Amelie.

She went west three years ago, trying to rebuild the country.

Now she's stuck on the West Coast and can't make it back.

It should have been you, Sam.

You're the only one who could have actually made that trip.

But Amelie is still alive, so now she wants you to go rescue your sister.

You don't respond, but she assumes your cooperation.

Since you'll be going across the country anyway, she wants you to help connect people while you're on the way.

Humanity will never survive this apocalypse if everyone is isolated.

Connection is the only thing that keeps humanity safe and alive.

You tell her that America died with the Death Stranding, and that she's the president of jack shit.

Bridget throws herself at you from her bed, begging you to please go to the West Coast and rescue your damn sister.

She grabs at your wrist, finding the cuffs.

She smiles, realizing you wouldn't be wearing that, if you weren't already planning on helping.

You are a Bridges after all these years.

She sees the picture with you, her, and the woman with the blurry face.

She pulls you close and says, I love you, Sam.

I'll be waiting for you on the beach.

As she says this, a much younger woman's face replaces hers, saying the same thing, as if from memory.

The president takes her final breath and dies in your lap.

Deadman and Die Hardman come rushing in with a team of doctors and try to revive her, but to no avail, the POTUS has fallen.

The POTUS is no modus.

The oval office around her vanishes, revealing it all to be a chirogram to make her more comfortable in this underground bunker.

Die Hardman says that if word gets out that the president is dead, Bridges is finished.

Nobody outside this room can know she's dead.

Deadman says that's cool and all, but what about the body?

Everyone at corpse disposal is dead from the last void out.

So Die Hardman suggests using a porter, one who is already in the room.

They approach you saying that before she died, she entered into a contract with you to go across the country to save Amelie, and they're gonna hold you to it, as they need to keep up appearances that the president is alive and giving orders still.

Sam's having a rough week.

You are once again a member of Bridges.

Welcome aboard.

You tell them to fuck off.

Hell yeah, Sam.

You can't force someone to work for you.

He points to your hand where the president touched you, leaving a mark on your skin.

He says, that looks like a binding handshake to me.

Oh, that's kind of fucked.

Oh, right.

I don't know, the rash says it all, buddy.

Regardless, the clock is ticking, and this body needs to be destroyed in an incinerator.

The disposal team is all dead, so you need to take your mother's body and burn it.

Otherwise, the capital and everyone else gets voided out.

Then you need to set out and go rescue Amelie.

Before you set out, Die Hardman gives a speech about how Bridget Strand believed in America and that it could be rebuilt.

She deserves a presidential funeral, but sadly won't be getting one, as she believed America was more important than her own life.

Without her, Bridges will fail as a group, and the country will never reunite.

You question if something so frail is even worth saving.

Die Hardman says that your mother believed it was, and he asks you to trust her vision.

They load you up with her body and send you on your way.

Now, out in the wilderness of the US by yourself, you must create routes to follow for the easiest and fastest way from point A to point Z, using the map projected on your cuff.

Balancing your load as you cross the terrain.

Once you arrive at the incinerator, you lay your mother's body down and send it into the flames to be destroyed.

The smoke from her cremation rises into the air, and a storm comes down on the area almost immediately.

Die Hardman says that there was another package she included with the body, and asks you to burn that too.

You open it to find a BB pod.

Deadman says it was the one Igor had, but it's clearly broken as it got him killed and caused Central Nuts City to get wiped out.

You look at it and say, but it's still alive.

Deadman says that it can't survive outside the pod and is almost too old to be inside it any longer anyway, so take unit BB-28 and toss it in the fire.

Suddenly, the power goes out in the Incinerator's building and the rain outside gets loud.

Handprints begin to surround you as you hold your breath to stay quiet.

The power comes back on as suddenly as it went out, and the danger appears to go with it.

Deadman says they lost you in the blackout and asks for an update.

You say the place is surrounded by BTs and that you're fucked.

Deadman says that kinda comes with the territory of an Incinerator, a lot of BTs looking for their former bodies.

You look down at the BB unit and say you really only have one option if you're gonna get out of here without causing another void out.

You strap to your chest and plug it into a port.

Immediately, your brain gets filled with a vision like the one from earlier where you're floating in that yellow liquid.

It's much shorter and you're looking up at that man who said he was your dad.

He looks exhausted and dirty.

A voice can be heard saying, I'm sorry, Captain.

Then the vision ends as you and the BB are now connected to one another.

Your Odger Deck activates itself and starts going crazy.

Oh no.

Outside, you can see a dozen BTs floating just outside the building.

You have to stealth crawl yourself away from the building, avoiding the BTs along the way.

They're attracted to sound, so you have to hold your breath when they're nearby as they can't see you any more than you can see them.

After sneaky sneaking your way out of there, you head back to Capital Knot City to regroup before heading out.

Deadman radios in saying he can't believe he made it out of there.

People with dooms are not supposed to hook up to BBs.

Connecting a BB to a person with dooms can cause serious problems, causing your minds to swirl together like feedback between a speaker and a microphone.

It's probably fine.

Deadman says that you've just created a need to destroy BB-28, as he probably just broke its brain.

This kid's all fucked up because of you.

He and Die Hardman order you to find shelters so they can give you some instructions.

You unplug from the BB unit and head back into the city.

While you're carrying the blacked out unit, you hear it start to cry and whimper.

You lift it and the black fades to reveal the BB inside.

The fetus looks at you, pressing its face to the glass.

You decide fuck it and plug back in.

Another BB flashback, now a bit more clear, looking up at Dad once again.

He says not to worry that he'll always be with you.

Then he begins to sing a lullaby as the vision ends.

Deadman approaches you pissed off because he just told you that connecting to a BB is very dangerous for someone with dooms.

You shove BB-28 in his arms, telling him that you all owe that BB your lives.

And if you want it destroyed, he'll have to do it himself.

Hell yeah.

Deadman is like, fine, I won't have it destroyed, but you still can't have it because it's dangerous.

He's like, well, I'm obviously not gonna go do that.

But I will scold you.

He looks you up and down saying you should get cleaned up before you speak with the president.

You're like, what?

I just incinerated the president.

Deadman walks off with BB-28, carrying the container against his shoulder like you would an actual baby, saying to go clean up.

You descend into a bedroom that has been designated for you.

Everyone is so critical of how Sam dresses.

Constantly, right?

We've met like two new people and back to back, they're both like, you look like shit.

You lay down and fall asleep immediately.

You're taken to a beach, and you can see a boy of about 13 on his knees crying by the water's edge.

The woman in the red dress from earlier comes up to the little boy, handing him a trinket saying, here you go, Sam.

It's called a dream catcher.

It will drive all the nightmares you keep having away.

Little Sam takes the dream catcher in his hand.

As Big Sam wakes up from the dream, you look around the room, and Die Hardman radios in to tell you, this room is a perk of being a member of Bridges.

Everyone gets a room in any Bridges location across the country.

It'll be identical wherever you go.

There's a shower, a toilet, a closet, and a little recharging port for a BB unit.

Not that you'll have one, of course, because you're not allowed one.

There's also a table with a couple monster energy drinks on it.

Stop.

Just the original flavor?

Are we getting into like some spunky stuff?

Just the black on green.

Okay, the OG.

Yeah, it's some of that full blown product placement I mentioned in the exact same branding they use today.

I love it.

In the director's cut, they remove the monster of it all and call it Bridges energy drink.

They rebranded to their own in-house.

Yeah.

Since you're still stinky from dying a couple of days ago.

I'm sorry.

Man, you reek of literal death.

You have to meet the president.

You decide to take a shower.

As you shower, Dead Man's voice comes over a speaker.

Can he not get a moment of peace from this man?

You ask, is nothing private anymore?

Hell yeah.

He says no, except the toilet slash shower.

That's the only place not being monitored.

After you're done getting cleaned up, come to the president's office.

Once clean, you go to the Oval Office.

Die Hardman is there waiting.

He thanks you, saying Bridget's legacy has a chance to live on beyond her.

You tell him to stuff it, but he says wait, meet the new hope for America first.

He moves aside, and the blonde woman in the red dress is there.

You're all, Amelie?

Beach bitch.

Her name appears next to her head, along with the name Lindsay Wagner, and then Emily O'Brien underneath that.

Again, the first being the body, the second being the voice.

We've already met Lindsay Wagner earlier, and Emily O'Brien is a very accomplished voice actress appearing in animation and video games since 2006, as well as appearing as a series regular on the soap opera Days of Our Lives, having appeared in over 350 episodes.

Whoa, so she can slap.

That's over three years.

They make soap operas the way they make porns, just like it exists and then there's 800 iterations of it.

It's crazy she did that many episodes over the course of like three and a half, four years.

As long as it took them to make this game, she was just like a star on soap operas.

She's just a full on superstar.

Go off, girlie.

Die Hardman says that despite you two having not seen each other for over 10 years, she hasn't aged a day.

Amelie says that you already know her body is stuck on the beach outside time, so she'll never age.

I thought she was like, I hate the rain, I moved to Tucson.

Die Hardman says that's why she's the perfect person to take over as president.

Samantha America Strand, Amelie for short.

Her name is America, and she's going to be the president.

Right.

It's almost too perfect.

I love Hideo Kojima naming conventions more than I can describe being a victim of them, actually myself.

That's amazing.

You ask if she's really serious about reconnecting the entire country to which she insists she is.

She and Die Hardman want to establish the UCA, the United Cities of America.

It's interesting that so many international creators are interested in telling stories in America.

It's really crazy, right?

Whether it be as it exists with slight variations for their narrative or situations like this, where they take an existing world and politics and structure of commerce and stuff and be like, what if we made the ghosts kill everyone?

You know, but it's fascinating.

It also could just be marketability.

Then yeah, dollars talk.

I get you.

Yeah.

Using a 3D model projection, Die Hardman and Amelie give you a little backstory.

Amelie has a much higher level of dooms than you, which is why she stood off with a crew of Bridges employees west.

She was able to help them navigate the wilds by helping them avoid any BTs along the way.

They stopped off at every bunker city they could find, convincing many to join the UCA once it gets established.

For every city that agreed, they left behind a Bridges employee to help them with the transition once it's ready to go.

It took them three years to make it to Edgenaught City on the coast of the Pacific Ocean, 3,000 plus miles away.

Her arrival in Edgenaught City is when everything went to shit.

Her crew was murdered by the locals, and she was taken captive.

Oh, shit.

Murder is so extremely rare due to the risk of void outs.

Yeah.

Nobody saw it coming.

Totally.

She says that she's not in a cell or anything.

She's pretty much allowed to live as a citizen.

She just can't leave the underground city at all under the threat of death.

The people who took her captive call themselves the homo demons.

Oh, that sounds like a slur.

I know, right?

It kind of does.

I don't love that.

I don't believe it's rooted in hate, but-

Or anything.

It's just that he has terrible naming conventions and sometimes-

Sometimes they sound like a hate crime.

A group of former military personnel who reject any form of government control.

They took Amelie alive as an insurance policy that the UCA will never come knocking again.

You say you've heard of them.

They're a domestic terrorist organization running around the country, killing people just outside of towns and unleashing void outs in their wake.

Oh, God.

There are splinter cells all across the country too, which you'll likely encounter on your way west.

Amelie explains that while many cities agree to join the UCA, the majority did not.

Most wanted to stay isolated, which is another reason you're the right person for the job.

You're a solo runner.

Who better to convince them than a renowned lone wolf?

You can show them that the UCA isn't coming with force.

They're coming with connection.

You hold up your wrist, showing off the handcuff bracelet, saying she's no better than the homo demons.

Amelie is like, stop thinking of it as a handcuff.

And stop calling them homo demons.

I know that's their name, but I don't like it.

It's a symbol of what they're trying to do.

We're linking the country with our chiral network.

The chiral network is essentially the internet, but run on chirillium crystal power.

They say that if you find any communities or even just single people or families living out there that don't want to join the UCA, try and convince them to at least join the chiral network for the sake of humanity.

The people who got left behind on Amelie's mission have been setting up the infrastructure ever since.

They just need you to connect them to the network.

To do so, it will require a device called a cupid.

He holds up a necklace we've seen once before.

You were wearing it on the beach after the void out and it had six dog tag looking things on it.

Yeah.

They're not actually dog tags.

They're just six metal rectangular blocks about five inches long looking like a group of thumb drives.

At every terminal, you'll need to use the cupid to bring that area online.

Once you make it to the west coast, you're to rescue Amelie and escort her back across the way you would come.

Once that's done, then they'll announce the death of the previous president Strand and announce Amelie as the new president Strand.

You're pissed saying, you know how I had to change my name to Bridges because I wasn't good enough to be a Strand?

You walk out of the room with a big fat fuck you, telling them all to go to hell, and fuck the UCA.

I can see why they got a soap opera performer because this is dramatic.

Die Hardman tries to catch up and stop you from going, but you just tell him it's always the same old bullshit.

Connecting the world won't save it.

Have you ever been in a Call of Duty lobby?

Everyone hates everyone, and connecting them will just spread the hate.

They also use the term homo demon.

Die Hardman tells you to sleep on it.

Deadman approaches holding BB-28, saying that he made some tweaks to it that should make it safe for someone with dooms to use it without their brain getting fried.

He says that the two of you seem to have an affinity for one another at the very least, as BB-28's face is up against the glass being goofy at you.

Hey, I just met you, this is crazy.

But plug me in, because I'm your BB.

Perfect.

That night in your dreams, Amelie comes to you on the beach.

She tells you that you are a strand, regardless of your last name.

Strand being such a versatile word, a strand of rope, stranding upon a shore like a beached whale, being stranded far from home.

Right now, Amelie is stranded on the west coast.

There's a strand between the two of you as brother and sister that's going to bring you together.

She puts the dream catcher she once gave 13-year-old Sam into your hand, reminding you of the bond you once shared.

She gives you a hug, saying she's waiting for you, then walks into the ocean, the sun blinding you, ultimately waking you up from your night's sleep.

It's wild that he had to change his name because he just didn't have the bridge vibe.

Right.

I'm sure you can relate.

You have two older brothers and they waited until you to give you the family name.

They did, didn't they?

Yeah.

They had two whole ass boys and they were like, doesn't really have dad vibes.

They had you and they're like, okay, you can take the mantle.

To be clear, we all have the same last name.

It's the first name.

I got the family first name.

Yeah, you're a fourth.

Yeah.

Tom has Roman numerals in his name.

I was the fourth born.

I got the fourth.

It was fate.

Well, anyway, you wake up and pound a couple of Monster Energy drinks.

God damn it.

That is a terrible breakfast.

I know, right?

This man already has health issues and now he's going to have palpitations and green shit on top of it.

Well, since you have the option to take a shit, you might as well.

What the fuck did you just say to me?

Well, if you thought Monster Energy drink was shameless product placement, and it is, you haven't seen anything yet.

For your privacy, as you sit down to poop, a privacy screen appears.

Thank you.

Featuring an ad for a television series on AMC called Ride with Norman reedus.

I got to go.

I can't.

So, in this world.

No, I can't.

Yeah?

I can't fucking do this.

I know we have so much more game to cover, but I'd really love to take a beat and lose my fucking mind.

The irony being that Hideo is like, I know I have to do this, but if you're gonna make me do this shit, I'm gonna make you watch it while he does his shit, okay?

And I admittedly have seen this, and I screamed at you for about two minutes before you calmed me down enough to say, you know this isn't my fault and I didn't create this, right?

Oh, it's so bad.

It's got an image of Norman reedus riding a motorcycle without a helmet.

That's dangerous.

With Godzilla as a passenger.

Wait, I've never clocked that Godzilla is on the bike with him.

Is it riding bitch or is it right?

Sorry, that's in the back.

Okay, so probably not an appropriate term anyway.

So it's not in like the little sidecar that dogs go into?

No, it's riding on back.

It's holding on for dear life.

Yeah, and it gets worse.

How?

What?

Out in the wild, there's a random voiceline you can hear where Sam says, this would make a great episode of Ride with Norman reedus.

No, he references himself as himself.

He does.

That is some Sam Lake in Remedy Games shit, but like on a different level, because he's also, what, plugging AMC Plus?

Right.

It's not even the most interesting AMC title of the last decade.

Honestly, in June, 2024, it was one of only two series that were renewed at AMC, making it seven seasons of this show I've never heard of until this game.

There's seven seasons of it?

Seven fucking seasons of Ride with Norman reedus.

Why?

What the fuck?

I don't know.

You know they were about to dump the Brinks truck out of Money on Bob Odenkirk's lawn to be like, for the love of God, please do Better Call Saul a little longer.

One more season, please.

We only have this.

But ironically, wouldn't the other show be like The Walking Dead or like one of the spinoffs of The Walking Dead?

Eli Roth's History of Horrors.

What?

So I, okay, wait, just on another note, the only things they haven't seen is renewed in 2024 are to documentaries from creators that, what the, oh my God.

Okay, uh.

You can find Hideo Kojima in an episode of Ride with Norman reedus, obviously.

Does he get on the bike?

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Okay, good for him.

He's like, I'm just down for shit.

I'm clearly just on my side quest game.

Like, whatever.

Yeah, it's just like all his friends showing up.

It's pretty great.

I've never watched it.

I'm just saying, I've seen clips.

You're like, I've obviously spent enough time with Norman reedus on a bike.

I'm fine.

What the fuck?

I've never seen it where it's like such a big title with such a dumb thing.

Right.

It's so dumb, but they needed money.

Like when we talk about it, it's like Final Fantasy and Ramen.

Yeah, absolutely fucking Lutely, go for it.

Alan Wake and Verizon and like batteries because there's like dark and connections and all TVs and all this shit.

But this is crazy.

And this stayed through the director's cut too.

So you played this five years after release and they're still like, yup.

Because it's still fucking relevant, still running today.

I hate it.

I hate it.

I'm sorry for the literal detour, but it was just too insane not to mention.

Thank you for apologizing because I'm upset.

So after you shit with Norman reedus, you get a radio call from a man named Hartman.

He is researching beaches and the Death Stranding, trying to discover the mysteries of both.

He tells you that as a repatriate, your bodily fluids are so unique that he simply must study them.

Can't they just say blood?

No, because whenever you piss, crap or shower, he'll collect your sewage and science the shit out of it, literally.

I don't like this.

He's also going to be taking some of your blood while you sleep because, you know, science.

While you sleep?

I don't love that.

I think that feels more invasive, actually, to get it while you're sleeping because there's a distinct lack of consent there.

They let you know it's going to happen.

Yeah, like the other fluids have to come out just biologically.

The blood's supposed to be in your bag, you know, like it's supposed to be inside of you for the most part.

He replaces it.

With what?

Other blood.

Anyway, Die Hardman comes in asking if you've had time to think it over, holding out the cupid, which is apparently full of chirillium making them lighter than air and toxic to anyone without dooms.

Add that to the list of reasons you're the only one who can do this.

I get my special necklace because I'm sick.

Right.

It's me with my fucking bracelet of like, I'm not allowed to get MRIs.

Your medical bracelet where it's like, the help I've fallen and I can't get up button.

You tell them you have no allegiance to the UCA and don't give a fuck about the chiral network, but you do care about Amelie and you'll do it because it's what she wants.

He's essentially being enslaved, you know?

Yeah, he's getting guilt tripped into doing this.

Is it guilt or is it indentured?

There's something very non-consensual about his job right now that I don't love.

Well, he did have a handshake agreement, so.

It's a rash.

Right.

It's a rash.

Die Hardman explains how to activate a terminal, explaining that there are chiral printers at the major cities you'll have access to on your journey as well.

They will give you the ability to craft things like ladders, boots, guns, armor, motorcycles, trucks, entire highways, all sorts of things that you'll only have access to if everyone is connected.

But don't worry, the world will still need porters for anything organic.

You exit the room, plugging BB-28 into yourself, kicking off another BB flashback.

Is this a cute baby in your opinion?

Oh, very cute.

Oh, they made the baby so cute.

Oh, good.

Dad is standing over a woman in a hospital bed.

He says, I'm sorry, Lisa.

I promise I'll look after him.

Then he grabs you running off saying, Daddy's got you, ending the vision.

You have a delivery relatively nearby in Port Knot City.

Every place you arrive in, you'll be greeted by the hologram of a person, as they're usually several feet underground at the moment.

When you arrive at your first outpost on your way to Port Knot City, they freak out saying, it's been three years since they were promised a crew to bring the outpost online, and they sent one guy.

You tell him you brought the Cupid, and he's all, oh, well, in that case, hook us up.

Geez Christ.

With the network connected, you can now chat with people back at base through the holograms.

Die Hardman tells you that the Chiral network here will open up a zone, kind of like a wifi signal, but much larger.

As you go across the country, the goal is to cover it with signals so everyone can stay connected no matter where they live.

As the player, this opens you up to some very cool gameplay elements.

You yourself also get to join a sort of Chiral network as well.

Through your menu screen, you have access to a number of other people also playing the game at the same time as you.

Aptly called the Social Strand System.

The number of people you can select is low at first, but as the in-game Chiral network grows, you can connect to more and more players in the real world through the Social Strand System.

What this does is connects each of your play areas in a unique way.

Say you connect to Noobmaster69.

Noobmaster69 puts down a ladder somewhere to help himself climb the side of a mountain.

That ladder will also appear on your map as well, allowing you to use Noobmaster69's ladder.

Oh shit, thank you Noobmaster69.

This applies to all craftables as well as parcels and side quest deliveries that Noobmaster69 decides he no longer wants to complete.

Wow.

The Kyroll network unites us all.

Out in the game's world, you can yell out and if another player is near you in their own game, they'll automatically answer back.

That's sick.

You can Marco Polo with people?

Kind of.

You'll never see them and they'll never see you, but you're both there.

Wow.

You can even send out requests for equipment when you're short on resources.

You also have the option of leaving little digital signs giving warnings about dangers ahead or providing words of encouragement.

Perhaps pointing out a shortcut or safe passage.

The highway has also been destroyed, and with the combined resources across your network, you can donate materials to help 3D print the highway back into existence section by section.

When you're outside the chiral network between settlements, you're on your own.

You can't access your personal social strand system in an area without first connecting that area to the chiral network.

Then you'll have access to everything others have built or left behind like bridges and timefall shelters.

The environment is mostly mountains and rivers with occasional hills and valleys, very few plains with no desert along the way.

Nothing like the US as we actually know it to be.

Scale, don't fucking worry about it.

It's supposed to be 3,000 miles.

It's not.

Don't be weird about it.

No, it's people that don't live in the United States trying to build the United States, and they did zero research about it first.

Love it.

Beyond that are the BTs, which you'll know are coming between BB-28 and your Spidey Sense Tingling.

There are also groups of bandits called Mules out there as well.

They don't kill, but they will knock you out and steal everything you own.

But they'll fuck you up.

Fortunately, there are guns with non-lethal ammo that you can use to protect yourself.

At the next facility, all that action getting there has caused BB-28 to become agitated.

Deadman appears as a chiral gram and instructs you to plug it into the port in your private room.

He tells you that the BB program didn't work until they started using mothers who are brain dead.

These ports connect the BB back to their mother in a central holding facility at Capital Mount City.

It essentially recharges them when they need it.

He reminds you that this one is looking pretty old and that BBs don't typically last longer than a year.

So this one may need replacing before you make it across the country.

He tells you that he'll check in on it whenever you plug it into recharge.

He vanishes and you continue on your quest.

Along the way, you'll start to get e-mails and chiral gram messages from people requesting special deliveries.

You can follow us on chiralgram at the othercastle.

Deliveries vary from medicine, technology, an aperture science companion cube, or even something as simple as a pizza.

Oh, I love pizza.

This game is packed solid with pop culture and other gaming references that it's unreasonable to list them all.

But yeah, if you deliver a companion cube to someone, you get a pair of glasses called the Gordon.

What?

When worn, you bear a striking resemblance to Andrea's boyfriend.

27 year old Dr.

Gordon Freeman?

That's absolutely right.

See, he's like the only person I would want to watch ride with Norman reedus with.

You can even receive an email from a man who was lost inside the chiral network.

Oh?

He can't quite figure out where he is or how he got there, but he knows he needs your help.

He signs his messages as J, and he comes from a place called Night City.

Oh shit, I know what happened there.

He sends you on a series of quests as he tries to piece together his memory, which got fried after he was killed, and woke up inside a computer chip.

Now he's in this chiral network thing and doesn't know what to do.

Wake up, Samurai, we'll figure it out.

The quest line ends with you getting a literal silver hand.

Stop.

A pair of glasses called Johnny's glasses and V's face markings.

So they weren't even like subtle.

No, not at all.

That's fantastic.

Here's the thing.

The J that is sending the email is not Johnny Silverhand, but a different J from Cyberpunk 2077.

Really?

Telling you who would actually be a major spoiler for that game.

So I'm not going to say who it is, Chica.

Oh, wait.

I have emotions.

That's that's fucking cool.

Yeah, I was actually surprised by that.

It was a good reveal.

Yeah, because you're like, well, obviously, I don't know who it is.

No, you don't, bitch.

It's really funny.

As we talked about previously hours ago, Days Gone was the forerunner for original IP in 2019 gaming.

Yeah.

In Days Gone, again, without playing Death Stranding at all, my bike tank had a tank that had a moving BB in it on my bike.

Yeah, it did.

These games came out almost at the same time, too.

So that was completely planned.

It was just like riding with Norman reedus.

It was fantastic.

Oh, God.

Anyway, there are celebrity cameos galore as well, because Hideo Kojima asked every person he knew and liked to come out and lend a voice.

Hell, yeah.

Go down the Rolodex and be like, come through.

Yeah, here's an abridged list of people who lent their likeness and voiced the game as side quest characters.

Oh, Sean of the Dead director Edgar Wright.

I didn't know he was in this.

Alan Wake creator Sam Lake, my best friend, Kong Skull Island director Jordan Vought Roberts, an acquaintance once talk show host Conan O'Brien.

I love Conan O'Brien.

Game Awards Grandmaster Jeff Keighley, Dead Snow director Tommy Warcola.

Oh, I did see that movie.

It's pretty good.

Yeah?

Yeah, it's Nazi zombies in Serbia, as well as several Japanese artists, musicians, and novelists to round out the cast of characters.

I'm a sucker for that.

I love shit like that.

This is his Wolverine Deadpool.

Yeah, right?

Exactly.

Again, there are simply too many to cover.

So unfortunately, despite how big of a mind fuck delivering pizzas turns out to be, we won't have time to go over all of that in this episode.

Aw, man.

Just be careful who you are delivering pizzas to.

They may not turn out to be who they say they are.

Oh.

But each side delivery mission is as well crafted and fun as the rest of the game and its story.

Many of them giving you cool cosmetic and or practical items as rewards.

What was your favorite one?

Probably the pizza one.

Good shit.

No, I really enjoyed the cyberpunk one.

That one was really fun.

Yeah, that's so cool.

You get some really good stuff out of that one.

And you love cyberpunk.

I do.

Yeah.

I highly encourage players to discover all this game has to offer because the further you spread the network, the more of a community you'll create.

As these people are so over the moon excited to see you every time you make a delivery, they make the pain and struggle of dodging BTs, avoiding mules, balancing on a cliff's edge, and rerouting your trek worth the effort.

You were a legendary Porter before the game even started.

Now, you're just proving that your legend is true.

The currency in this world isn't really all that different from the social currency of today.

Likes, which don't forget to give us one wherever you're listening right now.

That's the othercastlepodcast.com.

People reward you with a number of likes for every act you perform, including other players.

When someone uses a ladder you placed, for example, they can thank you with likes.

You can also do this in turn and thank other players for their support.

Every time you log into the game, you'll be given a rundown of the number of likes you received from others and for what while you were away.

You can't spend them on shit, so calling it a currency is kind of weird.

This was an aspect that Hideo Kojima had a hard time convincing his team about.

He wanted likes to be an act of unconditional love.

No value, just appreciation.

You cannot give negative feedback to anyone in this game, only positivity is allowed.

He loved that YouTube took the dislike count off.

Right.

It's not like you really need money anyway, just supplies to use the 3D printers at each facility.

Depending on how well liked you are by that community, they'll give you the supplies you need to build shit anyway.

So being as helpful as possible is profitable, despite there not being any money.

The more you help others, the more help you receive in return.

Every time you exit your private residence, you have to plug back into BB-28.

Each time you do, you get another flash of dad in the hospital standing over a woman lying in a bed.

There are a finite number of these flashes, and after a few nights sleep, you'll start to repeat them.

Okay.

They're just moments being captured.

I heard from the POV of the BB in the room.

Dad yelling at someone saying, they promised his BB wouldn't be hurt.

Dad entering the room with champagne glasses to celebrate his anniversary with the bedridden woman.

Crying in front of you, saying he's failed as a father.

Showing you a picture of the moon and a book, saying you'll get to see it someday, he promises.

He holds a little astronaut keychain up at you, promising to take you wherever you want to go someday, even outer space if need be.

Like Hideo Kojima.

You see him dancing in the hospital room by himself, as if holding his bedridden wife in his arms.

Spinning until he falls down laughing, then looks up at you and says that today is her birthday, as well as the anniversary of the day they met.

Or dad getting absolutely shitfaced alone in the hospital room.

They're all different with the same constants.

Mom into bed, dad doing something to pass the time, you seeing it all, with occasional interstitials of dad running with you down a hall.

After a while, they repeat in random order.

After a couple, you call Deadman to tell him that you keep having these visions every time you plug into BB.

Deadman explains that he tried to warn you about this.

It's the BB's memories, and they're probably not even real memories anyway.

But that should be the worst of the side effects after the modifications he made to the BB unit anyway.

He's like, it's just a hallucination.

It's fine, dude.

Yeah, it takes just a second, so don't worry about it.

After a few deliveries, you gain access to vehicles, making your trip a little less foot-based.

It's nice to be riding with Norman reedus.

There are still plenty of mountains to climb and hills to run down, all with breathtaking views and vibes, courtesy of the beautiful music.

You also have the ability to collect chiral crystals in the cells.

They appear in highly populated BT areas.

They're what powers so much of our technology today.

Hartman, the doctor studying beaches and BTs, teaches you how to identify them.

They're golden crystals that rise up out of the ground, like the statue of a hand carved from jagged stone.

Using a storage device, you can collect them to be used in crafting using the chiral printer.

A woman we met early on, she was wearing a white tank top and khakis.

She's a part of the support team helping you across the country as well.

Her name is Mama, and she's an expert on weapons, uploading useful items to the chiral network's printer system, helping to develop defense against the BTs as well as non-lethal forms of self-defense against the living.

She, Hartman and Deadman have been experimenting on the bodily fluids they've been collecting from your private rooms you've been using, saying they are putting them into aerosols and spraying the air in BT territory.

It seems to be having an effect, and those areas seem to clear out pretty quickly.

Yeah, because they're launching shit bombs.

What the fuck did you just, oh my god.

I don't know, we made the place smell like piss and shit and everybody left.

I don't like it.

Hey, if it's effective.

I understand it, I don't like it.

Well, the most effective has actually been your blood.

We've sent them your weird monster energy shits.

It's okay, but when they smell your blood, man, you are disgusting.

So they give you some grenades full of your sweat, piss, shit and blood to use against BTs, asking you to report back on the outcome.

This is more poop talk than the South Park game.

How did we get here?

I don't know.

I'm so sorry.

The blood grenade proves to be the most useful, as it seems to kill a BT entirely.

The umbilical cord and the BT disconnect.

The BT rises into the air, turning a bright red and disintegrates into nothing.

Wow.

Underneath where it died, a golden crystal hand rises up out of the ground.

We got a milk Norman reedus.

This is a double first for science, as that's the first confirmed BT kill in the history of the Death Stranding, as well as confirmed what causes Kyrelium crystals to sprout.

After connecting several small communities, you finally make it to Port Knot City.

After connecting it, Amelie holograms in to thank you for everything you've done so far to connect all these people.

Knowledge the UCA once thought lost has already been found thanks to the connections and the information that was thought gone forever after the collapse of the world.

But now it's drawing the attention of the homo-demon cells across the country.

That's still a rough phrase.

Terrorists are going to be drawn to these connected cities as they will see their spread as a danger to their goal of unchecked anarchy.

The good news though, is that mama is using your blood samples to develop more weapon varieties to use against the BTs for when you come up against them in the future.

Now you can hook up your guns to an IV connected to your veins.

This coats bullets you fire in your blood, making them lethal to BTs.

It's fucked up, but your blood replenishes in your sleep, so you'll be fine.

It's pretty fucked up, yeah.

Like, we need to make sure he's getting like really good iron levels, you know, like there might be some anemia play that we might approach at a certain point.

Somebody's gonna help him out with that.

Oh, okay.

In order to move on from Port Knot City, you'll need a boat to get across a large lake.

Terrorists have destroyed every boat the city owns, but there is one private courier service that still has a boat.

You say, let me guess, Fragile Express?

Why did my dumbass think it was gonna be Sam Lake?

I'm gonna be like, it's an ocean, what the fuck?

Yeah, obviously it's Fragile, let's go.

The man you're talking to, who happens to be Igor's brother, says, good guess.

He says he's already hired the boat to take some of the supplies you just delivered across, and he tells you that you can tag along.

You hear thunder overhead, but the man says not to worry, it never rains in Port Knot City.

You've guaranteed it's about to rain in Port Knot City.

You exit the bunker to a downpour.

There it is.

Black ooze quickly rises up your legs and grab you, tearing you straight down.

They start to drag you away, but then suddenly let go.

You stop struggling, looking around confused at the arms, which are just kind of there, not doing anything.

You stand up less than ankle deep in the goo.

About a hundred feet away, a figure can be seen walking toward you.

Oh no.

He stops, and you can see that he is wearing a golden skull mask, covering his face underneath a dark hood.

He raises his arms into the air, and as he does, the ground beneath him rises into the air as a chunk of rock.

With other pieces of earth rising up and around him as he does this.

He says that he should introduce himself.

His name is Higgs, which appears next to his head, as per tradition.

Underneath the name, Troy Baker appears.

Oh, that's right.

He's in this.

Yeah, I don't think we need to introduce Troy Joel Miller Baker on this show, do we?

That is how middle names work in Hideo Kojima games.

You take the thing you do or are and that's your name now.

So actually, you've done very well with the name.

Okay, there we go.

Tom, Podcast McLaughlin.

Higgs, otherwise known as the God Particle.

Okay.

Higgs addresses someone on a nearby rooftop saying, Ah, it was you who dragged him into all this.

You look up at the person on the rooftop and see fragile standing there with her umbrella overhead.

Higgs teleports down to you, standing inches from your face.

He smells you and says, No way, President Strand is dead?

How stinky is Norman reedus?

He's like truthfully stinky though, like his blood smells so bad, the ghosts are like, fuck this, I'm out of purgatory, take me down to the beyond.

And now Troy Baker with a mask on, a full mask as you've described it, smells you in open air and is like, ah yes, the truth.

Well, he takes another whiff and goes, and her daughter is gonna take her place?

Okay, what's going on?

You and I both know, she is not a leader.

And then just for no reason, it all injects with like his bullshit about her leadership skills?

What, he doesn't think she's a good project manager?

Well, you know, women are just so emotional.

Oh, America, baby.

He's probably in favor of the nickname of the anarchist here.

Oh, right.

He circles you, saying he knows the truth about the Death Stranding.

And the rest of you plebes have no idea what's coming next.

Please tell me he actually says plebes.

No, he didn't.

Oh, damn it.

It sounds like a perfect thing for him to say, though, right?

It does.

The girl isn't infected with dooms like the two of you.

She's an extinction entity, focused on catastrophe on a global scale.

Higgs mocks your level two dooms, as he is more than just a bridge to the other side.

He's bound to both sides at once, letting him do cool shit, like take total control of BTs.

Whoa.

From his fingertips, strands of black pour out into the surrounding lake of dark ooze.

He pulls back as if on reins, pulling a giant something out of the murky depths.

A 30-foot kraken comes up out of the oil, dripping in black itself.

Oh, there's a kraken?

Okay, this got really fun again.

Higgs reminds you that if this thing kills you, that's a void out, and everyone in Bortnaut City dies, while you wake up perfectly fine, having allowed all those people to die.

Best of luck to you.

And then he vanishes, leaving you to deal with the BT of a mythical beast.

What the fuck, man?

Deadman tells you to use the blood grenades to defeat it.

They do the job killing the Kraken, and the entire area clears of all BT activity entirely.

Hell yeah.

Everyone heard you say you had killed a people-sized BT, but now they witnessed you take on a monster-sized BT, basically on a surveillance camera.

That's fucking sick.

Hartman is fucking floored.

The relief in his voice is palpable when he declares that for the first time, there may be hope after all against the BTs.

If we drain the man, we can kill the apocalypse.

Fragile appears by her side, offering you a crypto-biote.

You point out that she too survived the Kraken attack.

She says that despite her name, she doesn't break that easy.

That's such a cool girl line to say.

You ask about Higgs.

She says he's a level seven, maybe higher.

It's why he can control BTs, can teleport, all that stuff you saw him do.

He's the leader of a terrorist organization.

You ask why she knows so much about him, and she mentions that they may have worked on a contract together in the past.

She said, look, I had to make ends meet.

You ask why the fuck she'd work with a terrorist, and she says he was different back then.

Oh, I don't love that.

Then he started listening to Joe Rogan.

You ask what her angle is in all this, but she dismisses you saying that the boat is ready, and that it's time to head off.

On the boat, you sit down to chat with Fragile.

But before you can get going, you fall fast asleep in your chair.

By this point, we're heading into Chapter 3 of 14.

However, Chapter 3 takes up about one-third of the game's total runtime, as it is mostly questing and traversing across the country.

After Chapter 3, the numbers go by really quickly.

Discovery is the nature of the game, constantly wondering what new path you can discover, or discovering just how steep a rock wall you can climb.

You'll gain items and devices to help you on your way, like a little levitating cart on a tether trailing behind you, to help you lighten the load.

That's cool.

Or exoskeleton legs that help you run faster, or hold your balance better, or carry more weight.

That's cool.

You wake up on the boat to the sound of Amelie's voice.

She's there with you, but you're clearly in a dream as she guides you to the edge of the boat, pointing down at the beach below where 13-year-old Sam is laying in the sand crying.

Another version of Amelie approaches the 13-year-old Sam, saying, it's almost time to go.

Sam says he doesn't want to.

The Amelie next to you says that she couldn't believe it when you told her.

She had no idea that she was actually alive.

She thought she was just an entity roaming around the beach alone.

Not much different from being dead, really.

Little Sam says that Amelie is really warm as she puts her arm around him.

Little Sam cries, saying he doesn't want to go home.

Amelie gives him the dream catcher, now replaying that part of the scene.

At least from a different angle, unlike when Days Gone repeated a scene.

It's not that they're like sister games.

It's that like this game exists, and then Days Gone is their Amelie, their weirdest buck sibling that just shows up at really inopportune times mildly and appropriately.

So I guess it's fitting actually.

Past Amelie asks Little Sam if he's forgotten how to get home.

She stands and takes his hand, promising to take him halfway.

Then she says to him, I'll be waiting for you on the beach.

Come and find me.

Back as adult Sam, you and Amelie talk about how you two would spend so much time here on the beach.

You say that you could never understand why she didn't come back with you.

She says that there's no physical body for her on the other side.

There's nothing to go back to.

There still isn't.

Not until you make the US whole again.

Your ship begins to pull up on the beach, straight at Amelie.

She tells you that she'll be waiting for you on the beach, and to come and find her.

Then suddenly, you're once again awake.

The boat docks, where Fragile lets you know she's separated her cargo from yours, then leaves you to deliveries with a see you later alligator.

The lake you just crossed is not one that exists today.

It's the site of the largest void out to date, having been filled in with water over time due to the constant timefall that has hovered over it ever since.

The place you just landed, Lake Knot City, needs a connection to the Chiral Network since you're here anyway.

Amelie congratulates you on getting to Lake Knot City, saying that the easy part is behind you now.

Congrats, it's only uphill from here.

Beyond here lies Middle Knot City and South Knot City.

Just three years ago, when Amelie came through here, it was a different place.

Peaceful, hardly any BT activity at all.

Then Higgs and his separatist group carried out an attack on Middle Knot City, detonating decades-old nuclear warheads.

Then doing the same to South Knot City, taking out half of it in another explosion.

Holy shit.

That explosion changed everything for the UCA.

And they had to adjust their strategy.

Die Hardman tells you that since those major knots are taken out, you need to convince the preppers in the area to at the very least join the chiral network.

Most of them have used Fragile Express to get their supplies.

So Die Hardman set it up with Fragile to get you credentials showing you work for her in order to get them to trust you.

You ask why she's willing to do that.

And Die Hardman says it's probably to get back at Higgs.

They have a long history of really fucking hating each other.

You know that asshole we met?

A lot of people think he's an asshole.

Time heals all wounds, but in her case, it caused them.

You decide to get some rest before leaving Lake Knot City, taking you into another dream.

Young Sam runs to embrace Amelie.

He takes a necklace off his own neck, calling it a kipu.

It means knot in some old language.

Looking closely at the necklace, you recognize it as one you've seen on Amelie every time you've seen her so far.

Young Sam continues to talk about the necklace.

Some people use its many knots to count stuff, kind of like a rosary.

Amelie agrees that she'll add a knot to it every single time Sam comes to visit her on the beach.

He puts it on her neck, and she says that it must be very special if he was able to bring it with him.

She says that he made it for her.

Of course it's special.

She hugs little Sam while staring directly into your eyes.

You wake up, clutching the dream catcher in your fist.

A hand appears in front of your face, holding a crypto-biote, as Fragile offers you one.

You ask what the fuck she's doing here, and she says that your boss sent her.

She gives you a bracelet with a little chiral crystal on it.

She says it has her blood inside, which will show you're a member of the Fragile Express.

Wait.

Her company ID badges are her DNA?

Yeah.

That's illegal in most states.

Without it, you can't be shown as an employee.

I don't like it.

Yeah, it's the biometrics for Fragile Express.

I don't.

We could have done a barcode, babe.

Little QR in the corner or something.

Yeah.

I've had to log in at some employee places with my thumbprint to clock in and clock out.

Yeah.

This is gross.

Well, she used to have the whole territory exclusively.

Then Higgs fucked it all up.

Not just by blowing it up, but by ruining the reputation of Fragile Express on top of it all.

She had a crush on him.

He realized it and fucked her shit up.

I know I'm pulling that out of nothing, but that's what I'm getting.

You go, and what?

You want to fuck him back all on your own?

She opens her umbrella saying she's not on her own.

The two of you keep running into each other the first time literally.

It's not on purpose, but it sure doesn't feel like an accident either.

She throws her umbrella in the air and vanishes before your eyes.

She reappears behind you saying, here I am.

It's not a catwalk gram either.

She's really here, and she really teleported.

You ask if she has access to the beach.

She says it's a beach, her beach to be specific.

She can go there where time has stopped, then travel to wherever she wants to appear in the real world, and poof, she appears there.

Seemingly instantly from the viewpoint of the real world.

In explaining how each person has their own beach, she even drops the line, I'm sure you've heard of the multiverse.

In this sense, she means it like Bioshock Infinite.

So, take your first Bioshot of the season, everyone.

Oh, I forgot we do those.

Hell yeah.

Every gamer is playing the game slightly differently, essentially creating a multiverse of options.

And they all overlap, because you can mildly interact with others.

Exactly.

Beaches are kind of their own universe as well, as they belong to an individual, and isn't some all-encompassing singular location everyone goes to.

She ports around the room a couple times to show off, but then her nose starts bleeding.

She says that jumping takes a lot out of her, so she has to take it easy if she uses her power too much.

She warns you that your next major stop, Edgeknot City, is crawling with Higgs's terrorists.

You tell her, you're not a mercenary.

You don't take out terrorists or anything of that nature.

You don't kill.

She asks you to help her take down Higgs at the very least.

He used nukes for fuck's sake.

Yeah.

He needs to go down.

In exchange, she opens up fast travel by leaving her umbrella in the corner of your private room, allowing you to call upon her to teleport you to any location already connected to the chiral network.

Oh, that's cool.

The only catch being, only organic material can be teleported.

So you can't take any equipment or supplies.

You need to leave it behind in a locker.

Wait, do you teleport naked?

No, you don't.

You can keep your clothes.

Okay.

They've been a little trigger happy on Norman reedus' body in this.

Oh, they very much have been.

Yeah.

But because you can't take any supplies, it really kind of makes you not want to use it.

I get you.

I think I used it once to go somewhere and once to return.

And you're like, nah, I'm good.

Yeah.

And plus, taking your time is just so much fun.

Yeah.

As you make deliveries to some of the local preppers, you hear stories about Fragile.

Some call her a no good terrorist herself, placing the blame of the attack on Middle Knot City squarely on her shoulders.

Oof.

Others say there's no way the stories they've heard are true.

Fragile is an opportunist, not a monster.

Some of these preppers are young enough that, even being in their late 20s, they've never left their bunker once in their lives.

Touch fucking grass.

Joining the Chiral Network will be the first time they interact with others, period.

It's life changing for so many people, especially in these rural parts of the country.

Many of them eccentric inventors and coders themselves, adding their wealth of knowledge to the network, allowing you to craft more complex and useful items with the 3D printer.

As your reputation and network spreads, your ability to add more real world players to your social strand system increases, giving you access to more help from players, as well as allows you to assist a larger swath yourself.

Now that MAMA has developed weapons that use your blood to kill BTs, you start delivering them to people, hoping it will sweeten the pot for them and convince them to at least join the network, if not the UCA.

Some take the weapons and refuse to join still.

But most of them can be worn down with repeat deliveries until you gain their trust.

Thanks for the blood.

Fuck off.

But here's a pizza.

Yeah.

Okay, I'll join.

When waking from one of your many beach nightmares, you are distracted by the sound of your shower running.

You look over and see a silhouette of someone bathing.

You approach the shower, which does have the privacy screen activated.

You get close enough to look inside, realizing it's fragile in there.

You quickly pull away, giving her privacy once more, now that you've determined it's at least not an enemy.

Yeah.

She comes out fully dressed, apologizing, since you were asleep when she stopped by, she hadn't had a shower in a while, so she hopped in for a quick one.

You confront her with the conflicting stories you've been hearing.

She's heard them all, the good and the bad.

She tells you how her father started Fragile Express.

Together, they worked to rebuild America to its former glory, connecting the people of this region to one another.

Not as a chiral network, but an actual one, where they would share resources, food, technology, gossip, and stories between the different communities here.

When her dad died, she became a wreck.

Higgs saw that she was struggling, and offered to combine teams.

All with the vision of expanding beyond this tri-city area, and spreading their delivery network across the country.

Being a wreck, she couldn't smell the bullshit coming out of his mouth, and agreed to join forces.

Everything was going great at first, but before long, the deliveries stopped being for things like food and medicine, and they became deliveries for guns and other dangerous material.

She herself delivered the nuke into Middleknot City without her knowledge.

Tears flood her eyes as she recalls the moment.

She didn't mean to, but she also never even knew she had it until it had gone off.

She sobs, saying, she's the one who blew up Middleknot City.

She knew another package was headed to Southknot City, so she went there to stop it, but Higgs was there waiting.

He punished her, leaving her with scars that time can never heal, and Southknot City was destroyed regardless.

So yeah, everything you've heard about her is true, except for the parts that aren't.

Yeah, that's just kind of how stuff works.

Just like you, she doesn't care about the Chiral Network or the UCA or Bridges.

She just wants Higgs to go the fuck down.

She knows you can help make that happen, so she will help you with anything you need, including letting you pretend to be her employee.

With that, she vanishes once again.

During a call, Mama lets you know that she lives pretty close to Southknot City and invites you to stop by when you pass through the area.

Then, her baby cries off-screen and she goes to take care of it.

As you deliver more packages and upgrade more areas around the country, people begin to share their knowledge and experiences with other cities.

One of the advancements they make as a collective is the ability to predict timefall.

Through this, groups of farmers have discovered ways to use timefall to their advantage, achieving full harvests in a matter of minutes.

Oh, that's cool.

But the Separatists are also out here.

In order for harvesting to work this way, it requires automated canopies to strategically allow a small amount of timefall to hit the crops.

Higgs' people are destroying that equipment, sabotaging the first ray of hope humanity has found.

Jesus Christ, they're pricks for just the fun of it.

Right.

There are gains and losses, but so far it's been mostly gains on this mission west.

One of those gains, being a couple that was separated due to the terrorist attacks.

They're a relatively young couple, early 20s at the oldest.

The young woman was visiting Middle Knot City when it was destroyed.

The young man thought that she was dead, when in reality, they were only cut off from one another.

When Fragile hears this story, she connects the dots that she knows both of them, and you go to meet the young woman to make sure it's her.

Eventually, they hire you to carry her on your back to reunite the two young loves.

As soon as you put her down, she proposes to the guy and he says yes.

The guy always blamed Fragile for getting his girlfriend killed, so he wasn't being cooperative before.

But seeing she's alive, and that Fragile is the one who found her, he joins the UCA.

You will later receive emails from both of them, saying, this was a huge mistake.

No!

Yeah, they end up hating each other.

Oh my god, they're the COVID couple that meets in real life.

I thought that was really funny when I got that email, and they're both just like, ugh, this sucks.

Did they email you separately?

Yeah, they each do.

They're both like, hey man, I appreciate that you threw me a bone, but I fucking hate my partner.

This is not going the way I expected.

After a delivery back at Lake Knot City, you take an order for a distribution center south of Lake Knot City.

Fragile is going to be there anyway, and you want to talk with her some more about all the Separatist activity going on.

As you're about to head out, a man approaches in a Bridges uniform with a small package.

He says that it's a package for Fragile herself.

The system glitched because it's a Fragile Express package going to Fragile through Bridges.

Couldn't handle it.

Yeah, it's like sending something to the president of FedEx through UPS.

Which is just mean, I love it.

It's condescending.

He tells you to be careful.

The contents themselves are Fragile.

Did he get sucked in the face immediately for saying that?

No, but he giggles to himself and leave, clearly having rehearsed that line the whole way here.

I love that for him.

When you arrive at the distribution center, you're pretty tired.

So you head straight to your private room and go to sleep.

While sleeping, you replay the encounter with the man that gave you the package.

Something about him is bugging you.

Then the man stops reenacting the scene and looks straight at you.

From his pocket, he pulls a golden mask and holds it up to his face.

Your eyes shoot open and you shout, Higgs!

Fragile is immediately by your side and she's like, what about him?

She was watching you sleep.

You say, it was Higgs.

He gave you the package she ordered.

Fragile says she never ordered any package.

And she wasn't expecting one.

What the fuck are you talking about?

And you tell her about the entire encounter.

Fragile goes and gets the package from your equipment.

She opens it and immediately recoils yelling, it's a nuke.

Oh, God damn it.

He has one fucking play.

She's like, not again.

Okay.

There's a timer and there's only 23 minutes left on it.

The crater that was left after half of South Knot City was destroyed opened up a tar pit that had been underneath.

Oh shit.

It's hundreds of feet deep.

If you throw the case into the tar pit, everything should be okay.

So you take a motorcycle and speed down to the crater where you throw the nuclear bomb, a whopping eight feet into the miles wide crater.

Fortunately, gaming logic takes over and the case sinks beneath the tar.

Then half a mile out, you see a big orange and black bubble form like you find on one of the best slices of pizza ever.

Yes, the way nukes work.

But it never pops and slowly deflates back into the darkness below.

Eat shit, Higgs.

Yeah, safely eliminating the nuclear threat.

Good.

Fragile appears by your side, happy to see you manage to save the city from a second explosion.

You tell her that now that you've both accidentally carried a nuke given to you by Higgs.

You know, that elite club.

It's time she tells you what really happened the day hers went off.

As Fragile tells you her story, we see it all in a flashback cut scene.

The moment Fragile knew she had a nuke, she tried to run away with it to get far from the city.

But Higgs had soldiers following her, and they took her captive the moment she tried to run.

We see Fragile on her knees, hands bound behind her head, being held at gunpoint inside a warehouse.

She's wearing nothing but her underwear, looking through a blown-out wall to the outside.

Where Higgs points a finger into the sky, causing timefall to come raining down.

The nuke next to her has just over 15 minutes left on it, as the seconds tick by.

Higgs tells her that she's lucky.

She's going to be given a chance today.

A chance to live.

All she has to do is teleport away from here.

She can't take complex objects with her when she jumps from somewhere to the beach, so the bomb won't be going anywhere when she does.

Or she can stay here, and see how far she can carry the nuke before the timefall takes her.

Oof.

Maybe she can save a few lives in the process.

Probably not though.

Oh my god.

But maybe.

There is a pit just outside the city.

If she can make it that far, she could probably save everyone, but she will be running through the timefall, so those are her options.

Is Higgs fucking Jigsaw?

Oh my god, right?

He's fucking diabolical here.

Vanish and live, or sacrifice her youth to save everyone.

Higgs removes his mask and approaches Fragile, saying that he wears a mask because he really doesn't care for the way he looks.

But Fragile, she's so young, so beautiful.

Then he leans in and licks her fucking cheek.

Ew!

Oh, is he, but like, deadass, is he evil just for the fun of being evil?

What a fucking creep.

It is just the grossest thing.

It's just, ugh.

He says that he wants her face to be preserved, so nobody will even know what she sacrificed should she succeed.

He pulls a full head mask over her face, leaving everything from the neck up, the only part protected.

Fragile asks why he's betraying her like this.

Higgs tells her that he's found someone new.

Besides, even if she saves South Knot, she'll always be known for blowing up Middle Knot.

Higgs guides Fragile to the edge of the timefall, saying now's her last chance to vanish.

Fragile says, I'll take the damage and the goods.

I don't break that easy.

Okay, it's cool when she says it there.

She repeats this mantra over and over as she psychs herself up for what she's about to do.

Finally, she says, my name is Fragile, but I'm not that fragile.

Then she takes off running.

The rain hits her skin like 30 years in a tanning bed per droplet.

No more than 20 feet out, she trips and falls, landing in the mud and dropping the nuke.

Higgs laughs from the sidelines, knowing she's not going to make it.

Fragile stands, grabs the nuke, and once again begins to run.

If you'll remember back when we were first told about these terrorist attacks, South Knot City was only half destroyed.

Fragile made it as far as she could, but eventually had to give up and jump out of there, as she ran out of time either with the nuke or the timefall we're never told which.

Back in the present, you tell her that she's a god damn hero.

She saved a lot of lives that day.

She says so many people still died.

She should have just jumped out of there.

You tell her never to forget all the people she saved.

She asks you to help her save one more person then, herself.

She can't take Higgs on her own.

Her body is far too weak.

You're not though.

She wants you to take him alive.

She has some questions she needs answered before he dies.

You say you didn't take her for the torture type.

She says that her ability to torture extends only to Higgs.

Like she's a little bit of a dork.

But damn, she's cool, you know?

She's so fucking cool, right?

She's a bad bitch, but she's a little cheesy.

A cryptobiobe floats between the two of you and she snatches it out of the air.

As per usual, she offers it to you.

For the first time, you take it from her and eat it.

This makes her smile.

Then she tells you not to forget.

You still have deliveries to make.

Then she vanishes.

After a quick freshening up back at South Knot, Amelie congratulates you on preventing your first nuclear attack.

Now that you're about halfway across the country, there's something she needs to tell you.

Which of course means her communications get cut off.

Mama chimes in saying there's a massive chiral spike right on top of your location and asks if you can go check it out.

You step outside the bunker and see a fucking tornado a hundred yards away.

Oh no.

There are dead whales flying around in this motherfucker.

Like in Twister with the cows but it's whales?

It is, yeah, exactly.

Fuck yeah.

You feel the suck zone of the twister as it grabs you, lifting you into the air, causing you to instantly blackout.

The scene shifts to a new location.

The ground is sandy and covered in dead crabs, but it's not a beach.

We're in a military trench, like the ones used in World War I.

The sand turns into black ooze, and up from out of it, four soldiers in full fatigues and strapped with guns come marching out of it.

They're not human, they're actually walking skeletons.

Each one of them has an umbilical cord trailing off behind them.

The cords converge in the oil, and pull up a fifth person.

This one, all four cords are attached to his belly button, and he's holding theirs like the reins on a train of horses.

This sounds gross.

Once he's fully emerged from the ooze, he falls over convulsing.

As he splashes down in the muck, the soldiers surround him, keeping him guarded.

Their cords detach, ignited like a wick of dynamite.

The cords retract into the man on the ground who gets onto all fours.

He vomits black from his mouth.

Floating in the ooze is an old toy doll.

What the fuck?

Looking like it came out of Sid's room in Toy Story.

Oh no.

It has no hair, but an occasional nail or staple can be seen.

It's dirty with no legs.

It has those eyes that can open and close, but this one is one of those ones where it's broken, so it just kind of does what it wants.

I'm going to call it Sid Baby from here out because it doesn't have a name and we're going to be seeing it again.

I don't want to.

I'm gonna have to.

I'm so sorry.

The man stops puking, then looks straight into the camera.

We can see that it's the dad from the BB flashbacks.

Oh.

He has dog tags hanging from his neck and he's fucking angry.

Yeah, I would be too.

Pointing forward, he directs his soldiers to move out.

He finally stands, oil dripping down his naked body.

The only part without oil being what should be his belly button.

But instead, it's the same scar Sam has in its place.

People with really big scars like that will tell you that's actually very common.

Scar tissue doesn't hold dirt or oil or really anything the way regular skin does.

Oh, because it's not porous.

Right.

The camera continues panning up his body, finally resting on his face.

Next to it, the words, Combat Veteran appear.

Underneath it is the name Mads Mikkelsen.

That man.

The third person to play Wizard Hitler.

What?

He was also the third person to play Hannibal Lecter on screen.

Wait, which one is Wizard Hitler?

Wizard Hitler.

That's from the Fantastic Beasts movies.

Oh, like, did you just add wizards to this fucking game?

I, like many, forgot those existed.

Got it.

OK.

He won the game award for this performance.

He did.

Yes, he did.

It's a fantastic performance.

Anyway, a sound you will grow quite accustomed to in this game is the sound of BB-28 crying, which comes out of the speaker on your controller.

Oh, that's always so jarring when you're like, my hand's making noise.

Right.

I'm sure parents love this.

People just start lactating while they're playing this.

Anytime there's a stressful situation, the BB is fucking crying.

At least in this instance, it makes sense because you look around and you find yourself on the same World War I battlefield as these soldiers.

You sprint through it as dozens of skeleton soldiers battle each other, not really bothered by your presence.

You collect weapons and other material as you run, trying to figure out just what the fuck is going on here.

You dive into a bunker and are greeted with a truly horrifying sight, a gigantic spider web of barbed wire with a dozen or so of those Sid babies caught inside it.

Oh God.

In the center of the web is the combat veteran as if sitting on a throne.

He stands and a machine gun far more advanced than World War I had to offer appears in his hands.

But it all vanishes as you were simply concussed.

This is a delusion.

You're still in the bunker.

That wasn't a concussion dream, just the spider web part.

Yeah, just the whole hallucination.

Your Odra deck activates itself, guiding you down paths of the trenches.

You encounter the soldiers under the veteran's control, taking them out one by one.

They're protecting the veteran who is constantly calling out, asking variations of, BB, where are you?

You have to shoot him down a few times, eventually sending him to the ground out cold.

When you approach his body, he lurches at you.

He grabs BB-28 and starts trying to pull it off you.

He grabs at you, pulling you close, as if about to whisper in your ear.

Then you are taken into a BB flashback.

Looking up at a much older version of the veteran, running through a hallway, sirens begin to blare as he runs, and you hear a voice say, Freeze!

Put it down!

Then the vision ends.

You wake up outside the South Knot City Bunker, laying on the ground.

Mama radios in, asking what the status is.

You ask how long you were out, and she says, What do you mean?

You tripped heading outside and stood right back up.

No time, buddy.

The storm vanished the moment you stepped outside.

You try telling her what happened on your end, and she tells you to go take a nap.

There's like one rule with concussions, and it's you don't sleep on one.

Isn't that how we lost Billy Mays?

Yeah, right?

Well, she didn't think anything happened.

For a mama, her instincts are bad.

Well, your next step is to see her, so she wants to make sure you're rested up for the trip and not hallucinating World War I.

Yeah, let the concussion pass first, babe.

You arrive at mama's workshop, where she lives and works as an engineer.

When you enter, your Odor Dex starts alerting you to a BT nearby.

On the ceiling, you see little tiny hands appearing.

It's a baby BT, which by now you've seen out in the wild and know they're as dangerous as full grown BTs.

Yeah.

So you hold your breath.

Mama approaches saying, don't worry, she's harmless.

No, she's my house baby ghost.

She's chill.

It's like Lamar.

Oh, Mama is in her mid twenties with brown hair still wearing the take top and khaki pants that we've seen her wearing in every video call.

She's also rocking a much higher tech Odra deck than yours.

Mama's name appears next to her head.

Underneath is the name Margaret Qualley.

Oh, she's a sweetie.

Another actress who has worked with Quentin Tarantino, having portrayed Manson family member, Pussycat in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

She's also in the Netflix series Made and Pete Davidson, and famously counted the days down until she turned 18.

Gross.

Yeah.

She pulls the baby BT into her arms as it was crying.

She cradles the BT saying she's hungry, then holds the BT to her fully clothed boob.

You ask what it eats, and she tells you to be quiet.

The BT baby falls asleep and drifts upward toward the ceiling, the ghostly umbilical cord attached to mama's stomach.

She says it's just going through the motions, the baby's not actually drinking.

But she's still producing, she says uncomfortably rubbing her breasts.

Ah, see she can't play this game, because every time the controller would cry, she'd just be like, squirt, twart.

It would just hurt.

Yeah.

It's her child that died during birth and stayed attached as a BT.

She can't leave her bunker workshop as a result.

Since BB-28 is detecting the baby BT, your Odra deck continues to go crazy.

Mama asks you to unplug while she explains some weather science.

Basically, she can't figure out how you were sent to World War I.

But there was a chiral spike just before you say it happened, which she thought was the reason the storm vanished so suddenly from her perspective.

But given you were there for hours, it got her thinking.

Best guess is, you went to a plane of existence between the beach and the real world.

Didn't even know that plane existed until now.

Now we got like quarter planes from the in-between.

She tells you that ever since you started your mission westward, the timefall storms have gotten worse.

She thinks that you spreading the chiral network is causing it.

She takes your Cupid from you, as she was on the team that invented it, and replaces it with one that limits the amount of chiral energy the network gives off in an effort to reduce the storms.

This Cupid has the hardware to fix the network, but not the software.

The person who made the software is named Lachna, a member of the Bridges expedition that came with Amelie a couple years back.

She was left behind at Mountain Knot City to set up their network connection.

So you make that your next stop, since you need to connect them anyway.

The lights begin to flicker as the BT Baby begins to cry.

You power up BB-28 and see a phantom figure pulling the baby away from Mama.

She shoes it away and pulls the baby toward her, saying it seems like the other side really wants her back.

She's way too chill about this.

Really is, right?

She's the only person unfazed by all of this, which is very alarming.

Very.

She tells you the story of how it all went down.

It was here in this building.

It used to be a hospital.

She was in labor when the terrorists struck, trapping her under rubble.

She survived under rainwater, dripping through cracks in the ceiling.

On the third day, she gave birth to a dead baby.

But she could see the BT of her baby floating above her, refusing to leave.

The BT's crying caused the rescue crew to finally find her, saving her life in the end.

That's beautiful.

She says that since your blood has special properties, she requests a sample she can use to run some tests and theories.

She at least asked.

She didn't wait for you to fall asleep.

She was like, hey, I'm going to explain why I need this and what I'll use it for.

Is that something you're comfortable with?

Yeah, Hartman does not extend the same courtesy.

No, he's like, let me get that poop.

Like, I'm going to make bullets.

She comforts her baby, telling you that despite the dangers, reconnecting the world is the most important thing you're doing right now, and encourages you to continue even if Lachna can't make the software.

With that, she leaves you to your deliveries.

Before you head out, Mama has one last thing for you.

She gives you the schematics for arguably the best feature the game has to offer.

Zip lines.

I think he's just here for those ziplines to be real.

I think you should leave.

In order to make traveling great distances easier, you can craft ziplines that you can link and ride in succession at high speed, and for the most part, completely safely.

That's fucking sick.

But they take teamwork.

You're limited to the number you yourself can build based on the number of people you've hooked up to the Chiral Network in the game's world.

You're usually limited by whoever you hooked up with, so I get it.

In the social strand system, you have to rely on other players to build ziplines of their own, so you can connect and stretch them further and further across the country.

Before leaving for Mountain Knot City, you get some rest.

In your dream, you awaken on the beach completely naked, except for the cupid and your wrist cuff.

BB-28 is next to you crying, not inside its container.

You lift the BB into your arms and against your chest.

Amelie approaches in her red dress and points at BB.

You look down and find a Sidbaby in your arms instead.

This one missing an arm and a leg.

You throw Sidbaby to the ground, freaked out.

Behind Amelie, Higgs appears.

God damn it.

He stabs Amelie in the throat with a big ass knife.

Does he have a motive?

Not yet.

You've noticed.

He's just a prick.

She falls down dead while he stands there holding the knot necklace little Sam gave her years ago.

He puts it around his own neck, then stabs you, waking you from the nightmare.

You cry out for Amelie in your bedroom, and her pyrogram appears.

She says that Higgs and his team made it to Edgeknot City where she's being kept.

They killed everyone.

They essentially wiped it off the face of the earth.

Holy shit.

There's nothing but BTs and Higgs's people.

Looking at her, you see that the knot necklace is missing.

Oh no.

You ask her what happened to it, but she blows by the question.

She says she had to sneak off to make this call to you.

She no longer is being allowed to live like a normal person.

Higgs is holding her captive.

This will probably be the last time you two can speak until you arrive in Edgeknot City, where she'll hopefully still be alive.

She tells you that no matter what happens, whatever you hear happens to her, whether she lives or dies, you have to complete the network.

You have to connect the country.

It's the only way the species can survive.

But if she's still alive when you get there, she'll go back east with you together.

You ask again where her necklace is, and she says that she'll be waiting for you on the beach, then ends the transmission.

It is embarrassing to admit you lost a gift.

She's like, literally, my accessories are not the most important thing right now.

Did you forget the murders I just explained to you?

Right.

You know why murder is bad in this world, right?

Come on.

And it was a mass murder.

Yeah.

Also, it was just gold-plated, babe.

Don't worry about it.

Turn my neck green.

You got it at the school fair.

This was made out of noodles.

Deadman calls you to tell you some things he learned about the BB experiments, where and how they started, then tells about the death of the president just before Strand, who died during a void out in Manhattan.

How Strand canceled the BB program when she took over.

But then when Amelie took her people across the country, they noticed that there were separatists and mules using BB technology, two decades after they were shut down.

So President Strand secretly restarted the BB program to help combat Higgs and his people, never finding out how Higgs managed to get his very own version going.

Yeah.

Which is how you eventually ended up with BB 28.

In other news, Mountain Knot City is in trouble.

There is a tar pit bubbling up nearby, and it's threatening to leak into Mountain Knot City and drown the inhabitants.

And we need it to hold the nukes.

Exactly.

So you bring them an anti-matter bomb to clear the pit out in one big poof.

The person who takes the order has short, dark hair and wears a scarf around her face.

She thanks you and tells you to go fuck yourself.

You stop recognizing her voice.

I like her.

You say, mama, is that you?

She goes, what the fuck?

No, I'm not your or anyone's mother, you fucking weirdo.

Hell, yeah.

She says, Mountain Knot City wants nothing to do with the chiral network or the UCA.

She heard that you are causing increased timefall and all other sorts of issues with your stupid little network.

You ask her if she speaks for everyone in Mountain Knot or just herself, and she says she speaks for everyone.

Her name is Lachna and she runs Mountain Knot City.

You go, oh, I need to talk to you.

Then you hold up your cupid and say, fix this shit.

But she hangs up without even asking what that shit is.

She don't owe you shit in all fairness.

Die Hardman calls to apologize that you had to deal with Lachna.

He explains that Lachna is mama's twin sister.

This is a soap opera.

They're secret twins.

Oh, right.

There's a guy who's evil just to be evil.

Just to be evil.

Yeah, it's fantastic.

They are both inflicted with dooms and are both scientific geniuses in their own fields.

Somehow, being twins with dooms, they've always been able to communicate across great distances with one another.

It's actually how the chiral network started.

They were studying their bond and invented part of the chiral network as a result of that research.

After mama's accident, Lachna vowed vengeance on bridges as they were the intended target the day mama got trapped.

Oh, damn.

For whatever reason, the two stopped talking after that.

Die Hardman begs you to get the sisters reunited, because when they're together, they're like two brains working as one.

You also need Mountain Knot City on the network if you want to go further west.

So get to it and do some family therapy.

Since mama didn't recently tell you to fuck off, you decide to go speak with her first.

As soon as you arrive, she says she has something for you.

A new cuff link to replace the one you've been wearing.

She redesigned the whole thing, made it more comfortable, can now kill BTs, that sort of thing.

Oh shit, so now your wristlet can shoot out fucking spider webs of your weird stinky blood?

Well, not like that because you're like, I'm sorry, what can my wrist do?

Oh.

She flicks the handcuff open revealing a sharp golden blade.

Oh wait, that's way cooler.

Yeah, I thought it would be like, pew pew, flip, flip, blood.

That would be good, especially considering all the webbing that they've been doing in the game so far.

It's right there.

She says that after infusing it with your blood, this blade can cut through a BT's umbilical cord, releasing them from their earthly bond.

Whoa.

Just to make sure they work.

She tells you to test them out right now.

Oh God.

She walks toward you and says to cut the cord to her BT baby, because the truth is, it's not really her baby.

Yeah.

You say you need some more explanation.

She tells you, Lachna's uterus is fucked and Mama's eggs are fucked.

But between the two of them, they had everything they needed.

So Mama offered to carry Lachna's baby.

The father being Lachna's deceased boyfriend that had put away some frozen sperm.

On the day of the attack, Mama lost the connection to her sister.

Lachna didn't respond to the name Mama because she doesn't even know her sister's alive and is going by that name.

Because she's only known her sister prior to the whole stillbirth-ish situation?

Oh, that's funny.

She's like, that's Susie.

What the fuck are you talking about?

No, her real name being Malignan.

Okay, that's cooler than Susie.

Yeah.

Since BTs are bound to a location, Mama couldn't leave the workshop and was ashamed of what had happened.

So she never reached out to Lachna.

Oh, that's sad.

But now, the chiral spikes the network is giving off are causing parallel dimensions to cross over into this one.

Oh, no.

So she thinks it's time to cut the cord and join her sister in Mountain Knot City so they can fix this shit together.

Yeah.

But in order to do that, you gotta kill a baby ghost first.

All right, let's do it for Mama Lignan.

You flip open the cuff, revealing the golden glowing blade.

Mama lets the baby float into the air.

With an effortless swing, you slice the umbilical cord, which sends the baby into a fit of spasms, eventually being retrieved by another BT to the beyond.

Mama falls to the ground crying, then recovers herself and says, it's time for you to take her to her sister.

Mama hasn't been outside in ages, so you wrap her up in basically a body bag and throw her on your back.

She's tiny, you've carried much larger packages already.

As soon as you step outside, Higgs is there waiting for you.

God damn it!

Says he had a surprise waiting in everything.

With Mama on your back, this just makes it a two for one special.

Higgs removes his golden chiral mask and drives it into the ground, causing black tar to erupt all around.

Holding the mask high in the sky, it breaks down into pieces and reforms in the air, creating a much larger golden skull mask.

From the mask, a gigantic lion-like beast forms, and Higgs orders it to attack you.

He can make lions?

Yeah, he can make lions now.

I need his backstory.

Like, we are so far into this, and all I know is this guy's a fucking asshole.

Yeah, that's basically his whole thing so far.

You can kill it or escape from it.

Whichever you do, Higgs is gone again, so you head to Mountain Knot City to reunite the long-lost separated twin sisters.

He also doesn't have a great track record.

Like, only like half of his evil plans really come to fruition.

Yeah, right.

It's just more of just stalling you.

On the way, you find out that they are separated in the literal sense, and not just by distance.

They were born conjoined.

Whoa!

That's a rare thing.

Yeah, there was a surgery that successfully split them.

So this, combined with dooms, is why they've always been able to communicate.

They also share a single beach they can both access.

Mama's saying that she was even able to communicate with Lachna in the womb.

It's always felt as if one ka spirit is responsible for two ha bodies.

And a fun fact about their names, Malignan and Lachna are the names of two twin craters in Sweden, formed by a single asteroid that broke into two pieces upon its entry into Earth's atmosphere.

That's beautiful.

When you get to Mountain Knot City, you unload Mama from your back, and after having her BT baby cut out, that epic battle and the difficult journey, she's fucking dying.

Oh no.

Lachna comes running in and takes a knee by her sister's side, calling her by her real name.

Mama apologizes for not being able to save their daughter.

Lachna doesn't care.

She's just so relieved to see her sister again, her literal other half.

Mama tells Lachna that the chiral network is important, and that the Cupid is the only way to fix the issues it's currently having.

Then she goes limp.

Lachna breaks down in tears, holding her dead twin in her arms.

After some time to grieve, Lachna approaches you, for the first time without anything covering her face.

She looks identical to her sister, with the exception of her eyes.

Lachna's eyes are hazel, while Mama's eyes were blue.

Next to her head, reads her name.

Underneath it says, Margaret Qualley.

Still, also Margaret Qualley.

This would be the best time to do an also.

Also, introducing.

Yeah, or reintroducing, that'd be funny.

Lachna tells you that she knew her sister hadn't died.

She would have seen her on the beach.

She thought Mama had severed their bond on purpose, and stolen their daughter to keep as her own.

Jesus, she really jumped to like, what if she did the most crazy, malicious shit?

Right?

She was leveled in a building, babe.

Well, now she knows the truth, at least.

She hands you the Cupid, saying she gave it the software it needs.

She tells you that the software that was on there before was not the code she wrote when she and Mama invented it.

Someone else wrote their own version, and she is not sure what changes were involved.

But now the chiral network should stabilize and keep the energy low enough to not cause problems.

She wishes you luck on the rest of your journey.

As you head out, she asks, Maligna?

Is that you?

It's like it was when we were in the womb together, isn't it?

Mama answers in an ethereal voice that they are once again whole.

Lachna closes her eyes as an apparition of Mama's Odra deck appears over Lachna's shoulder.

Lachna opens her eyes, revealing one to be Hazel and one to be Blue.

Damn, that's cool.

One Ka in one Ha.

You hook up Mountain Knot City to the network, and Die Hardman calls in to congratulate you on the family therapy session.

While you were doing that, he was analyzing the audio recordings from your suit from when you went to World War I.

That's how they confirmed you were actually somewhere else, because your body mics picked up a bunch of information from it.

Everything confirms you were on a battlefield during World War I, which was over a hundred years ago.

He's not sure if it was a time rift, another universe, a section of the beach.

He really has no fucking clue.

Hartman, the man who studies BTs and the beach, may have some answers, but he's not on the chiral network yet.

He'll probably need every resource he can get to help you out.

So you make Hartman's lab your next stop.

Before taking off, you get some sleep.

You wake up to find BB-28 missing.

You run up to where the pod should be, shouting, Lou?

Lou, where are you?

Deadman walks in holding BB-28 and goes, Lou, do you mean this?

He tells you that Fragile warped him here, so he's actually here in person.

He's here because there's a very serious problem with your BB.

When BB-28 is docked while you were sleeping, it connects to its still mother back at HQ.

During that time, it realigns itself directly in the center between the living world and the dead world.

This BB isn't realigning itself.

It's leaning closer and closer to the living.

You smile saying, that's because you're partners.

He's like, that's my homie though.

Deadman reminds you that a BB unit is a tool, nothing more.

It's not alive or dead, so you can't partner with it.

At least it's not supposed to be.

This BB unit is growing and learning and gaining weight.

It's becoming an actual child.

We're gonna need a bigger tank.

I am shocked they didn't say something like that.

You ask why that would be a bad thing.

Deadman says that there would be, at best, a 70% chance of it being able to survive outside the pod.

Those are pretty good odds, I'm not gonna lie.

If it were a regular BB.

Oh, okay.

But this one has a couple days left, tops, before it will die from simply being too large to be a BB anymore.

Deadman knows you have grown attached to this BB, so he offers to do a manual reset on BB-28.

What is a manual reset?

He says he's basically giving the umbilical cord a tug back to the center between worlds.

He'll also need to hang on to BB-28 for a day or two while he does this procedure, which will also result in their memory getting erased.

You ask, erase?

Lou will forget about me.

I love that he's just like, this is Lou.

Yeah.

Out of nowhere starts calling it Lou.

Yeah.

Okay.

So I didn't miss anything.

I'm trying to keep up.

There's a lot going on, but there has been no conversation where he's like, oh, Lou was my buddy.

Now you're Lou.

Or like, I've always really liked that name.

Deadman yanks Lou out of your hands, saying it's like a video game.

Sometimes you have to reset and start again.

He's going to blow on the cartridge.

A valve opens on the BB unit, and the yellow liquid Lou lives in starts spraying in Deadman's face like a long, hot streak of piss.

Oh, they love piss play in this.

It's not my thing, but I think it might be someone on the team's thing.

Lou laughs at Deadman getting leaked on.

Deadman is pissed, saying that he was already dirty from going through the beach.

This is just insulting.

Yeah, but it's funny.

So, he heads to your shower to clean up.

As he does, he turns around and gestures for you to follow.

You reluctantly do.

You don't want to go take a shower with Yelma and Little Toro, but I guess we'll do it.

Oh, Deadman crams into this tiny stall with you and turns on the water.

He leans in close, like un-fucking-comfortably close.

Are they gonna fuck?

Then he says, nobody can hear you two in here.

He needs to tell you something, and Die Hardman cannot know what he's telling you.

Oh, I get it.

I was like, if he's gonna be like, I love you.

Part of me is still bracing for impact of piss kink, but okay, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.

He's been digging into BB tech, trying to figure out more about BB-28.

He found out that the BB program was never actually discontinued.

It wasn't restarted recently to compete with the terrorists.

It's been running this entire time.

Strand was trying to use the tech to incorporate into the chiral network.

She wanted to make it possible for anyone, not just people with dooms, to travel through the beach.

But this secret underground tech was obviously stolen by terrorists.

Yeah.

The question is how?

This leads him to ask you, have you ever seen Die Hardman without his mask on?

You tell him you've known him your entire life.

He's worn the mask the whole time.

You heard it has something to do with a burn he sustained.

Deadman says that the files he needs to prove Die Hardman is involved are all on the chiral network, but they're protected by a clearance level.

A clearance level that only Die Hardman is high up enough to have.

Deadman thinks the chiral network isn't as secure as the old internet.

He thinks that with enough connections, he'll be able to find a way into the file.

Can I ask you a question here?

Sure.

While this is happening, and you're in the little shower pod.

Yeah.

Is the ad for Ride with Norman reedus still on the rap?

There's only a Ride with Norman reedus ad when you're taking a shit.

Oh, excuse me.

My apologies.

I was assuming this was happening while they're like, AMC Plus, now fucking streaming.

And the lower third of it, like it's a political crawl.

Got it.

No, it is just like frosted glass.

Perfect.

Two fully clothed men.

One holding a baby in a bottle.

Yeah, no, the baby is plugged into the wall right now.

Having a regular conversation.

Okay, got it, got it.

Thank you.

Yeah.

And if he can't find the information, he'll at least be able to piece the information from other files that aren't classified just in another location.

I need his mother's maiden name.

The name of his first pet.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The street he grew up on.

Third grade teacher of Die Hardman.

Let's go.

We can do this.

We can hack his bitch.

Either way, just keep spreading the network and know they'll be watching you.

Deadman ends the shower and steps out saying, that is a very strange way to cut down on laundry time, Sam, but I see the utility in it.

Okay, that is very funny.

I love that line.

Also, Loki, he's like, Sam smells so fucking bad.

I will do anything to get this man washed.

You just have to force him into the shower constantly.

Smelly ass Sam over here with his stinky blood.

Deadman takes Lou with him and leaves you unprotected to carry out your deliveries for the time being.

Honestly, it would have been a better cover if they kissed.

Yeah, right?

And like, you know, human nature, if you see them fucking, you might want to like give them some privacy.

Just turn the other way.

Yeah, if they had a romance, like, they could have been a better cover.

Yeah, it's true.

Die Hardman won't let you continue west without your BB unit.

Higgs has summoned a river of tar that they're referring to as the Tar Belt to block your way, and it's full of BTs.

In the meantime, the Rocky Mountains have a bunch of prepper types scattered around.

Nothing has changed.

Kojima weirdly nailed that bit.

Yeah, he wants you to connect them to the chiral network to help boost the signal and give the area better coverage while you await your BB units repair.

Lachna takes the place of Mama from here out, speaking as the royal we, as she and Mama are now one.

She knows everything that's happened so far, and you can feel free to talk to her the way you would with Mama, which is very convenient.

Does she kind of like swear and give a little edge like Lachna does?

No, they're just one single person now.

Yeah, after that whole thing, Lachna is no longer mean.

Oh, okay.

She's Mama's in her head like, he's our friend.

Yeah, exactly.

I know he smells weird, but he's a good dude.

Well, all of her reasons for being angry are now gone.

I love it.

As you spread the chiral network, the benefits continue to show themselves in so many ways.

People now have the ability to get a chiral gram from a doctor.

It's like a house call from anywhere in the country.

Another thing people have started to put together, including Hartman, who occasionally will send you messages, regards archival information on cave drawings.

Scientists have wondered since their discovery, why cave drawings in the center of a continent would feature depictions of sea life.

Oh, cool.

Or why there are always random hands depicted so often.

Why the words AMC are carved in the lower corners?

They weren't just tracing their hands.

They were writing about BTs.

Which means this isn't the first occurrence of a death stranding on our planet.

This has happened before.

Using the fossil record, and what I'm about to say is true for us in our real world, there have been five mass extinction events on our planet, most of them being different rounds of dinosaurs and other animals.

Perhaps the fifth one happened during an era of man, and cave drawings are the first depiction of a death stranding.

That's fascinating.

I love it.

Hartman promises to explain more when you come see him.

A buzzer begins to ring from his end, and he says he has to go for now.

Lachna says that there's another super storm coming.

It's exhibiting the same amount of energy as the one that took you to World War I.

You're like, you weren't there for that.

Lachna tells you to get over it.

Mama and Lachna are the same person.

Whatever you experience with Mama, you experience with Lachna and vice versa.

I told you this two scenes ago.

Get your shit together.

Deadman calls you to let you know that BB-28 is ready to go.

Deadman performed a full reboot and everything went according to plan.

I rebooted the baby.

It's so wild.

BB-28 is now back in the center and has no memory of anything before the reboot.

One tiny little problem though.

Deadman took BB-28 out for a test drive and now he's caught in that super storm Lachna just warned you about.

Break this down.

Hey man, I reset the baby.

I did take it for a test drive to make sure the reboot of the baby's working.

And now it's raining and I don't want to age.

Can you come pick me up, dad?

Deadman found a shelter and asks you to meet him there.

As you approach the shelter, Deadman throws the door open and tells you to run, but it's too late.

A tornado rips through the shelter, lifting Deadman, BB-28 and yourself high into the air.

Oh, shit.

The scene returns with Deadman wandering around a war torn European city.

Rubble and blown out buildings filling out the skyline, with long strands rising up all around.

Fighter planes fly overhead, and Deadman hides under a sewage tunnel.

The ground around him becomes tar, and he plugs into BB-28 just in case.

Far down the sewer, four skeleton soldiers with long black umbilical cords appear, followed by the combat veteran.

I mean, the visual of that is incredible.

Oh, it's so good.

He gestures forward, which releases their umbilical cords once again like a wick.

A Sid baby bumps up against his leg, floating in the goop.

He smiles, and it sends you back into control of Sam.

It's World War II, and you're running through Nazi-occupied France.

Deadman is able to call you on your cuff link, and the two of you agree to meet up in the sewers.

You warn him that the veteran is looking for BB, so he needs to be careful.

Deadman says, fuck that.

If it comes down to himself or BB, it's not going to be a choice.

He's like really ready to volunteer that he will kill this baby.

I will smash this shit on the ground like it's a Jewish wedding and stomp on it.

I don't give a fuck.

Mazel, let's go.

Oh my fucking god.

That was the darkest thing we've said yet.

That's the darkest thing we've said yet.

So far.

So far.

We're going to return to Nazis later this season.

Oh my god.

I'm going to say some fucked up shit because I hate Nazis.

Oh wow, that was bad.

You tell him that you'll trust he'll make the right call.

And stinky ass Sam says, do what you gotta do.

And then you hang up.

Honestly, these war sections are hard as shit.

Oh, I'm so sorry.

I'm like giggling like, yeah, he said I'll stop the baby out.

Honestly, I mean, they were for me.

It's not a heavy gunplay game, so when you do have it, you're not rehearsed on how it works.

Oh, it's like a jarring shift of gameplay.

Yeah, there's not a lot of practice with it.

BTs don't shoot back like these guys do.

And the mules you've fought thus far are not trained soldiers.

So I died a lot.

Mm, but it's okay, because stinky ass Sam doesn't die.

Exactly, he's a repatriate.

When you reach Deadman in the sewers, you immediately take Lou from him.

Lou gets fussy and you're like, what the fuck?

This baby's like, I hate Nazi occupied France, man.

You hand Lou back to Deadman and Lou does a flip, laughing and excited to see Deadman.

Oh, so he and Deadman have bonded a little.

They have now, right?

Despite Deadman being like, I will kill this thing at the drop of a hat, I don't give a fuck.

And Deadman's like, huh, that's interesting.

But then a bomb goes off and you take Lou back plugging in.

You don't get a memory flash.

So you unplug and plug back in.

Still nothing.

But everything else seems to be working fine.

So you head off to take out the veteran, since that got you out the last time.

You tell Deadman to wait in the sewers while you do.

After you take down the veteran and his men, the veteran crawls toward you, saying, I'm sorry, BB.

I should never have left you in that prison.

He lunges at you, causing you to grapple.

You grab his dog tag and rip it off.

He pulls you in, says, BB.

And you are ripped from World War II back to your world.

As you transition out, you finally get a BB flashback.

Dad, the combat veteran, is running with you, and you can see his dog tags swinging in front of your tank.

He turns a corner and puts his back against the wall, sliding down it into a sitting position.

He's out of breath, and you can hear people saying they're going to breach the door.

Then the flashback ends, and you wake up in your room.

You run over to Lou's pod, happy to see it's plugged in.

The glass is blacked over, and the machine itself is covered in blood, but it's plugged in.

You grab it, and the blackness clears, revealing a Sid baby floating in there instead.

Oh, god damn it!

The nightmare ends, and you wake up in your room.

This time, Lou is plugged in, but nice and clean, definitely a human baby.

And definitely not stomped out.

Right.

Perfect.

You pull Lou down, but Lou is silent.

Deadman appears, asking how Lou is doing, and you say you're getting no response.

You go to hand Lou over to Deadman, and Lou wakes up, blowing two heart shaped bubbles at him.

Is he one of those mermaids that swims in tanks at bars and shit?

Yeah.

That's very charming.

Deadman says everything seems fine to him.

Lou fully over Sam.

He's like, Deadman is my dad now.

That's actually really cute that he like imprinted on someone else after the reboot.

Yeah, right?

Deadman's not really here.

He's back in capital of Notts City, having gone through Fragile's Beach to get there.

You were out cold for a whole day.

Deadman also wants to say he figured it out.

Lou was the name you and your partner were going to name your kid before.

Well, you know.

Oh, wait, that's really sad.

You say you have no idea what he's talking about.

Deadman tells you he found a record of a woman who died a sudden death 10 years earlier.

Oh, no.

She was young and healthy, so nobody thought to check up on her.

She had a husband who worked for bridges and also had dooms.

The woman's death caused a void out.

The town was turned into a crater with the only survivor being her husband, her repatriate.

It caused all sorts of conspiracy theories.

Most of them angled at bridges, and they lost the trust of the people.

Oh, wow.

The woman's name was Lucy, and they were going to name their child Lou.

You deny it ever happened.

Yeah, you're like, what's that got to do with me?

Yeah.

My last name is Strand.

Yeah.

What the fuck does it got to do with me?

Deadman tells you he got the story directly from President Strand herself.

She talked about you all the time.

You tell him to shut up about your mom.

Your mom was really airing out some dirty laundry with that one though.

A little bit, right?

I'm not going to lie.

She's like, and the baby's name was Lou.

That was not the detail you should be giving to your employees.

Right?

That's too much.

I get why he went no contact.

If you've ever read any Reddit threads about entitled parents.

Have you ever had a conversation with my mom?

That is the kind of shit she does every time.

You'll be having a conversation about one thing.

Suddenly, she's telling me about a pregnancy, about somebody else.

Yeah, I don't tell her a lot about what's going on in our lives for that reason.

Well, he makes you sit down so he can tell you his origin story.

Oh, good.

His body is made up of about 70 percent aftermarket parts.

Igor.

Igor was into this.

Those parts came from dead people.

Yeah.

Yeah, this is Igor and Dr.

Frankenstein.

See, we had the groundwork prior.

It wasn't foreshadowing, but it was foreshadowing.

But the thing is, it has nothing to do with him being a coroner.

He's had these parts since his creation because he is Frankenstein's monster.

He actually says that he is Frankenstein's monster.

Making the scar across his forehead, very heavy handed indeed.

Wow, are there bolts on his neck that you've just noticed?

There are, you know, I wish there was something, like some little indication.

Little sew marks around his wrists and shit.

Looks like Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas.

He was never born.

His body never fully developed.

A doctor took the parts of dead people and completed him, giving him life.

But no caw.

He's just a soulless meat puppet.

I've been called worse.

A dead man.

Wow.

Being on the war zone beach with you, though, was the most exhilarating feeling he's ever had.

Because he felt the connection to you.

When you defeated the veteran, it took both of you out of that world.

Which means he was connected to you, something he's never had with another living person before.

It was comforting despite being in a war zone.

There's something really beautiful about this also being portrayed by Guillermo del Toro, who's like kind of our modern master of monsters.

Yeah, right?

Becoming a Frankenstein's monster, one of the most classic monster iterations.

Fully, that's a really good observation.

There's some really beautiful parallels there about him becoming a monster.

Yeah.

You see a dog tag sitting on the table next to your monster energy drinks.

God damn monsters.

Deadman says it was in your hand when they found you.

The name is Clifford Unger, US.

Army Special Forces.

Fought in Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan.

Pretty much all the wars the US has been involved in during my lifetime.

So not actually World War I or II.

No.

You can see a chirogram of him and confirm that's the same guy.

Deadman tells you to shower up before leaving.

Because again, I love you so much, Sam.

You are so wonderful.

You're doing so much for this country, for me.

You smell like shit.

And I'm built out of the corpses.

My body is actively rotting, dude.

We are getting so many four star reviews, and it's only because you smell so fucking bad.

It's through a chirogram, homie.

Like, they shouldn't be able to smell you.

They're underground.

They are deep in the earth.

And they're like, I can still smell this motherfucker off the package that he delivered.

I love the subtext of this game.

Oh wait, does he want to shower so they can like have a man chat?

No, he's actually not getting in with you.

Okay, so it truly is.

Dude, I can see the cartoon stink lines coming off of you.

And you and I are animated, so that's bad.

Yeah, you've been in a coma for a day and look like you came back from a battlefield.

Because he did.

Because you did.

But still, man.

But he has made sure that Die Hardman can no longer listen in on your conversations.

So you guys don't need to take showers anymore, together.

But Sam, you absolutely still need to shower for me, dude.

While you shower, Hartman calls you on a speakerphone to tell you some more info dump on how the beach works in times of war.

Battles will often get stuck in a loop, with the soldiers being forced to relive it over and over again for all eternity.

That's called PTSD.

Yeah.

It's weird that you went to World War II though, as Clifford Unger wasn't even born yet.

Yeah.

During all this, you get so fucking fed up with people interrupting your shower.

You just sit on the ground defeated, waiting for Hartman to shut the fuck up.

You just have the shame shower where you sit down and you're like, just let the water run over me.

When was the last time you had a good shame shower?

Oh, God, college.

About to be more recent.

All right, I'm not going to share when I had mine.

Go on.

With everything he says, he tells you once again, he can tell you even more when you see him.

You head out to see Hartman so he can give you one last exposition dump before you reach the West Coast.

Heading back up out of your room, you plug into Lou and you get another BB flashback.

Clifford Unger is looking in at you when a figure behind him appears.

Whoever it is, they're dressed in all black and are too far away to make out.

Clifford turns around saying, John, is that you?

John asks, Captain, what are you doing here?

Cliff says that this is his wife.

John comes over and gives Clifford a hug.

He says he's so sorry.

He had no idea Clifford was the husband.

Then the scene ends.

Hartman tells you that he wants you to bring him mama's body.

For some reason, necrosis never set in for her, and he wants to know why.

That's literally never happened before.

That's interesting.

Which means at least you won't have to burn her body.

Yeah.

Then Hartman gets an alert telling him he has one minute remaining, and he logs off.

You make the trek to Hartman's lab, high in the mountains, hauling mama's dead body on your back.

You get him set up with the chiral network, then head inside.

A timer appears in the corner saying, one minute, 20 seconds until resuscitation, counting down.

In a world without money, Hartman comes across as very wealthy.

Nicest place we've seen so far, very Denver chic.

Okay, got it.

Exposed brick, lots of art and sculptures of weird shit like a statue of a BT.

That's like taking your work home with you in a weird way.

Right?

The timer continues to tick while you look around, eventually seeing Hartman asleep on a reclining chair.

You find a picture of Hartman with a wife and daughter on an actual beach, the kind you want to visit.

A nice beach?

Yeah.

Upon closer inspection of Hartman, you see that he's hooked up to biomonitors and he is flatlining.

Screens flash, cardiac arrest, as the timer in the corner reaches one second.

A robotic voice says, administering shock, stand clear.

The shock administers and Hartman shoots upright, alive and crying.

There's an hourglass on the table next to him full of chirillium.

He flips it over and the timer in the corner becomes 21 minutes until death as it counts down.

Jesus.

Hartman's name appears.

Underneath is Nicholas Winding Refn, with special appearance in parentheses.

Winding?

Yeah, Winding.

That's an awesome name.

With the name Darren Jacobs under that, this is another director cameo lending their likeness but not their voice.

Oh, okay.

Nicholas's biggest movie would be the Ryan Gosling movie, Drive.

Oh, holy shit.

Wait, is Hideo in like the director's guild or something?

Right.

Well, remember, he grew up a film nerd.

These are all quite modern directors too though.

These aren't necessarily all people he grew up with.

No, it's just like he just likes movies and so he wants to be involved with the people who are currently making movies.

Yeah, he's like the guy who did Kong Skull Island.

Call him.

His group chats must be crazy.

Oh my God, right?

He put Mama's corpse down and let Hartman know that he was in cardiac arrest a second ago.

He tells you that happens every 21 minutes.

He goes, that's old shit.

My name is Hartman.

He spends 21 minutes here, then three minutes on the beach.

Every 24 minutes, he repeats the cycle.

60 death and resurrection cycles per day.

How does he get anything done?

He does this because he is searching the beach for his wife and daughter determined to be reunited with them.

Oh, that's fucked up.

Convinced that the beaches can't be tied to the individual, believing they must be connected in some way, if only he can figure it out.

A self-inflicted Groundhog Day.

So far, he's been to the beach 218,549 times.

That's how many minutes are there when they're dead.

And he has been alone on that beach every single time.

But maybe this next one will be different.

Oh, God.

Then when he finds them, he won't be in the afterlife alone, and he'll simply turn off the machine that brings him back.

Whoa, honey.

Unzipping Mama's body bag, he notices that not only is she not necrotizing, she's not even decomposing.

She's not the worst smelling thing here, Sam.

Dead body is not the worst smelling thing.

Oh, God.

Why don't you ride your ass into the bathroom and freshen up, buddy?

He reaches into the bag saying there's supposed to be one other thing in there.

Then he pulls out a vial containing a piece of the umbilical cord.

This is equally as miraculous as a body that won't rot.

It's a BT strand tether made physical.

With this, he hopes to discover more secrets about the link between that world and ours.

The timers begin to warn there's only three minutes left.

Hartman preemptively apologizes for when the conversation cuts short.

I'm so sorry if I have to die mid-convo.

Please help yourself to snacks.

I'll be back in a little bit.

He next picks up the dog tag you got from Clifford Unger.

Hartman says that these old-ass battlefields are proof that beaches can be connected, as all of those dead soldiers are on their own beach, layered on top of one another.

Yeah.

For some reason, Clifford Unger is able to bring these beaches close enough to our world.

With a minute left, Hartman lays down in his chair once more, ready to die for the 38th time that day.

While he's dead, you have three minutes to look around his lab.

There's nothing really though.

It's mostly concept art disguised as decoration.

You do what you do.

After the three minutes are up, Hartman wakes up and begins the cycle over again by flipping his hourglass.

You say, it can't be easy living like this.

He says, you get used to it.

Most of life's basic functions can be squeezed into a 21-minute time period if you try hard enough.

Yeah, the living is easy.

It's the dying that's harder.

Yeah.

That's why his DVD and Blu-ray collection is all sitcoms and short films.

He's like, I'm one of those guys.

I love the office.

21-minute stories that are easy to consume.

Holding up the family photo from the beach, Hartman tells you his tragic backstory.

He was having heart surgery at a hospital on the edge of town.

When it became clear he was going to recover, his wife took his daughter home to get the house ready for his return.

They were caught in a void out while they were there.

The void out knocked out the power to the hospital, taking out his life support, and he awoke on the beach, along with everyone else who died in the void out, including his wife and daughter.

They all walked toward the water, and as Hartman was about to take a step forward, a charging sound could be heard, and a shock went through his body.

Oh, fuck.

He called out for his family, begging them to take him with them.

But the shocks kept coming, and his heart began to beat louder.

The next thing he knew, he's being dragged off the beach, back to the land of the living.

The backup generators had kicked in, and life support brought him back, because there's always a god damn generator.

He was dead for 21 minutes before that machine brought him back.

He swears he visits the beaches of others when he dies.

There's never anyone there, but there are footprints in the sand.

That's where Jesus was.

That's where he was carrying you.

Carrying him back to the land of the living, like, hey, dipshit, I gave them generators to fix this.

Why won't you live?

Well, he's convinced that he's found theirs at least once.

He just hasn't caught up to them yet.

Hartman tells you about a way station nearby that will be essential in connecting to the West Coast, but Higgs flooded the place with tar.

Jesus Christ, right.

Higgs is a piece of shit.

Right.

So he wants you to use a 3D printer to build a new one.

Boys love 3D printers.

Then he dies.

It's fine.

The floor underneath him turns into a soft air mattress and catches him laying him down gently.

Oh, that's cool.

I've seen those.

I think there might have been a shark tank product or one of those like as seen on TV products where it's like if it notices an elderly person falling, it inflates.

Yeah, that's kind of cool.

But he gets like an air mattress.

Yeah, exactly.

Fortunately, with ziplines, all these deliveries go a lot quicker as you'll need to collect supplies to feed into the 3D printer.

Ultimately, it's all in an effort to uproot some dinosaur fossils to see if there are any traces of their extinction being linked to a Death Stranding as well.

Who took Hideo Kojima to the LA tar pits?

Oh, my God.

You know what?

It was probably just like a big field trip during the Game Awards.

All the Jeff Keighley took him.

All the foreign game developers came.

He's like, hey, let's go to the tar pits.

Yeah.

Wait, I would kill to see Jeff Keighley like driving one of those big double decker busses on your left.

Yeah.

Obviously, Sam Lake and Hideo Kojima sitting side by side sharing one cotton candy, eating at both sides out and then like him being like, these are the tar pits and them both going, oh, oh, we could use this.

I have ideas.

Yeah.

After completing that little side mission, you head back to Hartman, who has done a thorough examination of Mama's corpse.

He says it's full of chirillium even though she's dead, and it's keeping her from decomposing or necrotizing, as if time simply stopped for her.

Before he really gets going, a warning goes off saying he will die in five, four, three, two, one, but he doesn't die.

He says that nobody can hear you to now, as he has something secret to tell you, and he only has three minutes.

He tells you that Deadman sent a message for you.

He plays it, and a chiral gram of Deadman appears in the room with you.

He says the umbilical cord you brought to Hartman didn't belong to Mama.

It belonged to President Strand.

Oh, shit.

Before she died, she gave it to Deadman, saying it was the key to unlocking the secrets of the Death Stranding.

That's the name of the game.

For some reason, she told him to make sure Die Hardman never finds out she gave it to you.

That's why he's keeping it a secret from him for now.

The message ends, and Hardman's next 21 minutes alive begins.

The umbilical cord is mysterious in that it's still in perfect condition and has never decomposed, just like Mama here, which is why you had to bring it to Hardman.

Hardman shows you pictures of a well-preserved woolly mammoth and a well-preserved caveman.

They've since been destroyed in void outs.

But those are, like, literally at the LA tarpets.

Yeah, those are.

So, I'm sorry, I'm just putting all the production pieces in my mind together of how this happened.

But what if it wasn't ice that kept them well-preserved?

What if time stopped for them like it did for Mama?

Because they all had identical umbilical cords still attached to them as well.

They've even found non-mammals with these umbilical cords.

Meaning, these cords have nothing to do with birth, and everything to do with death.

Interesting.

Lizard umbilical cords.

Hartman theorizes that right now, the world is undergoing its sixth extinction level event.

Hartman proposes the Extinction Entity Theory, or EE for short.

An EE is a being that causes a death stranding, which leads to an extinction level event.

You ask if that means President Strand was an EE, since that umbilical cord, or strand, as Hartman keeps calling it, came from her.

He says it's too early to tell if all creatures with strands are EE's, or if all EE's have strands.

You mention that Higgs referred to Amelie as an extinction entity when you encountered him previously.

Oh.

Hartman says, like mother, like daughter, it's likely they both are EE's.

And this probably has nothing to do with you, Sam.

The appearance of multiple EE's suggests that it doesn't just take one to bring it about.

It likely takes a combined effort of multiple EE's to cause Death Stranding.

With a minute of life left, Hartman tells you this death will be real.

He bids you farewell as you head west for this final stretch.

It's some serious mountain climbing as vehicles can't really make the passage.

Oh, they're not called Rocky for nothing.

Right.

At the base of the final mountain, you come upon the Tar Belt, which is basically an over-flooded Colorado river, but full of black gooey tar.

There's absolutely no way across, but Die Hardman is confident you'll figure something out.

He kind of gives him a slap on the back like, you got this buddy, proverbially, is like, head out there, cross the Rocky Mountains.

I know there's a river of murder tar.

Right.

You're good.

Since there's so much tar, the place is also crawling with BTs.

You get into a fight with one of the giant animal like BTs, which floods even the safe parts of the land.

During the fight, you see Amelie in her red dress, standing in the middle of the tar.

You try to reach her, but the tar gets deep and you sink beneath the surface, calling out for her as you do.

You awaken naked on the beach, all alone.

Amelie walks by, singing London Bridge is Falling Down, and walks right into the water.

You follow behind, fall into the water, and wake up as Sam back on earth.

Having just repatriated, you vomit up the death.

As you puke up black goo, you hear Higgs appear behind you.

God damn it.

You've made it across the Tar Belt, almost all the way to your destination of Edgeknot City.

Higgs says he can smell it.

She's in there somewhere.

Buddy, I bet you smell a lot of crazy shit right now.

Which of you are going to get to her first is the question.

Says he never would have made it this far if it wasn't for that chiral network you're building.

That thing is awesome.

He forces dark black arms to rise up for the ground and grab you.

Pulling you to all fours.

He comes up to you and licks your face like the fucking creepy is.

Hey, at least it's not just women.

I guess.

I don't know if that makes me feel safer in this story.

It's not a misogyny thing.

Cool.

That's a win for feminism.

Thanks, Higgs.

He holds up Amelie's knot necklace, which makes you flip out.

Yeah, absolutely.

You try to grab at him, but the black arms hold you back.

Higgs says that Amelie is on the beach, but the two of you can race to her.

First one there gets to end the world.

Oh my God.

Then he vanishes, leaving you to figure out how to beat him when he can fucking teleport.

Die Hardman calls you to tell you to just keep doing the mission at hand.

Complete the Chiral Network.

Get Edgeknot City online, and then you can save Amelie.

It's what she wants.

She's actually safe as long as the network isn't online, so she'll be secure until then.

But once it's online, Higgs will likely find her, and that's when the race will actually begin.

There is no situation where Higgs' backstory makes sense for his actions to me.

Right?

He is so ridiculously just like bloodlusty for bloodlust.

He's creating crazy shit, and now we're in this kind of...

It's a rare trope, but I do enjoy it, where the hero has accidentally built the weapon of mass destruction that is being threatened to be used against him.

Always a fun story mechanic.

I'm not going to lie.

It's satisfying.

Weapon of your own making.

Yeah.

I'm like, oh, goddamn it, I did that to myself.

It's very Sarah Winchester and her lore, like, oops.

Yeah.

Oh, no, now I'm haunted.

Yeah.

Well, that night while you sleep, Amelie sends you a message.

She says that it's true.

She is an EE, but she's doing everything in her power to prevent the end of the world, not make it happen.

She says she's hiding on her beach and that Higgs does not have access to it, so she's safe.

That she knows of.

I don't trust it.

Higgs is level seven, right?

That's on some shit that we haven't seen in anyone else in this game yet.

Ever.

It's crazy.

She ends her message telling you that you must stop her.

Don't let her end it all.

And that she'll be waiting for you on the beach.

You pound one more round of monster energy drinks.

Well, you got to fuel up.

Before you head off to your final destination, Edgeknot City.

It's kind of nice.

It's at least a monster energy drink.

Like it could have been like an odd wall of juice.

There are more embarrassing versions of this that could have existed.

What if he was like, a polar pop from Circle K?

The only place online in the apocalypse.

You know, it could have been.

But no, the good people in Monster Energy Drink are like, we're still going to produce the chaos.

Yeah, and the exact same branding.

That's my favorite aspect of it.

The brand book has not changed.

I love that.

Yeah, you're right.

Die Hardman reminds you, this is your last chance.

Don't fuck it up.

So you don't.

You managed to make it through BT Central thanks to the array of BT killing weapons you now possess.

You find the terminal to bring Edge Knot City online and activate it.

Die Hardman calls you to congratulate you.

The UCA is now officially a country, connected from sea to shining sea.

Even if a terrorist were to take out a knot, the network is so strong, it won't disrupt anything.

Everything passes through the beach now, instead of through a physical wire like the Internet did.

Now that the Chirold network is complete, the UCA needs a president.

Time to go rescue Amelie, the person President Strand chose to succeed her.

Now that the network is up, Amelie will be able to tell, and she will meet you in your private room.

But watch out for Higgs.

As soon as you get to your room, you fall asleep.

You have a nightmare involving Higgs and Amelie, and wake up to an alarm going off in your room.

It's warning of an unknown entity approaching.

You plug in to Lou, taking you to another BB flashback.

Clifford Unger is sitting with you on the ground, and he's covered in blood.

He starts singing a lullaby to you, while the sounds of people trying to break into the room can be heard.

Back in reality, you exit your room.

Outside, a 100-foot-tall BT creature is roaming the city streets like a Ghostbusters final boss.

Holy shit.

You've seen this creature once before, the moment you got Lou, at the very beginning of the game, just before the void out that killed Igor.

Higgs appears behind you, saying thank you for the Chiral Network.

All that power has made this entity possible.

He points, and you can see Amelie is strapped to this bendy-the-ink demon clone via a bunch of golden chirillium.

Higgs is excited to bring on the end of times, tired of all the bullshit of existence.

This will be the sixth and final extinction event, the end of every living organism.

Then he invites you to meet the end of all things.

Amelie appears in front of you.

She calls out your name and runs toward you.

Higgs slaps his mask onto her face, causing her to convulse and twitch.

Then, in an entranced voice, she says that she is the extinction entity.

With the chiral network now complete, she can uproot every beach and bring them to this world, killing everyone and everything.

The last Stranding.

She raises her arm in the air, and the ink demon behind her does the same.

Oh, no.

Higgs asks you where you think Dooms came from.

Why is it only people our age and younger who have them?

It's because she's our mother, the reason we have them.

Happy fucking Doomsday, Sam!

With a snap, he and Amelie vanish, both reappearing strapped to the giant BT.

Higgs calls down like an evil Power Ranger and tells you to come and get him.

Out of nowhere, Higgs keeps breaking the fourth wall, making jokes about needing to pause the game, or if you want to lower the difficulty level.

So, actually, Higgs knows he's in a video game.

And that's why he's evil for the sake of being evil.

Right.

He just wants to fuck out.

I kind of accept that more.

It's not the only fourth wall break.

There have been a few.

Hartman really likes breaking it, for example, by giving the player thumbs up and winks.

That's weird.

I mean, he's a man on the edge of death every 20 minutes.

That's true, right?

Give him a break.

He really sees the veil there, right?

Yeah.

He's like, I am a monstrosity between the world of the living and the dead more so than anyone else in this game.

For some fucking reason.

It's not like Deadpool level breaks, just the occasional one outside of references to ride with Norman reedus.

I was going to say like Norman reedus says Norman reedus.

Right.

Well, just like all BTs, his strength and weakness are in its umbilical cord.

So after some blood bombs and blood bullets, you kill the city stomping creature.

Unfortunately, it doesn't kill Higgs.

And he appears with Amelie saying that extinction is going to be put on hold for now.

Higgs raises a machine gun filled with real bullets and fires at you.

Oh, shit.

You know the real bullets because there's a strip of red tape wrapped around the clip of the gun.

This is a reference to the movie Die Hard 2, Die Harder, where the clips with red tape have live rounds of ammo and the clips with blue tape contain blanks.

Troy Baker famously loves the Die Hard movies.

Yeah, you thought the character named Die Hardman was going to be the only Die Hard reference you're going to get?

Ho, ho, ho.

You flinch, completely unprotected.

Out of nowhere, your Odra deck turns on and blocks every bullet fired.

Hell yeah, Doc Ockarm.

Higgs is confused and fires some more.

Again, the bullets get blocked.

The camera lands on Lou in the BB pod, hands balled up in fists of rage, angrily staring down Higgs.

Higgs laughs saying, all that for a repatriate.

He's like, yeah, to his point, he's like, there's no fucking stakes.

Why are you mad, baby?

He lowers the gun and fires on Lou, cracking the glass of the BB pod.

Oh no.

You fall to the ground, keeping Lou safe.

As Higgs fills your body with bullets, saying he'll be waiting for you on the beach.

The world around you fades as you and Lou look at one another, each of you the other's savior.

After a quick swim through the ocean of repatriation, you wake up where you died, and there is no sign of BTs anywhere.

Die Hardman calls saying that Higgs took Amelie to the beach, and they don't know how to chase after them.

So you call your friend Fragile to see if she can lend a hand.

She meets you in your room to formulate a plan.

She says that she can't get to Amelie's beach.

That's not how her power works.

But you've been to her beach plenty of times.

Amelie gave you a pass that allows you to travel there when you were younger.

That dream catcher you carry.

It's your pass to her beach.

An item that connects you to, which means you're welcome on her beach.

So Fragile agrees to teach you how to jump there yourself.

Before she does, she makes you promise you'll bring Higgs back alive.

Because again, I ain't committed to torturing him.

I fucking hate that guy.

He belongs to her.

You agree, of course, knowing what Higgs did to her.

She says that she'll be right behind you after you land there.

Confused, you ask her how that's possible.

She says it'll be because of the bracelet with her blood that she gave you to prove that you're a Fragile employee.

My worker's card?

Yeah, since it contains her blood, it will grant her access to that beach once you arrive there.

He's like, I thought this was just for clocking in.

Well, it's because our connections to one another are stronger than the power that keeps anyone out.

You tell her that you're leaving Lou behind.

That poor BB has already been through enough today.

Then you ask for something to eat, which makes Fragile laugh.

She eats a bunch of bugs while she thinks it's happening.

She pulls out a crypto bio and you eat it.

She pulls another for herself, but you rip it from her hand and eat that one too.

You said, I'm hungry.

This makes her double over laughing saying she got you hooked on them, didn't she?

You roll your eyes because you were obviously flirting.

She tells you to be careful as she guides you through your jump to Amelie's beach.

It works and you awaken on the sand.

Looking around, you find Amelie and Higgs.

Amelie is confused to see you here, but Higgs slaps his mask back on her, keeping her quiet.

Oh, god damn it.

A spiderweb of black goo rises up out of the water, and Amelie becomes bound in its center.

You ask Higgs what he's doing, and he says it's his job to keep the EE safe until it's time for the final boom.

It doesn't matter if you stop him, this end will come eventually, even if it takes another hundred thousand years.

But the next extinction will occur.

Might as well make it now while we're all around to see it.

Not a great attitude.

The beach around you begins to lose stability.

Rocks and dirt begin to fly into the air, along with whales and other sea creatures.

He says that if either of you die here, there's no repatriation.

There's nowhere else to go after here, but to go to the great beyond.

He's tired of this rinse and repeat bullshit.

He's immortal and just wants to fucking die.

So this is it, one final boss fight.

And you didn't bring any weapons with you other than your fucking climbing rope.

It's time for one last game over.

Truly the last strand.

This battle with Higgs is a bitch.

I bet.

Because yeah, you don't have any weapons, just a rope.

So you have to sneak up on him and choke him out a few times.

Oh, my dumb ass brain was like, what, are you gonna lasso him?

Kind of, yeah, actually you do.

But like real Arthur Morgan style, like I'm gonna get you.

Yeah.

Or you can throw like an empty briefcase that you can find laying on the beach and throw it at his face.

So like occasional throwables and then you got a sneaky sneaks.

Yeah.

Damn, that sucks.

He finally falls and you rush over to knock him out.

Just as you're about to, Amelie cries for your help.

You turn and head in her direction to free her from the chiral web.

Higgs calls after you, saying this can only end one way.

Then he pushes you.

Two health bars appear at the top of the screen like it's a fucking Mortal Kombat game.

Oh.

And the two of you have a full blown beat down fist fight.

Hell yeah.

Time's slowing down for the hardest punches to the face, causing Higgs' cheeks to flap around in slow mo.

You beat him to a bloody pulp, ultimately headbutting him unconscious and tossing him into the tar.

You drag his body to the shore so he won't drown, having promised fragile the final blow.

He's like, I need to keep your health bar on like one percent for my homie.

This girl let me eat her snacks, I owe her a body.

Higgs wakes up and laughs, saying, for a guy with a phobia of touching, you really just put that aside to save his life.

He coughs, fully defeated, but still giggling to himself.

He says, you beat the game.

Way to go.

You still didn't stop shit.

You stand up, sick of his taunts.

As you do, Fragile approaches, having just arrived on Amelie's beach, so she can do her part with Higgs.

Get it, girl.

He looks up at her, scared.

She smiles, saying, I guess I left a lasting impression.

She looks him dead in the eyes and says, I'm fragile, but I'm not that fragile.

Yeah, it came around.

It's cool.

Fuck yeah.

It was corny, and then it was like, I get it.

Now it's like, all right, battle cry, let's go.

This time, Higgs is the one who's going to break.

Fuck yeah.

Higgs says, oh yeah?

Watch this.

He reaches his hand out to command Amelie in the BTs, but Amelie's already in your arms with that golden skull mask removed.

Higgs tries to control her or anything at all really, but he can't.

Fragile laughs saying, oops, looks like you're already broken.

Higgs goes, what the fuck?

I'm the god particle.

I permeate all existence.

Fragile is nothing more than damaged goods.

Fragile removes a glove, revealing just how damaged her 90-year-old hand is.

Then she punches Higgs in the face until he's out cold saying, no, you're damaged goods.

Hell yeah, girl.

Higgs wakes back up fully bound and on his knees.

You walk over to Fragile who's standing over him.

Bending over, you pick up the machine gun Higgs was using and hand it to Fragile, saying you always keep your promises.

You rip the knot necklace that belongs to Amelie off Higgs's neck and return it to her.

Fragile returns.

She hands you your BB unit, saying it took a lot of effort on her part, but she was able to bring Lou along.

She hates babysitting anyway.

She's like, cute kid, but it cries a lot, man.

Yeah.

She offers to jump you back to Capital Knot City on the West Coast, but Amelie turns the offer down.

She says, now that the chiral network is complete, the two of you can make the jump on your own.

Fragile's like, fine, whatever.

I guess we're done.

She's like, well, I got what I wanted.

That was just a gesture.

Then she turns and fucks off back to her job as the head of Fragile Express.

You're like, did I say something wrong?

Amelie tells you not to worry about it.

You still have a lot to do.

She starts to walk, but you stop her, asking why she did all this.

Is it for President Strand or for her?

She tells you it's for the good of the country and the good of the human race.

That's why she's doing all this.

Then she says she has a confession to make.

She could have left this place anytime she wanted.

Ugh, you're so annoying.

One of those visits when you were back east was real, not a chiral gram.

You're like, what the fuck?

I traveled the entire country, risked my life and the lives of countless others to get here.

She says she knows and that you would have never done it if you didn't think she was in trouble.

Everything Higgs said about her is still true.

She is an extinction entity and she's doing everything she can to stop it from happening, which is why the chiral network was so important and necessary for you to build.

But she's essentially a ticking time bomb, which is why she stays on the beach where there is no time, which is why she also never ages.

Okay, I kinda get it.

The whole thing was Die Hardman's idea to lie to you about her being in trouble.

You go, great, so I'm Mario and you're Princess Peach?

You two played me like a fucking fiddle.

Played you like an NES baby.

They say that in a game?

In the game.

In the game, he says, I'm Mario.

And you're Princess Peach.

Oh Lord.

On a Stony game.

That's right, this is exclusive.

Suddenly, you hear the sound of a machine gun firing.

You look off into the distance toward the sound and go, well, I guess that takes care of Higgs.

She said, now I have the machine gun.

Oh, fuck yeah.

Amelie tries to bring the conversation back around at justifying her actions.

She says, she knows you have questions.

She just wants you to save them for when all of this is over.

When you have the full picture of what she's trying to do.

You ask how getting back east works.

Do you just jump like fragile?

She says, no, you have to run to where you want to go and then you can jump to that place in the real world.

You say, we have to run?

She says, yeah, like Mario and Princess Beach.

Shut up, they do it twice?

Well, she says beach at least.

This scene is a beach.

Well, you two do run down the beach and no lie, this scene is cheese dick as fuck.

Two people just running down the beach?

Yeah, I bet.

You run down this dark and dreary beach in slow motion.

Your face is beat to ever living shit.

You have bruises and blood covering it.

She looks pristine and ageless in her red dress and four inch heels, sprinting full speed down the sandy beach.

Good for her.

You look over at your sister and give a smile that does not look like it should be aimed at your sister.

They don't look related.

No.

They have different facial structures and features, so that doesn't bode well.

I just I feel like a lot of mediums have a really hard time portraying brothers and sisters because people have a hard time writing a man and woman loving each other and not in a sexual way.

A thousand percent.

There's always a little like, but are they gonna fucking kiss?

Like, what's happening?

This game definitely suffers from that issue.

Eventually, you reach a rocky outcropping that rises up about 40 feet.

Amelie tells you to wait here while she scouts ahead.

The moment she's out of sight, you follow behind her up the rocks.

Obviously.

You stand at the apex and look down the other side.

You can't see Amelie anywhere, but you do see two other people standing just on the water's edge.

President Bridget Strand and Die Hardman.

Die Hardman is holding a gun pointed at President Strand, asking if she remembers the gun.

He says, it's the same gun that started this whole mess, and it's the gun that's going to end it.

She was supposed to fix the world, not fuck it up.

We finally see the president's face.

No longer cancer-ridden and old.

She's a much younger woman.

She says to go ahead and do it.

Pull the trigger.

Die Hardman does, and it goes off right through her.

She says, there is no atonement for the two of them, not after what they did together.

She points out at the ocean, and up from the depths come four skeletal soldiers, each with an umbilical cord attached.

Die Hardman points his gun at each in turn, then his eyes go wide, as the fifth and final person emerges from the water.

This fucking guy.

Clifford Unger joins his men here on the beach, all of them geared up for war.

The soldiers detach, and Clifford removes his helmet and glasses.

Die Hardman looks at him terrified, saying, it can't be.

Die Hardman drops to his knees, defeated.

Clifford joins him at his level, looking at Die Hardman confused.

He reaches forward and removes the skeleton mask off Die Hardman's face.

Clifford asks, is it really you?

Die Hardman says, yes, it's really me.

It's John.

He begs for forgiveness as Clifford stands, drawing his gun and pointing at Die Hardman's face, which we have yet to see.

Then Clifford looks up and sees someone else.

Turning his gun on President Strand, he approaches her, putting the barrel to her forehead, saying, give me back my BB.

She says, he's looking in the wrong place.

Then she points up to the top of the outcropping, where you stand, a lone black silhouette on the gray sky.

Clifford yells out, BB!

Then gestures his forces forward, as they charge straight for your unarmed ass.

You look around scared as they begin to climb the hill.

Amelie appears by your side, and you ask her what you should do.

The other castle tells you to stay back as she shoves you off the top of the rocks and you fall backward.

She said stay back and then she pushes you off a cliff?

Yep.

Instead of hitting ground, you splash down deep into water as if you're about to repatriate, which you are.

When you go to repatriate, instead of seeing the head of a BB inside your throat, as you have every single time you've done it so far, there's a fucking Sid baby in there instead.

Ew!

After that jump scare, you wake up in bed in one of your private rooms.

Deadman's chiral gram is there with you.

He says that you are no longer on the West Coast.

You are at a distribution center just east of the tar belt you had to cross.

He tells you that Amelie dropped you off here and sent a cryptic message to HQ saying she is going to finish what Bridget started.

Oh, she called her mom by her first name.

Their family is weird and fucked up, right?

Entirely.

Their sibling prank is like, hold on, and then she pushes him off a cliff.

Like that's on another level from you and your siblings.

Haha, got you dead.

Yeah.

Yeah, you know, I'm an only child.

I don't get it, but like that feels dramatic.

Right.

But when you first name a parent, oof, you fucked up.

Yeah.

You tell Deadman that you saw Bridget, Die Hardman and Clifford Unger on the beach.

Deadman says that seeing Bridget is impossible.

Once you burn a body that forces their Caw to either pass over or become a BT, there is no other option.

You yourself burned her body.

You're like, well, let's find Die Hardman.

He can tell you.

Deadman tells you that Die Hardman is actually missing, which aligns with what you just told him about Die Hardman being on the beach.

Oh no.

Die Hardman's mask appears in Deadman's hand and he puts it on.

He says it's strange.

He is suspected Die Hardman was behind all of this from the beginning, but now he's not so sure.

I mean, his first name is Die.

Doesn't bode well.

He removes the mask and turns it into the Golden Higgs mask.

He says that this whole time, we've thought Higgs was controlling Clifford Unger in an effort to end the world.

But now Higgs is dead and Cliff is still a problem.

You ask if it's possible this Clifford Unger person is the actual big bad.

Deadman says he's sure of it and that he's probably keeping both Die Hardman and Almalee hostage on the beach.

I love a third act.

Wait, which one was the villain?

Yeah, that's very Disney.

Yeah.

Oh, damn it.

I thought I killed the dragon.

It was you the whole time.

Fuck.

You say that's where you're headed then, back to the beach.

You ask where Fragile is and Deadman says she's at HQ and she's not gonna be able to help you.

You ask why not?

And he says that some things have changed since you last repatriated.

But you should get some rest first.

You just died and came back to life.

He points to Lou who is stretching and yawning, saying that you're not the only one who needs some rest.

You barely sit down on your bed before you fall asleep.

After your nap, Deadman tells you that there are a few final steps in establishing the UCA, namely swearing in the new president, which is supposed to be Amelie.

You're like, fuck America, I didn't do this for the country.

I did this for Amelie, who was lying to me the entire time.

Once again, I'm not even supposed to be here today.

Fuck all of you, all the way off.

Yeah, fuck you, fuck you.

Lou, you're cool, fuck you.

I'm out of here.

Hartman appears and says it's not about the country anyway.

Cliff has Amelie, an extinction entity.

If you don't save her, the world could end.

Saving Amelie will prevent the last stranding.

Fine, I'll save the fucking world.

The only way for you to get back to her beach is in Capital Knot City.

Fragile appears as a chiral gram, looking sick and weak.

She says that everyone is back east but you.

She jumped all over the country, rounding up all of your allies and ported them to HQ.

But it took everything out of her and she almost didn't survive the last jump.

While she rests, you need to travel back to the east coast, on foot, where she can jump you back to Amelie's Beach so you can stop the sixth extinction.

You better hope you and the other players built some fucking zip lines on your travels because you're going to need that.

In the meantime, Hartman says he'll keep killing himself every 21 minutes to see if he can land on Amelie's Beach and get some intel or something.

Better than doing nothing, he says.

At least on your journey east, you won't have any cargo to deliver.

You'll be the cargo.

That doesn't feel better, right?

As you prepare for your journey, you plug back into Lou treating you to another BB flashback.

President Strand is standing in the hospital room with her back to you saying, this child is special, one of a kind.

She's talking to a soldier who is out of focus.

He asks if this is really a BB candidate.

She turns around, revealing herself to be wearing Die Hardman's skull mask, saying, you are the bridge.

The scene ends and you begin your trek back east.

You can still complete some side quests if you really want, but overall, it's not nearly as difficult or time-consuming going east as it was going west.

That's good.

With the chiral network open everywhere, if there's not a zipline, there's a road.

If there's not a road, there's an off-road vehicle.

When there's not an off-road vehicle, you have your trusty legs to carry you.

As we head into the climax of the gameplay portion of Death Stranding, which, why is that a thing I have to say?

In this game podcast, you're like, the game is going to end and then the movie will start.

Right.

Since the gameplay is a prequel to the movie that is the end of the actual experience itself, I want to give my final thoughts on the gameplay of Death Stranding.

Yeah.

I mentioned before the gamification of the act of walking.

But like most every little detail of this game, even the simple task of walking becomes a metaphor.

Death Stranding has a lot of motifs, and a major one is overcoming hardships.

When I started out Death Stranding, I sought out some tips on how best to play it.

Just about everything I read said, stop looking for help and just play the fucking game.

Really?

After about ten different sources say the same thing, I found one with a single different piece of advice.

There is not a single mountain in this game.

You won't be able to climb.

Oh, interesting.

Starting the game your first time, it is very good advice, as they weren't kidding.

I was able to climb everything I encountered.

Sometimes I needed a ladder or rope, but I was able to make it over every single obstacle in my way, even with a full backpack.

Despite that, climbing is still difficult as you're trying to balance your pack, avoid BTs and timefall.

That's when the metaphor began to click.

It's fucking hard balancing your life when you're going through something difficult.

There will be mountains to climb and bullshit to overcome.

Even if you have a full load of responsibilities you're trying to balance.

But you will never encounter a mountain you can't climb or bullshit you can't make it through.

Because on the other side of that mountain, after fighting literal time and the scariest shit your mind can create, you come out to a wide open clearing, the ground levels out, the sun shines down on you, and beautiful life-affirming music starts playing to remind you why you just fought so fucking hard to get through it all.

It's never been about the chiral network.

It's never been about the UCA.

It's never even been about Amelie.

It's about saving the beauty that is the natural world, the healing power of music and art, and the sense of ease that balance brings to our lives.

When you're happy, Lou is happy too.

And you can hear Lou laugh through the speaker on your controller.

A baby's laugh being a universally beloved sound.

And a final reminder of who would be on the receiving end of you saving the world.

If we're going to save the world, we need to first make it back to Capital Knot City.

On the way, Deadman will call you at certain intervals to tell you information he's been able to dig up on Clifford Unger in a series of exposition dumps.

Since he wasn't aware Clifford was an actual problem until very recently.

Clifford Unger was special forces in the army, which you already knew.

He retired very shortly before the first Death Stranding event.

After it happened, he became a part of the BB program at its earliest stages.

He died before the program was canceled.

Allegedly.

Right.

For some reason, instead of crossing over after his death, he seems to have been visiting other beaches in search of his BB.

Probably as a result of the experiments they were running during the early days of the BB program.

He points to you as an example of how attached a person can become to their BB, particularly Lou.

Cliff appears to be of the opinion that by reclaiming Lou, it will make him whole again.

He's not a BT.

He's something else entirely.

A new thing.

Right.

More like a vengeful spirit rising from the depths of hell to fulfill a specific mission.

Yeah, his unfinished business.

Classic ghost shit.

The reason for that mission is that he volunteered his own child to the experiments, not really understanding what those experiments would entail.

He just thought it would be an external womb situation where the baby would grow outside its mother, but he found out the program's true intentions and tried to get his baby back.

Oh, you want to turn my baby into a ghost alarm?

Fuck that!

We're gonna go play catch in the goddamn yard, give me my fucking baby.

He died shortly after and is currently on a rampage.

He was likely tormenting President Strand until she died, and now that she's dead, he's coming after Bridges, Amelie, you, pretty much anyone he thinks is involved with the BB program.

His hate has become so strong and he feels so hopeless about it all, he has decided to just end the world instead by bringing on the last stranding.

Meaning, he knows that Amelie is an EE, and that's why he's holding her on the beach.

His research also dug up the truth behind the BB experiments themselves.

As you know, Bridget Strand discontinued them after she became president.

But that was all bullshit, she just moved it underground.

The reason there were charging stations for your BB in every private room across the country is because BBs are necessary to the operation of the chiral network.

BBs weren't created to combat BTs.

They didn't even know they existed when they started the BB experiments.

BBs were created purely so the chiral network could function.

The fact they could see BTs was just a bonus.

A nice surprise.

Amelie did a nationwide tour, installing these ports and volunteering women by force into becoming still mothers to make the network a success.

I assumed, but that sucks.

Making the chiral network both a triumph and the UCA's greatest sin.

Deadman is torn on how to feel.

Wanting more answers about Clifford, hoping it will clear up why Bridget would do something so horrific.

He started trying to dig up info on Die Hardman, but his entire history is redacted.

Deadman can't figure out how Die Hardman made it to Amelie's Beach.

They're not that close.

So Deadman followed the trail.

They're on Amelie's Beach.

Only those with emotional connection or a past to Amelie's Beach can go there, which is how Bridget was there, seeing as how she's Amelie's mother.

Clifford Unger made it to the beach because of his emotional connection to Bridget during the BB experiments, which means Die Hardman must have a connection to Clifford Unger.

You go, so does that mean Die Hardman is the bad guy again?

Again.

Have we circled back to that one?

Right.

Hartman calls in with another problem anyway.

He says that on the seam where the veil between life and death meet, he's seeing other beaches converge on top of one another.

Multiverse.

In fact, it appears that all beaches are merging into one.

He thinks that's Cliff's goal now.

Wasn't that Hartman's goal?

He's like, at least I can find my fucking wife and kid now.

No, because he still wants to keep it separately so he can be just with them.

Okay.

He's like, I want all these fucking people here.

If they bring all beaches together, that's a fucking problem.

That's a disaster.

Yeah.

But Cliff's doing it so that way he can find his BB no matter where it goes.

Got it.

The only beach that appears to be unaffected is Amelie's beach.

Hers remains separate, likely because she's an EE.

Yeah.

It's almost as if her beach controls all other beaches, which explains why Cliff is there holding Amelie hostage so that he can control all the beaches.

Yeah.

If the seam opens up further, BTs will overtake everything in the real world, and the resulting void outs will destroy the entire planet.

Meaning, you need to hurry your ass back to HQ, so Fragile can send you to Amelie's beach ASAP.

On the outskirts of Lake Knot City, about two-thirds of the way across the country, you approach your base for the night.

In your way is a fucking chiral tornado.

Ugh, this again.

Just those flyover states in their tornadoes.

I'm terrified of tornadoes.

I couldn't do it.

I've been through one.

It's very scary.

Is there, ugh.

I grew up in earthquake country.

That means nothing to me.

The world could shake, and I'm like, bet.

That's what, earthquakes are what brought me into this fucking world.

They won't be the thing to take me out.

No.

Tornado might be.

All right.

Well, this one lifts you into the suck zone, and you pass out.

Don't say suck zone.

It's the official name for it.

Wait, really?

Yeah.

Does Glenn Powell say that in the new twisters or something?

I don't know, but they say it in the original twister.

Suck zone.

It's called the suck zone.

Suck zone.

You have a BB flashback.

Clifford is there, laying on the ground next to you, saying that when he found out he was going to be a father, he was so scared.

He realized that he couldn't risk his life any longer by being a soldier.

That's why he retired.

He couldn't ever let you and your mother be alone.

At the time, he had to be there for other people now.

Then you were born to do this thing, and he realized he's no longer scared.

He now has to be brave, and he's sorry it took him this long to muster the courage.

He stands, lifting you, and tells you not to make the same mistakes and to be free.

Then the voice of Die Hardman says, I need you to hand him over, Captain.

You can't see him just his silhouette, but you can tell he's not wearing his mask.

Then Bridget says, shoot him, John.

You close your eyes, and the sound of a gunshot is heard.

For the final time, you enter another war zone.

This time, a helicopter drops the four skeleton soldiers down, followed by Clifford Unger wearing Die Hardman's mask.

He removes the mask and gestures his men forward as their umbilical cords release.

You're in the middle of a jungle, making this the Vietnam War.

It's more of the same, just much fucking harder.

Yeah.

After you take Clifford down, you approach him, but keep your distance as he's lashed out at you the last couple of times.

He sees Lou and reaches out, touching the BB pod while whistling the lullaby he was singing in a previous flashback.

He tells you to give him back his BB.

You ask if he's really Clifford Unger, the father, and he just whistles in response.

So you finish the lullaby with a whistle of your own.

Clifford looks at you, saying he was told your name is Sam Porter, but your real name is Sam Bridges.

His bridge to the future.

You bring people together, Sam.

You're everyone's bridge to the future.

He removes his remaining dog tag and puts it around your neck.

You hand him Lou and Clifford brings you in for a hug.

Then you hear a gunshot and Clifford vanishes.

You black out and are taken back into a BB flashback.

Die Hardman is there with Clifford in the hospital room.

He's not wearing his mask, and his face is pretty clear to us now.

Just a regular looking guy, really.

Oh, it wasn't like hiding a crazy thing going on.

No, he's going by John these days, and he tells Clifford to take the BB and get the fuck out of here.

Cliff's wife can't be saved no matter what, but Cliff and BB have a chance.

If the president gives him an order, he has to follow.

She's the commander in chief and his ultimate authority.

The fact that Clifford was his commanding officer first is the only reason he's giving him a chance to run.

Clifford asks him why, and he says that no matter what hell they were sent to, Captain Unger always got his men out.

The scene ends, and you wake up in your bed.

Deadman is there, saying you were caught in another superstorm.

They dragged you in here when they found you.

You tell them that you believe Clifford Unger is Lou's father.

Deadman says that's not possible.

Clifford died decades ago.

You show him Clifford's dog tag that you brought back with you, saying that whatever is going on, Cliff's trying to tell you something.

He didn't have violent intentions.

He just wanted to talk.

Deadman says that he found something that just might clear everything up.

Die Hardman left behind a message labeled, in case I go missing.

I love it.

You turn it on, and a chiral gram of Die Hardman appears, saying that he hopes this falls into the right hands should he go missing.

He holds up a SID baby, saying that it was given to him by Amelie.

She told him that he could use it to get to her beach.

He knows it's a trap, but he's going to use it anyway, because he's been playing along with her little game for a while now.

Which he's pretty sure whoever is listening to this message has likely been playing along too.

He says this mask hides more than just his face.

He removes the mask, revealing a completely normal looking mid-fifties black man with some gray stubble around his chin.

He puts it back on, saying that he's not the only person without a past.

Amelie doesn't have one either.

In fact, he's never even met Amelie, not in person anyway.

Never shook her hand, touched her in any way.

Have you?

Pausing the message, Deadman says that Mama and Hartman have confirmed that they've never met her either, despite their involvement building the chiral network with her.

You tell Deadman that you know she's real.

You absolutely have touched her.

You've known her literally your entire life.

Deadman asks if you have ever touched her outside of the beach.

Oh.

And you stop to think on it.

While you do, Deadman plays the rest of Die Hardman's message.

In the message, he says that Amelie was born on the beach.

Her ha and ka split at birth.

Oh.

Her ka remaining on the beach, while her ha went to the real world.

She grew up in a hospital, as she was very weak without a soul.

The reason she survived was because her doom's numbers were at a level nobody had ever seen before or since.

As she aged, she showed an outrageous amount of abilities.

At 20, she found she could send herself to the beach.

There, her ha and ka finally became one.

Returning from the beach, her ka stayed behind.

Oh, no.

So she left for the beach one day and pretty much never came back.

Hence, why she doesn't age.

President Strand always introduced Amelie as her daughter, and everyone accepted that as truth.

But after her death, Die Hardman was digging through some old archives and found President Strand's medical records.

She lost the ability to have children at the age of 20 due to ovarian cancer.

Oh, God.

So where the fuck did Amelie come from?

Huh.

How can we confirm Amelie is an extinction entity if we don't even know she's real?

That's why he's taking a gun with BT killing bullets with him to the beach.

He's going to get his answers or he's going to start killing.

He tells you that he's never had dooms.

He can't repatriate.

There's nothing special about him at all.

Yet he's been through hell because every battlefield is hell.

He's spent his life running from death.

It's time to stop running.

Then the message ends.

Deadman says it's so obvious now.

Everything makes perfect sense.

Then the power goes out and he vanishes.

It's so clear.

It's back up within seconds.

And Deadman says there's some interference going on inside the Chiral Network.

You ask what he was going to say before.

And Fragile phones in via Chiral Grams saying she'll tell you.

When she was on the beach before she killed him, she got some answers out of Higgs.

You ask if she found out why Higgs betrayed her way back when.

Fragile says it was on Amelie's orders.

She was their leader.

Higgs was an opportunist.

He partnered with Fragile because she had a huge network of clients, as well as a power that allowed her to travel with ease, and he wanted to expand.

Then he met Amelie, who had the ability to do the same, plus had the power to control BTs.

So he dropped Fragile like a bad habit and joined Amelie.

Amelie then taught Higgs how to use these same powers.

And that's how he got the asshole we once knew.

The whole time you knew him, Higgs also had a BB pod of his own, one that glowed red because he was the bad guy.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

His BB always just had a black silhouette floating in the tank.

But why would someone as powerful as Higgs need one?

So she opened it, where she found a Sid Baby, like the one Die Hardman said was his pass to Amelie's beach.

Motherfucker.

Higgs didn't actually learn those powers in a traditional sense.

His use of the Sid Baby connected him to Amelie's beach and by default, Amelie herself.

Holy shit.

He was just a tool, literally.

Literally such a fucking tool.

Able to access her power through the Toy BB doll.

God damn.

He never had that power himself.

He was just borrowing it.

He's not fucking special.

Deadman looked at the Sid doll and said that Clifford Unger had this exact same doll with him on the battlefield as well.

Oh.

Clearly, Amelie was handing these things out to people, giving them access to her beach.

She couldn't have picked a less creepy fucking totem.

In Inception, it's a little spinning top, you know?

Come on.

Fragile and Deadman tell you that you need to return to the beach, figure out what is happening and who the fuck Amelie really is.

You have one final stretch ahead of you.

Fragile needs some meds if she's gonna survive long enough to take you to Amelie's beach.

So you bring a case of CryptoBio to Long, her favorite healthy snack.

Bitches love snacks.

It's the most treacherous stretch of the hall home, as BTs are more dense than ever, doing their best to slow you down.

When you finally make it to HQ, Fragile is in a coma.

She's so fucking close to done.

She's in the same bed the president was in when she was dying, but the surroundings are not hologrammed out to be the Oval Office.

It's just a sick bay.

Dead Man says that all her jumping to rally the troops really fucked her up.

You wave a CryptoBio in front of her face and she springs to life like it was a Scooby snack.

Honestly, I get that.

She gets up and is like, all right, boys, let's do this.

I see snacks.

I'm ready to murder.

Hartman gives a science talk about the multiverse and how Amelie's beach is the one beach to rule them all.

So now you have to teleport there, find her, and then talk her out of destroying the world.

Hey, don't kill everyone.

Then they say, help us, Sam Porter Bridges.

You're our only hope.

They don't say that.

Oh, they say it.

Shut the fuck up.

This game is a love letter to everything that's come before it and a road map to what's to come after it.

That is really fucking accurate.

Holy shit.

Hadn't played a moment of it.

If you can't reason with her, you'll have to kill her.

If you kill her, you'll be trapped on her beach forever, but you'll have saved everyone.

You give a speech about how you were once a broken man, hating everything.

But then you crossed the country, met tons of people who changed your view, people who relied on you to deliver.

So you're going to deliver for them one last time, even if it means there's a chance you won't return.

You remove Lou, handing the pod over to Deadman.

You tell him that Lou has saved countless lives and deserves the rest.

Deadman promises to nurse Lou to full health while you're gone.

You hold up your dream catcher and let Fragile know you're ready to go.

The two of you link up, and she teleports you to Amelie's beach.

You wake up there on the ground with Amelie approaching you.

But it's a fake out as you hear the sound of a baby crying.

You're the baby, and Amelie lifts you into the air.

She asks if you want to go home.

Then she carries you a few feet, kneels down, and drops you in the ocean.

I'm sorry.

It's weird that their brother-sister dynamic is her throwing him into the sea.

Constantly from clearly the first time they met, too.

Hey, buddy.

You descend below the water, reaching your baby hand out, and the screen goes black.

Now you awaken as adult Sam, still on the beach.

The water is different, though.

It has a ton of blood mixed in with it.

You run the length of the beach, searching for Amelie to know avail.

You run so long you tire out and fall to the ground to rest.

As you do, you hear London Bridge is falling down, being sunned by Amelie.

Suddenly, she's standing nearby wearing all black instead of her usual red.

She's holding the gun Die Hardman used on Bridget Strand, saying the last stranding has begun.

You took too long.

It's too late.

You tell her that her voice sounds off.

She turns around to reveal she's wearing Die Hardman's black skeleton mask.

Then you hear your name coming from behind you.

Turning around, you see President Bridget Strand lying in a hospital bed, dying of cancer, just as you did at the start of the game.

And just like before, she dives at you, now wearing the skeleton mask.

The two of you struggle, then she gives up.

The mask vanishes, revealing the old lady underneath.

She says she loves you, Sam, and that she'll be waiting for you on the beach.

Then she turns into Amelie and dies.

The Amelie in black removes her own mask and says that she's been waiting ever since.

Amelie says it was your job to stop her.

Why didn't you stop her?

You look at her and ask, Bridget, is that you?

She says, of course it's her, Sam.

You're confused, asking where Amelie is.

She says, Amelie is right where she always was, nowhere.

Amelie and Bridget are the same person.

Now, just stop asking questions and listen.

Now I have more questions.

Bridget and Amelie are just names, nothing more.

They're two different names that she's been going by.

But there's only one extinction entity, and it's her.

The last stranding has begun, and there's nothing you can do about it now.

So you can stay here, hang out on Amelie's beach, and just watch the fireworks as a new big bang is about to occur.

Or you can cut the cord that ties her beach to all others.

If her beach controls every other beach, then removing her beach from the equation should stop the last stranding from resetting the universe.

You ask if this will also stop the Death Stranding on Earth, and she says, yeah, it will.

For now, the Sixth Extinction will come someday.

It just won't be today.

But for now, yes, it will stop the Death Stranding, and Earth will go back to normal.

Which is why the option of ending it now is so appealing.

Why wait for the inevitable downfall when you can be the one to just pull the plug and avoid all the suffering?

She hands you the gun and tells you, it's your choice.

You have the chance to stop this nightmare.

You were the person who brought everyone together when you traversed the country.

It's only right that you decide if they get to remain united.

She holds her hands out and turns around, saying she accepts whatever choice you make.

You say you don't know what to do, and she says of course you do.

After all this time, how could you not?

She walks toward the water, waiting for the inevitable.

If you take too long, a light flashes, ending the world, and you reload at the start of the scene.

Oh shit.

If you shoot her, however, the exact same fucking thing happens.

Oh god damn it.

You aren't given any other choices, because it shouldn't be a choice.

She's right, you do know what to do, and you don't need the option to appear on your screen for you to do it.

You run up to her, turn her around, and hug her.

You're Sam Porter Bridges.

You bring people together.

So you bring her to you.

You promise that you're here for her, and that you always will be, like she was for you growing up.

This makes you think back to the day she gave you the dream catcher.

She hands it to you saying that one day, you'll be the one to make us whole again.

You're the only one who will be able to stop me.

Back in the present, hugging her, you say that she always knew this was how it was going to end, didn't she?

She said she wasn't sure, but she hoped.

She knew she couldn't explain it all then, you were a child.

But with time and perspective, maybe you would come around and understand.

She needed you here at this moment to do this very thing.

She takes your gun, saying that it can't help you here, but it still has a role to play.

Then she tosses it in the water.

She loves throwing shit into the ocean.

She's like, this is still really important, okay, Sam?

Into the water it goes.

Then she says that if the people in the real world are the most important to you, then you should go.

And she'll lock herself away here and the rest of the world out.

She tells you the last stranding already started.

You can't stop it.

But time here isn't the same as time there.

You can go there, delay the inevitable for however long it can be delayed, or stay here with her and experience it now.

You ask why she has to remain on the beach too, and she says, Sam, I am the beach.

Her job as an EE is to destroy all life.

Her job is beach.

She will do it eventually.

You just won't be around when she does.

She's been stuck in this hell dimension for so long, she got sick of waiting and wanted to do it while there were still people who remembered her.

As the two of you converse, the sky beyond is becoming brighter and brighter as it becomes more engulfed in white-hot heat.

The planet is crumbling and ascending into the sky.

She can't promise it won't come beyond your lifetime.

She can't control when it will.

But just remember, the Earth has had five other EE's, and each time, life fought back.

It evolved.

This end can be a new beginning.

She says goodbye, and then shoves you into the water.

She really hit you with the fucking Jeff Goldblum, life finds a way, splash.

Fuck you.

It's, this does feel like big sibling thing.

Like I know you say there's structural issues describing opposite gender siblings without it being sexual or creepy or having weird undertones.

But this does feel very sisterly.

You sink below where you see your body in the real world, which you rejoin.

Something's off though.

You're in black and gray, while the world around you is in color on a beach.

But only you the gamer can see or knows this.

There's a Sid baby by your side, and you pick it up.

No longer needing a ticket to Amelie's beach, you release it to the sea.

Nearby, you see the gun Amelie tossed.

You pick it up, hearing her voice say, the gun won't help here, but it still has a role to play.

You run down the beach, looking for someone, anyone, but you're all alone.

You stop to rest, and Amelie appears in her black dress.

She circles you, telling you a story.

As she does, different versions of herself appear to enact the story she describes.

She always had nightmares growing up about destroying the world, every night, for years.

Not easy for a child to live with.

At 20, she had a surgery that killed her momentarily.

Her ha and ka were split.

One stayed behind, the other remained on earth.

Bridget became the ha, and Amelie remained the ka.

Bridget passed off Amelie as her daughter that needs constant care.

Amelie is French for soul.

And her daughter was a lie.

Giving us Amelie.

Also a soulless president.

Okay, I see you.

He saw the joke to make her a redhead.

He said, too easy.

Let's just make her a politician.

The thing was, Amelie arriving on the beach was the first time anyone had ever experienced the beach in recorded history.

Oh.

She thought it was her secret to hold onto.

And so she did.

That's when she started to develop the early days of the chiral network.

A method of transmitting information through a place that has no time.

Allowing for zero latency in the real world.

Then her ha died, like a cruel, ironically named joke.

Which is why she asked you to complete her life's work.

Eventually she started to think maybe extinction is the best way to prevent total annihilation.

It forces life to survive, to adapt and evolve to the next thing.

She started to see the Big Five Extinctions throughout history as ways of kickstarting new life instead of destroying all of it.

She then talks about the day she found you.

Here on the beach, as a newborn baby.

Never even making it to the land of the living.

You watch as she picks up baby Sam, asking, do you want to go home?

Let's go home.

Amelie tells you that she wanted to protect you from death and thought by sending you back, she was setting you free.

Instead, she upset the balance between life and death.

You became a repatriate, the first.

Whoopsies.

Opening the scene between the beach and the real world, allowing BTs to escape the beach and enter reality.

Dooms quickly infected people all over the world.

Shortly after that, the Death Stranding began.

This is how she earned her title as an extinction entity.

Unleashing the Death Stranding was her destiny, and she did it by resurrecting you.

She then reminds you that alas, Death Stranding is total annihilation, which is why a regular old extinction would be far preferable.

She's like, I missed the days of asteroids, man.

The dinosaurs had it so fucking easy.

What would you rather do?

Die slowly and permanently, or die quickly but able to evolve?

You look down and see the gun in your hand.

Take a deep breath.

Put the gun to your head.

And the screen cuts to Death Stranding across a black screen.

But don't worry, that's not the end.

Yeah, we still have a whole movie.

Yeah, this cut scene still has one fucking hour left.

Famously so.

I am not exaggerating.

From this point to the end credits, there's one hour of cut scene to go.

It's already been going for about 30 minutes before this fake out.

Oh, we're already in it?

Oh, we've been in it.

Oh.

Very few sections do you actually take control of Sam.

There's still a couple short moments to come where you control him, but they're literally just point A to point B situations, and then it's back to the cut scene.

So anyway, back to the cut scene.

Fuck you.

You pull the trigger and nothing happens.

You keep pulling only to realize the gun is empty.

You toss it to the ground and run down the beach.

As you're running, you can hear the voices of Deadman, Lachna and Hartman, all saying, There he is.

We have to get him.

Sam, wait up.

But they're nowhere to be seen.

Out in the water, you see Amelie.

She is standing, looking up into the sky.

Five bodies hang there.

You've seen them before at the start of the game.

The five previous EE's watching over everything.

You look up at them with her, and then hear a voice say, gotcha!

As you get dragged beneath the water.

Looking down, you see dead men holding you by your ankle, clutching Lou in his arms.

You repatriate.

This time, the baby in your throat is at least a human.

But this time, it's a gray baby, like you were back on the beach.

The scene ends, and we are taken to a press conference, being held in the Oval Office by Die Hardman, wearing his traditional black skull mask.

He is wearing a Bridges pin, as well as the knot necklace you gave to Amelie, as if it were an award on his chest.

He is announcing the beginning of the UCA, saying that as the new president, he will do his best to support it and help it grow.

To do that, he says he can't hide behind a mask any longer.

He removes it, revealing his totally normal looking face, saying that if people have something to say, then we should say it to each other's faces, because that's what we've been missing.

You know, face to face interactions.

So funny that this COVID game ends with a climax of like, take off your masks.

We gotta take off our masks.

Otherwise we cannot connect with each other.

And I was like, that was the fucking point.

As he continues his speech, the camera pans around the room, showing all our friends, dead men, Lachna and even Hartman dead on a couch.

Just dead.

Finally coming up on you, standing against the wall.

He finally announces the death of both Bridget Strand, as well as her daughter, Samantha America Strand.

Samantha America?

I keep going, I'm too mad.

He thanks them for all they sacrificed for making the Kyrell Network possible.

Then moves on saying, there's one more hero we need to acknowledge.

You know where this is going, so you immediately head for the door.

As you reach the door, you hear him say that he's not going to disclose the person's name.

Everyone already knows who he is.

So it doesn't need to be said.

He thanks you for connecting the country.

And then goes on a long diatribe about legacy as you exit the room.

Why did I low key think he was gonna be like, me?

You're welcome, America!

Deadman rushes to catch up grabbing you by the arm.

He says to hold on, there's something he needs to tell you.

Then he realizes you're not throwing his hand off you.

Your fear of touch suddenly gone.

Is your rash better, buddy?

They don't go into that.

He asks if you want to know how they got you off the beach.

They didn't have any Sid babies lying around, so they tried to use the umbilical cord they got off President Strand.

They tried to go to Amelie's Beach, but it was blocked, as if it didn't exist any longer.

They hoped that you were not trapped on her beach, and were instead stuck on another one.

So Hartman and Fragile spent the next month going from beach to beach looking for you.

You go, hold up, a month?

How long was it for me on the inside?

Deadman says you don't want to know.

But fortunately, without time being an issue there, you didn't age.

He's like, but there was no rain.

You look great.

Pores are tight.

Skin is smooth.

Took a while.

That's why I was so excited.

We said, gotcha.

The one place they didn't think to check was your own beach.

That wasn't on the fucking list.

Jesus, they could use some project managers over there.

Die Hardman reminded them about his gun, and they found you by focusing on it.

You say that Amelie told you it still had a purpose.

He says, it did, just not one of death, but one of life, a stick that became a rope.

He hugs you loudly, declaring, oh, Sam, so happy you're okay.

Then he leans in and says he has something top secret he needs to tell you about Clifford Unger.

Get in the shower.

No, please, God, don't want you to ride like Norman reedus.

Clifford's wife's name was Lisa Bridges.

You push him away going, I'm sorry, did you say Bridges?

Deadman continues, no longer worried about top secret information.

He doesn't give a fuck anymore.

He's like, I'm barely real.

He says that Clifford Unger was killed by a special ops soldier known only as John.

Then John's trail vanishes, but some trails die harder than others.

Did he wink after he said that?

Maybe nudge him in the ribs with his elbow.

With a flick of his wrist, an image of Die Hardman appears.

His records start right around the time of John's disappearance.

Deadman lets you know that you now have top secret clearance level to the Chiral Network since you are the one who made it possible.

He advises you to look into it some more on your own.

If you do, you find out John's last name.

What do you think it is?

Bridges?

Strand?

There's only three fucking families in this world.

MacLaine.

Good for everyone involved.

I am mad at that.

Wait.

Wait.

This is John MacLaine.

And then he went through some shit with his wife.

And now he's Mr.

Die Hard Man.

Oh, we are loopy, guys.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, John MacLaine's the star of Die Hard, if you've never seen Die Hard.

Death Stranding is my favorite Christmas game now.

It's canon.

Yeah.

Fuck me.

He tells you that he doesn't trust Die Hard Man, but he'll keep working with him until he has proof that he truly can't.

Dead Man leaves and Die Hard Man approaches you.

He says he knows you won't be able to forgive him, but he needs to tell you something.

He killed Captain Clifford Unger.

He says that he did it because Bridget ordered him to, and he loved her with all his heart, so he did.

Captain Unger saved his life so many times.

It's how he got his name, Die Hardman.

That's not why you got that name, John McClane.

I can assure you there were other factors in that decision.

Captain Unger wouldn't let him die.

In the end, he loved Captain Unger every bit as much as he loved President Strand.

President Die Hardman falls to his knees sobbing, clutching at you.

When he was confronted by Captain Unger on the beach, he was prepared to die, knowing he deserved it, not understanding why Clifford didn't take his revenge.

Then he saw his BB, and saw the results of his actions, and that Die Hardman was just doing it for the betterment of America, and Captain Unger forgave him instead.

But he says he doesn't deserve the forgiveness and cries even harder.

You stand up uncomfortable with his old man crying at your feet.

Yeah, he's like, you're a business acquaintance, man.

He says that maybe Captain Unger did it for a reason, to save him from death one more time.

You snap back, that can't be true.

Who wants a president who isn't afraid of death?

If you're not afraid of death, how can you possibly value life?

Not sure if you've noticed, but life is pretty fucking fragile right now.

Did someone say fragile?

She comes out eating bugs and shit like, hey guys, I'm cool now.

You tell him, you've been saying it from the start.

Maybe America needs to die, so something better can come from it.

You shove his gun into his hands and say, that gun won't help you here.

Telling him those were her words, not yours.

Hell yeah.

You turn your back on the president, who thanks you for shifting his perspective to the right point of view and walk away.

You approach Deadman and see that he's carrying Lou.

You run over and grab the BB pod out of Deadman's hands.

He tries to stop you, but it's too late.

You look down and see Lou isn't moving.

Oh no.

Deadman apologizing, saying that if it makes you feel better, Lou was never really alive either.

The decommission order came in this morning, and Lou is scheduled for incineration.

He thought you would want to be the one to make the trip to the incinerator.

One last delivery together.

As you look over Lou, Deadman reminds you that if you were to take Lou out of the pod just to see what happens, then that would be a disobedience of an executive order.

Since we're now a country of laws, we should probably start following them.

And ironically, we're only a country of laws because of you.

So once again, you built your own destruction here, buddy.

He next tells you that he has deactivated your cuff link.

If you were to remove it, nobody could track you.

Just saying.

I'm just putting out information here.

You take what you want from it.

I'm a Frankenstein monster.

I'm not really human.

Yeah.

If you were to activate the incinerator with your cuff and then remove it, you could disappear forever.

Hypothetically, of course.

You hug Deadman goodbye, thanking him for everything.

As you walk out of the facility, you find Fragile standing there, holding up her umbrella.

You ask how the weather is, and she says she actually has no need for the umbrella ever again.

Now that the Death Stranding is over, there's no more timefall.

The UCA basically needs a new postal service, and Fragile Express got the gig.

Hell yeah.

She's the postmaster general?

She is.

Fuck yeah, girl.

Then she says that back on the beach, she couldn't kill Higgs.

She gave him the option of going through the end of existence on Amelie's beach or shooting himself.

Bitch, you had one character motivation.

Wait, how long we been sitting here?

My ass is fucking numb.

All I've known about you is you love to eat bugs, you are old from the neck down, and you want to kill Troy Baker.

What are you doing?

But it also means that Higgs took the coward's way out.

We did hear the bangs, you're right.

Yeah.

He had a machine gun.

Ho ho ho.

Why is this low-key canonical to the Die Hard universe?

You weren't expecting that, were you?

I really, why would I ever?

Yeah.

Right.

You say that she never did like breaking things, to which she says, I'm fragile, but I'm not that fragile.

Okay, calm down.

It's cute the first four times.

Well, you said it along with her that time at least.

She offers you a job and you tell her that the world is still broken out there.

You have no connection to anyone or anything, just like when you met in the cave.

She says, that's bullshit.

You literally connected the UCA.

You made friends.

You made connections.

You're not the lone wolf you think you are.

Conan O'Brien gave you a hat.

You turn your back on her and leave, tears streaming down her face.

This time, not because she was using her powers.

You hold Lou in your arms and say, come on, Lou, one last delivery.

After you make it to the incinerator facility, you decide to try plugging into Lou one more time, just to see what happens.

You're immediately taken into a BB flashback.

The difference this time, you no longer are in the perspective of the BB in the room.

We see it as a cut scene instead.

President Strand, wearing Die Hardman's mask, is there, along with a younger Die Hardman.

They're saying that this BB is special, and will either be the first one put into service, or will have to be sacrificed to experimentation.

Time lapses, and Clifford Unger can be seen giving his precious BB a little astronaut keychain, saying that man can go anywhere, even the moon.

Then Die Hardman walks in, saying he didn't realize Clifford was the husband.

The two men embrace, happy to see each other after a long time has passed.

Time skips, and Cliff is leaning over his wife's body, yelling at President Strand saying she promised BB would be safe.

Strand says that they're doing everything in their power, and they will release his son, but right now, it's best they keep him.

Cliff asks how he can trust a woman in a mask.

That doesn't hit well after COVID.

She explains that this mask keeps the fact she's sanctioned this entire thing a secret.

Secrets are sometimes necessary for the safety of a nation.

Then she storms out angrily.

Another time jump, and Die Hardman tells Cliff he's deactivated the security system for five minutes.

He tells Clifford to take BB and run.

There's nothing anyone can do for Lisa.

She's too far gone.

But he and BB can make it if they run.

Otherwise, his son will be taken to a new facility.

He'll be used as a new type of communication network.

Die Hardman wrote everything out on a note card.

It's the only way to truly keep it off the record.

He tells Cliff to read it and then burn it.

This will keep the fact that Die Hardman helped him a secret.

Handing him a gun, he tells Clifford that in order to disconnect BB, Lisa needs to be dead.

Once she flat lines, an alarm will go off, so you'll need to move quickly.

He can buy Cliff five extra minutes tops.

He wishes him luck as Die Hardman exits the room.

Clifford wraps the end of the gun barrel in a towel, then grabs the pillow from a closet.

He kisses his wife goodbye, promising to take care of their son.

Then he puts the pillow over her head, lowers the gun, and pulls the trigger.

He grabs the BB unit off the wall, and the perspective shifts back to inside the BB pod.

The sequence ends with Clifford running with his BB, saying everything's gonna be okay.

Daddy's got you.

Back as Sam, you disconnect from Lou, and head inside the incinerator complex.

After activating it, you remove your handcuffs, and place both it and Lou in the incinerator's loading platform.

An alarm sounds, indicating it is going to descend down into the incinerator itself.

In your mind, you hear Dead Man's voice say, there's a 70% chance the BB won't be able to survive outside the pod.

You figure that's a pretty decent chance, actually.

It's not bad.

And you grab the pod before it goes out of reach.

You immediately plug into Lou, and are taken back to the hospital.

Something's very different this time, though.

You're under water, as if you're repatriating.

You find Clifford carrying the BB pod frozen in time running down the hall.

You swim up to the pod, and the scene springs back to life with Clifford running down the hall in a cutscene once again.

Every doorway he tries is locked.

Every hallway contains guards.

Then the alarm finally sounds, and five security personnel are right on top of him.

Clifford points the gun at BB, knowing how important he is to their research, and the guards put their hands up.

Turning to run, one of the security people shoots at Cliff, clipping him.

Die Hardman comes around the corner telling the guards to stand down.

He rounds a corner to find Clifford Unger on the ground, bleeding out.

Die Hardman apologizes as more and more armed people enter the hallway.

Die Hardman stands up to calm them down, instructing them not to shoot.

Cliff pops up behind him, putting his gun to Die Hardman's head, taking him hostage, backing down an empty hallway.

He leans in and says, thanks for trying, John.

Then pushes him towards the security guards, running away down another hallway.

The security personnel tell their commanding officer that they have orders to fire even if he's standing in the way.

Die Hardman says that the dumbass just ran down a dead end, calm down.

He's like, okay, then do your job, whatever.

As Sam, you find yourself physically in the hospital room where this all began.

You watch as Clifford runs into the room and closes the door, shooting the electronic lock.

Cliff collapses holding his BB.

He crawls over to Lisa's dead body, apologizing saying he ruined everything.

The door is getting broken down as Clifford sings BB a lullaby.

You are powerless to do anything, a visitor in this memory.

The door breaks open and security floods the room guns blazing.

They pass right through your body, and you turn to see Clifford Unger lying on the ground, bleeding out, telling his BB about how being a father changed him for the better.

John runs up, comforting his dying friend.

A guard takes the BB pod from Cliff and hands it to President Strand, who had just entered the room.

She activates it and sees that it's empty.

Looking over, she sees Clifford cradling a baby in his arms.

John stands pointing his gun at his former captain, saying he needs him to hand it over.

President Strand yelling, shoot him John, behind him.

You dive between them, despite there being nothing you can do.

Then you hear Clifford say, they told me your name was Sam Porter, but your name is Sam Bridges.

The scene is frozen in time, and Clifford is speaking directly to you.

He then says, my son, my bridge to the future.

Without you, his life was a cliff.

No way forward, no landing zone on the other side.

Then you came into his life and showed him another path, like the deer did for you at the very start of the fucking game.

He spent his life dividing people.

You spent it connecting them.

You're everyone's bridge to the future, not just his.

There wasn't going to be a future without you.

He hands you the BB and you're like, so wait, this is me?

Without answering, Cliff takes his dog tags off and puts them around your neck.

Then a gunshot rings out and John can be seen holding the smoking gun with President Strand's hand over his, having forced him to pull the trigger.

This causes Clifford Unger to fall to the ground dead.

Flopping out of his hand is BBU bleeding out.

President Strand drops the ground screaming, her grand experiment dead.

The scene switches to underwater.

You're floating up toward the surface.

On the way, you pass Clifford Unger's dead body descending deeper.

The water washes you ashore, a pale gray dead baby body.

Amelie approaches in her red dress, saying, There you are, Sam.

She lifts your body, and there's a hole blasted straight through your stomach.

Oh, God, they kept that in?

They did.

That's kind of gnarly.

I'm not gonna lie.

Using beach magic, she seals the hole, creating a small cross-shaped scar where your belly button should be.

The camera flies down B.B.U.'s throat, where a brand new baby doll is waiting.

It winks, and the camera flies back out your mouth.

To reveal you in full color, crying as the tiny baby you once were.

She puts you in the water, saying she's sending you home.

Making you the world's first repatriate.

You awaken inside your BB pod.

Die Hardman is there, along with President Strand, who is no longer wearing her skull mask.

She smiles, welcoming you back.

Die Hardman says that your time as a BB is over, now that your umbilical cord is blown off.

She says that she knows she's the one who fucking did it.

I was there.

He questions whether having a deathless repatriate on their hands is such a good idea and suggests tossing you in a fire.

What if we just burned him?

Jesus, dude.

She says that she wants to try taking you out of the pod first.

See what happens.

If the BB lives, she'll raise him as her own.

Back in the real world, away from the land of exposition.

You have removed Lou from the BB pod and are desperately trying to revive the lifeless body.

It takes an extremely long time.

Black goo slowly releasing itself from Lou's body as the eyes begin to open.

Finally, you hear a cry as Lou wakes up, gripping Amelie's necklace and their tiny little hand.

Oh, Lou.

Above you, five baby BTs can be seen floating above, but they're different.

Their umbilical cords don't go down to the earth, they go up into the sky.

They're also not black, they're a sparkling white.

A different kind of BT entirely.

Oh.

You stand there hugging Lou, rocking back and forth gently.

You walk out into the rain, holding Lou closely.

Timefall no longer a problem.

You having saved the world for now.

The sky clears and you smile, as the scene cuts to black, and the game ends.

For real this time.

In a final end credits shot, you see your hand holding the picture of you, President Strand and your late wife, pregnant with child.

Long since lost to avoid out.

Lou's hand grabs yours, and you say, Louise, the name you and your wife were going to use for your unborn daughter.

The end.

Oh my God.

Should I play this game?

You absolutely should, because that was Death Stranding.

That was fun.

Oh, I hope so.

Fuck.

This is a long, long episode, wasn't it Goombas?

Thanks for hanging with us.

We got another episode next week.

Oh my God.

Yes, we got nine more of these episodes coming.

And Patreon, you're doing an episode very soon too.

We are busy, guys.

Yeah.

All for you.

So if you enjoyed that, please make sure you like it.

You subscribe to it.

You tell all your friends about it, because goodness, that was quite the adventure.

Yeah.

And if you want to see other games we've covered like this, you can check out our website, the othercastlepodcast.com.

That's the othercastlepodcast.com.

And that's how you're supposed to do it.

What did I do?

Monster energy drink.

Was that normal?

Oh goodness.

Yes.

Over there, you can find links to our Discord, to our Patreon, to our Instagram, all sorts of things.

Speaking of Patreon, we grew so much in the off season.

We are so happy and we want to thank everybody who has been listening on Patreon.

So we want to make sure that we give them all a wonderful little shout out.

Yes.

This episode is commercial free.

Thanks to patrons like these.

And we are wildly grateful for Matthew.

You bonks.

That's a fun.

Zan, Autumn, Alex, Sid, Jutsu, Mozart, Tamiya, Ian, Danny Boy, Zeta, Ari, Big Cat PDX, Chase, Alfredo, Micolaj, Terramak, Hippity Hoppity Cthulhu on your property.

That's the Cthulhu that was in the Death Stranding.

Michael, Amber, the Zerk Panda, QM1993, Damien, that Chonky Boy, AJ, Paul, Omar, Aaron, Cerise, Molly, Krisha, Molly Mock, Jackie, Jacob, Ellen, Steamed Hams from Albany.

You guys have fun names.

But truly thank you so much for your support.

It means the world to us if you want to join the gang and get access to our entire back catalog, including some episodes that we have archived and are inaccessible to people outside the Patreon, as well as some Patreon exclusive episodes.

I love our World of Warcraft episode that Tom did.

Thank you.

Please feel free to join us there.

And if you have ideas for other games, you want to lovingly suggest we do.

Or bully relentlessly.

You have earnestly had conversations with me in real life going, I really need you to stop encouraging bullying.

Like, I know you think it's funny.

Not everyone thinks it's funny.

And I'm like, I'm not for everyone.

My humor, you're like, Yeah, shut the fuck up.

You can't tell people to bully people.

Because the moment you were bullied, you're like, nah, fuck that.

I'm not doing it.

What's that got to do with what we're doing right here?

So please do join us on Discord.

Links are wherever you're listening to this and on our website, the othercastlepodcast.com.

Once again, that's the othercastlepodcast.com.

You can do suggestions.

We also have a forum for every single episode.

So if you want to hop in and talk about how Tom made you cry in this episode, because I will be.

Oh, that's going to be available.

And there's also just like a page of memes and it's a delight.

It really is.

Anyway, so this is Tom and Andrea reminding you.

Stop getting pushed off fucking cliffs, man.

And don't skip the cutscenes.

Tom, they're so fucking long, though.

Bye.