Death Stranding – what is the game about? Well, it might be hard to explain and understand even after beating the game, but this article is here to try and make some sense of it.
Sam Porter Bridges (or Sam Strand) is the main character in Death Stranding. At first glance, he seems to be a person who acts as a bridge between different cities by connecting them to the chiral network and delivering necessities. He is a repatriate, which in Death Stranding means someone who has returned to the land of the living after dying—breaking the norms of life and death. The goal of the game is for Sam to reach the west and complete the chiral network. Similar to other games by Hideo Kojima, there’s usually an underlying theme or story that takes a bit of digging to really understand. This article will dig into Deathstranding’s convoluted lore by discussing the three main villains in the game and their motives, so there will be heavy spoilers below.
3. Cliff Unger
Cliff Unger is a dead man, a BT (beached thing) on a mission to find his baby; that is his motivation and purpose. You are shown images from the perspective of a baby inside a container throughout the game, and these images only start appearing once Sam is connected to the Bridge baby. The game seems to hint that Sam’s BB, Lou, is the BB that Cliff Unger is looking for, which is why he comes after Sam.
Cliff Unger is infamous for being a great soldier, so your encounters with him are in a war zone where he summons soldiers to attack you. This ties into the overall theme of Death Stranding—his resentment and motivation tie him into the world of the living and how he became a BT. He doesn’t realize until their last encounter at the end of the game that Sam is the BB that he is looking for, and his son—it was when he realized that and found Sam that he finally found salvation and moved on from being a BT.
2. Higgs Monaghan
Higgs is the main antagonist in the story—kind of. He’s the big bad guy and leader of the terrorist group Homo Demens, responsible for blowing up two cities with a nuke. He has a twisted personality and enjoys watching people suffer. He has the strongest DOOMS power in the game, which gives him the ability to teleport, float, and even control BTs, making him the strongest enemy in Death Stranding.
If Higgs doesn’t sound like a villain, I don’t know who does. However, he’s actually more of a puppet than a villain. That’s right, the character that’s been depicted as the mastermind trying to destroy the world (or what remains of it) as we know it was actually just following orders. He’s known as the guy who kidnaps Amelie Strand, the daughter of the late-president Bridgette Strand and Sam’s adoptive sister. As you find out near the end of the game, Amelie Strand gave Higgs his DOOMS power and planned for everything to happen so that Sam would head on the Journey to the West to rescue Amelie. Higgs is loyal to Amelie, but we are never really told the reason—what drives him? What is his motive? We only know that Higgs is jealous of Sam because of their connection, which is why he wants to destroy Sam. Eventually, Sam bests Higgs and ties him up. Finally seeing Sam, Amelie took Higg’s powers away as he was no longer useful, and shortly afterwards he meets his end.
As you may have guessed by now, the final villain in Death Stranding is none other than…
1. Amelie Strand
Amelie Strand is a very complex character; she is the "antagonist," but not by choice; she is the bringer of the end. Her very existence is to bring about the end of the entire world as she is the Extinction Entity—this is a term discussed by Heartman in the game where Mammoths and Cavemen were the Extinction Entities that brought about the Death Stranding in the past. Throughout history, there have been five major deaths. Amelie Strand is the sixth Death Stranding—the one to bring the Last Standing, the one to end everything.
Amelie’s motivation is to bring about the inevitable. As the Extinction Entity, the world will end, and it’s her job to bring about the end. She wanted to speed up the process instead of staying alone, which is why she used Higgs. She needed Sam to complete the chiral network in order to connect all of the beaches to her beach; once that was complete, she would be able to bring about the last stranding to end all life. At the very end, Amelie gave Sam two choices: to watch the end of the world with her on her beach or to sever their connection by shooting her with Die-Hardman’s gun. Sam picked a third option—to embrace her and assure Amélie that he would be there for her forever.
Shortly afterwards, Amelie ejected Sam from her beach and chose to remain isolated and delay the stranding for as long as possible in order to give humanity the chance it needed to adapt, evolve, and survive. Amelie explains that her body and soul separated during surgery, which left her body as Bridgette Strand and her soul on the beach as Amelie Strand, but they are both the same person. We learn that Cliff Unger’s son was killed by Bridgette Strand and that Sam became a repatriate because Amelie saved him on her beach and brought him back to life, breaking the normal cycle of life and death and setting the Death Stranding in motion. Bridgette Strand then took Sam as her adoptive son, and we come full circle in seeing how everything is connected.
You may also be interested in:
- [Guide] Death Stranding Difficulty Levels Explained - Choosing Best The Difficulty For You
- What Is Death Stranding About? (Death Stranding Story Explained)
- Death Stranding Amelie Explained (All You Need To Know About Her)
