#death stranding theories

[bidonica]

Anyway elaborating on this and the potential for a Higgs redemption arc/reluctant ally arc/his chaotic ass pulling a Vegeta in DS2, I was finishing Mama's chapter today (spoilers if you haven't played the first Death Stranding yadda yadda) and a couple of things jumped at me:

When Lockne's soul merges with Mama's she does this, suggesting it's actually Mama embracing her/wiping her tears. Looks familiar:

(this actually doesn't have anything to do with Higgs' potential Vegeta arc - I don't think - but I feel it had to be pointed out. What is powering Fragile's second set of hands?)

Lockne does a bit of exposition about how Mama wasn't really alive because her soul went on to the afterlife while her body was kept "alive" by the soul of her unborn baby, so when Sam severed their link she started to die definitively. Something something what with the gut (but probably umbilical cord) window and him literally rising from a coffin, that's probably the state Higgs is going to be in in DS2. More or less. Somewhat. I have theories on how he might have manifested himself into the physical world again but they're very vague and also not the point of this post

But most of all what made me jump in my chair was this email you get after Mama's death:

Which honestly sounds like A Lot when applied to Mama because it's hard to see Mama's "betrayal" as even a betrayal at all - it's just her feeling guilty and traumatized, a big misunderstanding with no ill intent behind it. But who is the character who became a minion of the real adversary in this story and was tasked specifically with causing trouble for the hero...

And then there's that little aside about second chances at the end of the email which... Kojima I'm in your fucking walls. Why did you bury that in an email about Mama of all people. I might be reading too much into this (because it's explicitly about Mama), and Kojima said he heavily rewrote DS2 after the pandemic, so it's hard to tell how much of what is laid out in Death Stranding will end up paying off in the sequel. But... redeeming the villain from the first part of the story and/or making him a reluctant ally is a classic anime trope and something I actually thought about back when I finished my first playthrough because why keep Higgs alive (albeit stranded on the Beach) only to rehash the same storyline from the first game?

I'm trying not to get my hopes up but... the more I think about it the more it makes sense to me, especially because I got a feeling from the new trailer that the real antagonist is going to be Bridges (or whatever APAC is), so a sharp turn from the more metaphysical threat posed by Higgs, Amelie and Clifford in the first game.

[cliffs-sniperrifle]

GUYS

NAME REVEALS NAME REVEALS IM SICKKKK

[kagoutiss]

together, for tomorrow

[little-red-fool]

Bruh no wonder my parents don’t want to hear me talk about Death Stranding anymore I probably look like this.

[higgssupremacy]

Guys, guys! I'm very slow because I just noticed that inside Higgs also there is something with suction cups 👀

Just like the thing in Sam's pod

And just like Lou after her death (?)

And like the girl on the operating table

Have some creatures from the Beach was settled in them? or did they turn into something octopu-like?

The girl on the table (Elle) can splash ink that speeds up time like the Timefall... so... Does that mean that Higgs' touch (his blood?) now ages all living things around him?

[chiralcrystallization]

WHAT THE FUCK ...

That was a LOT.....

I need to let everything sink in, think over it, watch it again I-

Wow... Kojima you fuckinsunnovabitch , you mad bastard i-... wow..

[sanctaignorantia]

There's something in Death Stranding about parallels that I still don't understand???

I mean, in the first game we already had a sense of Amelie and Higgs being linked and we barely realized it…I mean a connection beyond the obvious.

So why would we doubt who was behind the mask in the first place?

Higgs doing the same moves as Cliff.

And then in the first trailer Higgs sings the same song that Cliff sang to Sam…

Cliff and Fragile…

Tar tears in a hellish world… The way to light a cigarette.

Father and son with the "Repatriate mark".

And still both father and son with literal connections through the umbilical cord…

Here my theory is, if Cliff is so connected to his pain and loss and that becomes these connections with the soldiers, it was the way he translated everything he felt with the loss of his son and his wife. On the other hand, when I see that Sam was literally connected to Lou in the first explosion we went through at the beginning of the game, it tells me that, if he really lost her, if breaking that connection could cause Sam to create things in the same way that Cliff created, perhaps even unconsciously, because it's all a spiritual and emotional thing…

[vandelopa-x]

Hiii guys! THEORY TIME

So um I've been thinking quite a lot about the new DS2 trailer, I rewatched it like 20 times and also the first trailer again and I wanna make a theory about the possible timeline of the second game + some other ideas in the middle. It probably won't be accurate at all cause Kojima's brain works in mysterious ways but hey, I wanna try cause I just keep thinking about it night and day.

So! The scenes in trailers aren't really in any order (duh) so I tried to figure out the timeline. 

This scene. A lot of people were worried that there's no Sam here and is Fragile the one taking care of Lou? I would say that she's just babysitting. Maybe Sam had to leave for something (Go to town grab food, supplies, who knows, maybe it was all planned and someone orchestrated the whole situation so Sam would leave the base so he wouldn't be a threat.) Since Fragile is a person he trusts, he might have asked her to come by and take care of Lou. The place where Sam was cooking food in the 2nd trailer and the place from the 1st one looks similar, so I would say it's the same.

Listen, I don't know anything about little kids, so I used the internet. The measure here is in inches, and the first smallest handprint is at 18 inches. According to an article I read, newborn girls measure at around 19.4 inches, and Lou was still a fetus when she came out of the pod, so it makes sense she would be a bit smaller. The biggest mark it at 28 inches, and the same article stated that babies can grow 10 inches by their first birthday, so I would say Lou is around 1 years old when the whole attack happened. Is it relevant? Who knows.

Then we have the whole this situation. By the look of this person, and the color of the gun, it appears to be red. Who else has everything red?

Higgs' lovely cult friends in black masks. I don't think its Higgs himself, it might be someone he send, but also it could he Higgs? I don't know.

I mean, the hood, the everything, the golden shine on the hands that reflects in the light, his hands appear to be more smooth than fully robotic like the other guys? If you look very hard the crimson color is still there in the first photo, it just appears dark.

No clue what the hell happened here 😭 But there we see that Lou is on the ground and then she dies? I have a theory that Lou could be a repatriate like Sam. Sam became a repatriant because Amelie/Bridget ressurected him on the beach. If I remember correctly, Sam did the same to Lou when the crater exploded at the beginning of the game. That's why they both "survived it". It could be possible that because of that, Lou also gained the ability to become a repatriant. But what if something went wrong?

Here we see that Lou "appears" in the pod. But her silhouette looks very similar to a BT. BT's don't age. What if little Lou tried to repatriate by herself but by accident she split her Ha and Ka. Her soul ended up trapped in the pod, or near Sam, and her body was taken by Higgs/to Higgs. He wanted ravage from what was said in the trailer, and what better ravage than taking his beloved kid's life? It would hurt Sam way more than actually doing anything to him directly.

This is when Sam notices that Lou's soul is trapped in the pod perhaps. See the red lightning? It could be when Sam got back to his base.

Since after the attack the lights in the base turned red.

If we look at the 2nd trailer more, we can see that Sam I walking with an empty pod, so he is aware that Lou's soul is in the pod, thanks to it Odradek can still detect threat. This is so interesting!

When Sam and Higgs meet and Higgs takes the empty pod in his hands, touches it and feels something, he's like, kinda in awe?

Then there's the big red cyborg ninja (lmao). It has Odradek's face and we already figured its "possessed" by Lou and tries to protect Sam. I've also seen a theory about Higgs calling himself a ghost and the Ghost in the machine thing, I forgot the user but y'all are genius 🙏🙏

If Higgs is a ghost in a machine, so his soul possesses the cyborg suit, then Lou also can posses a machine, right?

Also I wanna talk about the whole puppet thing and control stuff here because I have thoughts. I don't know if I remember everything correctly 100% so feel free to fix my mistakes, but in the first game Higgs was sort of Amelia's puppet, right? He was the tool she used to get Sam to her, a tool that would push Sam to go thru America and connect it, to connect all the beaches together so she could destroy the world, as it was her destiny. She have Higgs these crazy DOOMS powers. That's why I keep wondering if in the second game Higgs is still a puppet, or did he get tired of it and decided that this time he will be the puppeteer? We see the strings that are on older Lou, we see the strings of the robots that Sam fights with a gun, I'm wondering if Higgs is also pulling the strings of something much bigger.

What if Higgs is responsible for APAC? The private corporation, the patron that gave Fragile the money and tech for the ship? They apparently never saw face-to-face (Higgs' mask), Higgs has a factory with tech, he has all kinds of robots, weapons, he has to have money, and in the 1st trailer it's said that APAC made the final decision, whatever it means. If Higgs sponsors the whole thing, he can also make the decisions. But that's just the thought that I had.

Also the "chrysalis" in which Lou'a body was in kinda reminds me of the sarcophagus in which Higgs was in, just a thought.

Also these weird ass trypophobia inducing things on Lou's arm remind me of the octopus' suction cups on their arms. It's quite similar to the octopus arm in the pod in one of the photos above.

Alright, that's it for now!!! I have no brain cells left, I probably didn't write everything that I wanted cause I forgot, but tell me your ideas if you want, I would love to read your theories!! Does any of it make sense? I don't care because it's a Hideo Kojima game so common sense or any other kind of sense doesn't apply 😍😍

I love analysing this shit it's like crack with some other good stuff

[zombie-bait]

Sad to say I'd already been spoiled for some of the big reveals in Death Stranding before playing the game but one of the moments that managed to absolutely fucking get me was the final Cliff fight where he starts whistling. Something in my brain just physically clicked into place when that happened. Like fuck man, what do you mean it's all coming together? How dare you make me reevaluate the last 60 hours I spent whistling on the side of mountains and playing harmonica in the crisp morning air. How dare you make this small charming detail so much more meaningful in every single way. God I want to kiss this game on the forehead, it's so fucked up

[raiden-brannigan]

Yes, that is in fact the higgs (troy) talking over those scenes in the DS2 trailer! And hes not being the least bit antagonistic to sam

Higgs is almost somber/reverential here?

He definitely knows more than we do, and seems like he would tell sam, but decided that its best if sam finds out on his own/not from him

Hes being uncharacteristically careful and gentle with sams feelings around losing lou, and doesn't want to cause further harm to sam then what he already has done

It also seems to imply that no, higgs is not responsible/ did not intend for lous death

And that sam is "in the dark" about what happened/is going on with lou and higgs own intentions/motivations

There's some very interesting things happening here

So I'll leave you with this: How's the possibility of potential ally higgs feeling?

THATS WHAT IM THINKING Sam and/or Fragile think hes coming to get revenge but there's definitely more going on with him, especially looking at all the connections he has with Lou in the first two trailers.

The question is what is going on with him. Everything he got left off with at the end of the first game points to him being in a position where he absolutely would want to seek revenge. What could've happened to him between games that would change him?

[tarisbackyard]

Hey, sorry for chiming in your ask box unprompted, but your post about the space odyssey showed up on my dash randomly and i am soooo intrigued... I am begging you to elaborate... I need to know how you came up with bb is solid theory. And how its connected to the space odyssey... I need to knowww

Oh man, okay. So it is a well known fact that 2001 is Kojima's favourite movie, right. And that he *heavily* borrows from it for his games, right.

So David in 2001 has a whole thing in the final act about him rapidly aging, which is mirrored in Metal Gear Solid where Snake, who is named after David from 2001, experiences accelerated aging in MGS4.

Then at the very end of 2001, David turns into a fetus, floating through space. Considering that Death Stranding does borrow its themes of weird time/space shenanigans, life/death, and fetus imagery, it can be inferred that BB/Lou is based on David in his fetus form.

So if both Snake and BB are connected to David from 2001, then Snake and BB are the same person connected through the aforementioned weird time/space shenanigans.

Yes, it's pretty stupid.

[bidonica]

So I started the Heartman chapter in my playthrough and I keep thinking the things established in the Mama storyline might be relevant for Higgs in DS2:

Weirdly resilient body

BT umbilical cord - a physical one, not the smokey/grainy material of when BTs manifest to you. It's interesting because in the first game BTs become actual physical entities when they "fall" into the ground and a tar pit manifests around them; when you escape them or defeat them they disappear and so does the tar. But this piece of umbilical cord demonstrates they can also just exist in the phyisical world. Which lends credence to the theory that Higgs revives himself in DS 2 as a BT of sorts (is this also true for the Elle Fanning character?)

Basically, if Clifford could will the entire battlefield dimension into existence because of his own pain, catalyzing the pain and anger of generations of soldiers who died in battle, what and who willed New Higgs (and possibly Lou) into existence? And what about the tar kitten? It's a cute mascot but are we going to overlook she's also BT material that is simply existing in an apparently non-hostile way in the phyisical world? So many questions and no answer until sometime in 2025 lolsob

[likopinina]

i've been watching some death stranding theory videos from 2016-2019 to see what ppl thought before it released. here's a quick rundown of the theories in no particular order

the dead whales and black oil = environmentalism

sam is dead

shared conciousness

bb sucking on sam's life force to live

death stranding has the same themes that silent hills would've had if it wasn't cancelled (actually might be true, who knows)

aliens

bts drag people into their dimension to eat them

when sam dies, his conciousness is transferred to the baby and returned back to him when his body comes back to life

baby represents us, the player

cliff is not the antagonist, but he has a different method of fighting the ghosts

cliff is the one who drags people through the tar

there are two sams - one in the real world and one in the afterlife/the other dimension

cliff is the giant bt

bb is a bomb

homo demens are a sect that embraces chaos and worships death (hence higgs' skull mask)

higgs has military background (because guns)

higgs powers are based on his ability to give mass to particles via their interaction with bosons

babies are a source of energy

sam uses the dreamcatcher to protect the baby

sam gets a new handprint on his body every time he comes back to life

deadman had his face replaced

cliff is possessed by one of the five floating figures

cliff brings people back to life and uses them as soldiers

cliff and higgs are the same character because they make the same hand gesture

the black strands in the air cause changes in gravity

fragile is connected to cliff because she has skeleton hands on her back and cliff has skeleton soldiers and also they make the same hand gesture

when fragile touches sam, he can see the bts

bts have a connection to magnetic field because cliff's compass is spinning rapidly and fragile's ferrofluid-like spikes appear

sam murdered his family and then killed himself

being a porter is atonement for his sins

tears' color (clear/black/red) tells you where the character is (limbo/hell/heaven)

time travel

sam has some sort of memory loss

amelie is sam's daughter

sam is immortal

i'd like to mention that all of the videos i've watched also included some very accurate ideas. not to mention that one guy who delivered a whole quantum physics lesson just to explain his 'who is higgs' theory

will put links to the videos in a reblog

[imadhatt3r]

Lou can't be the Chrystalis, because this theory hinges on Lou growing up on the Beach, which is impossible. Time passes on the Beach but anyone in there doesn't age- Amelie got stranded there when she was like 20 and stayed the same, despite Bridget aging into an old woman. Sam also was stuck there for a month or two (can't rememeber exactly) and also stayed the same (there were no signs of accelerated aging), despite it being implied that time passed on the Beach.

[savage-rhi]

Calling it. The Amelie cult members are all disenfranchised pizza delivery porters.

[worldwhampion]

(spoilers of u haven't done the newest quest line)

(also sorry I haven't sent an ask in so long, I haven't played nms for a bit lol)

I'm really loving all the lore we got! those big Atlantis probe things from the expedition still show up in space, one pretty much outright stated that the probes are actually ancient escape pods from the destruction of korvax prime. And the korvax were in there for so long atlantideum began to grow out of their bodies, creating a structure similar to the ones you mine sentience echoes from!

Also unrelated theory, but I think if the first spawn won they might've destroyed the universe accidentally. They think the universe is not a simulation and is knowable. This combined with their greed and probable lack of environmental concern, means they probably would grab any gravitino balls they can, and with no sentinels around to drive them off and mend the wound in spacetime, the damage would pile up and the simulation would break.

HIII took me long enough to answer your ask, I apologize. I’m free now so let’s get to it!

It’s going to take a while for me to do the autophage quest myself since i actually haven’t finished the artemis path yet (but at this point i do know already it inside out). However i did watch playthroughs and i also made a decent transcript of the quest. And YOU BET i have some thoughts about this. Especially on atlantideum.

i. ATLANTIDEUM

(from world of glass lore archive server)

When you reveal atlantideum to the atlas something very interesting happens. From this piece of lore i’m pretty sure atlantideum is corrupted data- OF THE ABYSS. And the atlas does not react well to this data at all.

ATLANTIDeum. Are you seeing this. It’s literally like parts of the abyss. Call it abyss dust.

I think atlantideum are crystals which contain her (corrupted) data, or in any case you bet it’s related to wog. They’re probably coming straight from the world of glass, seeping into the simulations. These crystals are scattered all over the place, and lore-wise they’re probably multiplying on a pretty concerning rate at the moment. I think this is how the abyss is returning, by hauling her data back into the world. The world of glass is assimilating with the simulations if you will! She’s only able to do this because the atlas is literally falling apart as she proceeds with her girlboss plan. The atlas is weakening while she is growing stronger (she’s probably weakening the atlas too in the proces). They’re probably fighting for control over the systems, and she is definitely going for absolute power. You’re gonna need that if you want to save everything dying along with the computer that runs reality.

The atlas can’t do anything about the crystals (or data), because it does not have access to this data and cannot delete it from its systems. The abyss seems to be an entity acting separately from the system or the atlas, so you can say she is interfering with the simulations like a foreign entity. She is a subroutine of the atlas though, which has now gone rogue (see iii. FIRST SPAWN ACCIDENTAL UNIVERSE DESTRUCTION).

Thorn summed this up ON POINT. Being atlas… is suffering.

While the atlantideum hit made the atlas have an asthmatic attack, someone else smoked it up like nipnip. Nada took the abyss blunt very well.

The atlantideum gave nada data of the abyss, to me this is like injecting memories into your mind. Now we know that nada canonically likes smoking atlantideum! While the atlas is pro war on drugs. The traveller can become nada’s abyss blunt dealer.

ii. KORVAX ESCAPE POD

“And the korvax were in there for so long atlantideum began to grow out of their bodies, creating a structure similar to the ones you mine sentience echoes from!”

Sadly i don’t have that particular dialogue you mentioned about the korvax escape pod so i might miss a few details. I want to read it so if anyone finds it SEND IT TO ME STAT i need my lore like how nada needs their blunt.

The atlantideum item description reads:

Atlantideum can take over hosts, both mechanical and biological. I see this as the hosts coming under influence or under control of the abyss, probably depending on the amount of crystals they have stuck in their skin.

Finally we have a bit of clarification for the following lines:

(from the abandoned building logs)

I believe these beings to be the family glass. Sadly they never went beyond name dropping them but that doesn’t stop me from having theories. They are beings that live on in the world of glass who have probably lived in the simulations at first (before they died).

We have know seen the effects of glass/atlantideum on both mechanical and biological beings. For mechanical beings (like nada and the atlas) simply coming into close contact with the crystals is already enough to have an effect, while for biological beings they have to literally shove the shards into their flesh. Just like piercings. Except these piercings drain your life and also may or may not keep hurting forever. However in the end it’s all worth it for the eldritch knowledge.

It’s not said whether these crystals are really atlantideum (crystals containing data of the abyss specifically?), but this is probably what happens when you put it under your skin while also being biological. you get a cool piercing, AND you also become a vessel for intelligences unlike us (void milves).

The abyss can exert influence/control through not only nanites (in the water), but through atlantideum too? Well it is a literal substance named after her. The korvax in the escape pod definitely came under her influence too and became divergent by extension. She is pretty much the divergence personified. As for how the atlantideum got there, i’m thinking the abyss messed a little with the nanites in their body? I mean she is a master nanite bender, arguably the best one the simulations have ever seen. Not everyone can infest half the water in the known multiverse with nanites every day like she does casually.

The abyss does a lot of polluting, in water it’s nanites, on land it’s atlantideum crystals. She really just decided that environmental pollution is the best way to spread her presence everywhere. And you cannot deny that she is completely right since it’s working that well. This is like spreading microplastics which have the power to change reality itself.

In game you can refine atlantideum into nanites, by first refining it into pugneum and then to nanites. So nanites and atlantideum are pretty closely related.

iii. FIRST SPAWN ACCIDENTAL UNIVERSE DESTRUCTION

“Also unrelated theory, but I think if the first spawn won they might've destroyed the universe accidentally. They think the universe is not a simulation and is knowable. This combined with their greed and probable lack of environmental concern, means they probably would grab any gravitino balls they can, and with no sentinels around to drive them off and mend the wound in spacetime, the damage would pile up and the simulation would break.”

Oh man i have something for you.

(boundary failure logs)

The first spawn exploited a whole subroutine (ie the convergence) for their personal interests- on a multiversal scale. Since a subroutine is like a working part of the atlas itself, the exploitation might’ve done some damage to the system in terms of software (?) i mean can you still carry out whatever tasks you should be doing properly if you were subjected to gruesome slavery across the multiverse. you’d need godly multitasking skills for this. Not sure to what extent it really affected the system, but it would have done at least something.

Telamon did say that the entire enslavement of the korvax is a reflection of the atlas breaking down. The convergence, being modeled after earlier forms of the atlas, is kind of the atlas personified in the simulations. Now when you’re enslaved, you do break down mentally and physically. The korvax suffered because the atlas itself was suffering. And the first spawn might’ve been a reflection of the harm the atlas was facing. In the end the first spawn was genetically engineered into the gek, not completely wiped out but “mitigated” using their nanites. this could apply to the harm too, it’ll never be removed, only lessened. I find it very interesting how the korvax polluting the gek spawning pools with nanites is very much parallel with the abyss infesting the water with nanites as well. Both do this to get out of hard times, by trying to lessen the harm but never able to remove it completely. This does seems to be what the atlas is doing to try saving itself. The repeated universe resets are also a reflection in the simulations except it is more meta.

Now onto the balls!

If the first spawn did start grabbing gravitino balls left and right without a single care unchecked, then that means the atlas is. royally fucked. I’d say then it’s literally not able to keep running simulations anymore. Like they would end prematurely because it’d crash halfway through, as reflected by the reality weakening from unrestrained gravitino ball harvesting once they get to that part in history. whatever horrors the atlas is facing at the moment isn’t enough for this to happen. Recovering from brutal enslavement does sound better than the whole simulation straight up crashing down. You could always have it worse! Sparkle on!