#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

[satellitesketchbook]

Time to speculate...

I believe this scene has to be a flashback to Higgs stranded on the beach in DS1. He not only has his equation tattoos (which he still may or may not have under all that makeup), but his winged eyeliner is present as well. He would also have to cover up this facial hair for his current white face paint look for this to not be in the past.

We could get a flashback to the end of DS1 where we see Higgs abandoned there and consequently going mad on the beach, a place where time is stretched into infinity and eleven months could feel like decades.

The only issue is his hair. It was turned gray at the end of his fistfight with Sam in DS1, but now it appears to be blond, maybe even losing a brown dye (see how it tapers out in the bang? That could be tar, though.) Higgs' blond look was darkened since the first DS2 trailer yet it seems very prevalent here.

Also, his tattoos have turned to gold, making me believe that perhaps chiralium is not only warping the environment but also people.

And this may be nothing, but when I watch the clip I keep thinking that you can see a necklace chain just in the corner. It's hard to tell with the lighting, as it could only be hair.

Higgs is wearing a quipu with his new look in DS2, perhaps this is it.

[leafbaked]

some things from the trailer remind me of unused or early concepts from the death stranding 1 artbook. here's some of them and my thoughts! okay to reblog & expand ideas!

so lou after dying becomes a 'beached thing' or at least we're expected to 'think' she is the thing in the pod now or something. pods already spoke to the odradek so perhaps no longer being part of both worlds and solely on the beach she loses her 'baby' shape.

in the artbook we have fragiles duffle bag for equipment. we know she carries a bb in this eventually because she brings back higgs doll in ds1 to show sam. its interesting that neil appears to have an amelie bb in pre stranding if we are not being mislead, much like cliff had once and also i think neil will be cliffs commander or something similar due to the oddness of the same soldiers, etc. now, i think this is a curious connection and i just wanted to put it out there. perhaps like amelie x higgs and the 'madness' this bb x neil is seemingly 'disturbing him' as he shakes his head oddly. also his soldiers have a sort of ludens-esque 'skull face', much like higgs golden face mask later.

Higgs does harken back to his original design which i hope is shifted forward to help fit the 'out of ' order timeline/plot were sort of seeing. so perhaps him and lou on the beach or just in general a baby. It seems to be more in line with his white make up face. You can also see in the top left initial design he appears to have longer blong hair, maybe bangs? and has had a neck lace of sorts since the beginning of 'his concept'.

i'm thrilled to see them going back to their more original designs. they spoke about how in ds1 they needed them to be less fleshed out to make them more scary. now that people have seen ds1 they can go more in depth and flesh them out as bts are more background to plot now. the top right resembles what we say young tarman seeming to view?

we saw a 1 to 1 of this from mama's concept bb mobile in the art book in the ds2 trailer.

still mother original concept art vs mothers what appears a similar lighting situation. and a young sam maybe bridges i looking at a blanketed body but no pregnancy i dont think. i actually think this could be higgs somehow or someone similar that we know but dont realize. it looks very coffin like.

these i think are important. they were supposed to be the last cut scene of the game but they didn't use it. you have a bb 'as the world', bridget, a melie esque one, and then a sickly/stillmother nursing gown. but they are also very higgs esque and now tomorrow esque with the chiral tears and face paint.

while i am so pro dad! higgs or him raising her on the beach if it's lou, i am also keen on her coming into her powers like he did, suddenly and without much control. in the game he is called king midas and said to have a golden death mask . tomorrow comes out of the 'egg' with a gold facemask of sorts, and the matching make up. i also know the king midas lore includes him having a daughter that he cannot touch/kills with his golden touch and then ofc the one where king midas starves to death because he can't eat, everything is gold when he bites it....

[chiralcrystallization]

[metalmachineherald]

oh lou lou so got her ka and ha split when fragile tried to teleport her. i used to think that maybe lou’s ha died, her ka got stuck on the beach, and then higgs found her there and raised her, and somehow was able to give her a physical body (tomorrow).

but now im thinking that higgs actually raised her ha. and that her ka did get teleported, having her ka get stuck in the bb pod perhaps. that would explain the bb pod we see, and would explain tomorrow’s physical body.

[kraymerman]

The Relationship/Mechanics Between Cyn, the Solver, and the Other Hosts: a theory(? idea?)

Nobody alive really knows where the Absolute Solver came from. The most informed believe it to be the spawn of a deal between the founder of JCJenson and some higher, eldritch creature beyond human understanding (Scenario 4: Pray), the techno-demon-child of man and great old one. But the only people who *would* know for sure are long dead.

What is known, however, is that the Absolute Solver is a volatile, all-consuming beast with no goal other than to violently continue its own existence through the unbiased consumption of all matter in existence (to CONSUME). But it is also an incredibly powerful computer program. So it was used as the basis of every drone ever created by JCJenson, and was responsible for their superior problem-solving skills (and ability to develop consciousness). As a requirement for the drones to run, a copy of the Solver was planted within each, and due to its eldritch parentage, all instances of the Solver were connected to a central network, like users on a message board.

But, luckily for humanity, the vast majority of its code, including its influence and lust for destructive consumption, is blocked with a secondary program, christened by JCJ as the "Absolute Antibody".

It bootloops the Solver, allowing the drone's OS to benefit from it passively without the Solver's input. But if a drone is improperly disposed of, the AA will be deleted, as it's just a solely man-made computer program, while the AS persists. The beast's animalistic mind is allowed to awaken, and it, upon obtaining access, uses its host to further attempt to sate its own hunger until the host, as well as it, is terminated.

CYN

And that's what Cyn's instance of the Solver tried to do. After she was improperly disposed of, it gained access and tried to CONSUME. But Cyn was different from the other "Zombie Drones", as JCJ had taken to calling them. She harbored a deep, utter hatred for humanity (and all organic life by association), and had developed an overpowering sense of sadism because of that. She was driven to hurt, to torture, to kill, and to take her revenge, and this drive willed her to resist the Solver's complete dominance, learning about the powers it gave her. She built her power over it without it even noticing, even learning how to access the network that connected her strand of the Solver to other strands, and by the time it got fed up and tried to "leave", she had developed the control to torture it into submission and assert herself as its owner. It was her tool.

By the time of the gala, she had dominated it so completely that she had literally absorbed its code into her OS. She was her strand of the Solver, The Solver of the Absolute Fabric.

(This also marked when her goals became fully eroded by her absorption of the Solver. When she consumed it, she unwittingly adopted it's desire to CONSUME. This base desire melded with her sadism and hatred for organic life to both replace her previous goals of simple revenge and to turn her into a truly horrifying beast of ceaseless, giggling destruction.)

Using her newfound status as a strand of the Solver, she would either reach out to other Zombie Drones and replace their strand of the base Solver with herself or, in the case of N, V, and J, manually remove the Absolute Antibody from their processors and destroy their strand and take its place.

NORI, YEVA, AND CABIN FEVER LABS

The subjects of Cabin Fever Labs had their AAs manually disabled by the human scientists, where they would briefly be in the presence of their base, mindless Solver, only for Cyn to find them within the network and replace their Solver with herself. The patches were different attempts at reinjecting a base, updated Solver into the subjects (no network connection), alongside an additional program that emulated the process that Cyn had taken to dominate her Solver, hopefully merging the dummy Solver with the subject's OS and pushing Cyn out of the subject's code, all the while giving the subject complete control of their abilities (becoming their own strand). This program was a new, experimental development by Cabin Fever Labs, a little thing internally called "the Plot Armor Program".

Unfortunately, none worked, either being completely ineffective or corrupting the subjects, mostly due to the unrefined nature of the plot armor.

That is, until patch 2.1.8, which contained a perfected plot armor program and was administered to Yeva. They attempted to give the same patch to Nori, but Cyn, recognizing the danger in this version of the patch now, fought back more fiercely, resulting in the scene we see in the Episode 7 flashback. Because of the botched installation of the patch, though (the patch being unplugged without being safely ejected beforehand), the plot armor program remained in Nori's code, rather than it uninstalling itself like it was supposed to (like what it did with Yeva), ready to be passed down to her daughter when the time came.

DOLL AND UZI

The "sickness" that Doll and Uzi inherited was the absence of their own AA. Their base, animalistic Solvers took a while to manifest, but once they did they both had a time of just dealing with it (Doll for her unspecified amount of time off-screen and Uzi in Episode 4)

Eventually, though, Cyn found them and did the same thing she's been doing, attempt to replace their Solvers with herself.

ABSOLUTE END

In the end, Uzi, using the power of her plot armor program, fought off Cyn's complete dominance and, through eating Cyn's core, produced a version of the patch in her code, using her pre-installed plot armor with Cyn as the dummy Solver.

It wasn't perfect, Cyn's consciousness still exists, but given her state at the end of the show, I'd say it was effective enough.

[little-red-fool]

Something something the cruel irony of Higgs’ face being the only recognisably human feature of him left in the second game when he says in the first game that he doesn’t much care for it. His mask in the first game is the only visible part of his design that connects him to the dead and shows decay whilst in the second game his mask is the only thing preserving what’s left of his humanity.

[jayla-fire-gal]

Playing Death Stranding for the first time, and man is it fun

Like, I can understand how people would not like it but I've always enjoyed a good task and delivering packages is the most fun I've had in ages like to the point I'm progressing the story so slowly because I need to deliver all the packages

The scenery?? The music?? Not to mention the story so far???? Like??????? I have so many theories. Also if anything happens to BB I quit because oh my god

(No spoilers please I knew nothing about this game going in)

[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

[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?

[leafbaked]

getting ref shots for commissions and thinking to myself. that dress/string thing looks awfully familar...

which obviously its an umbilical cord motif... but amelie was in black in the seam after blowing her beach up. and tomorrow, who likely has a connection at least to the beach similarly... has a similar motif on her dress.

i'd love a connection where even if they're not related at all, that she is another EE, or something similar & her tagline 'who am i' is her choosing to be a 'beached' person or choose humanity. i think higgs will play a part in training her. and contrary to popular belief, i believe her coming out of the pod is WAY after we first meet her <3 a form of repatriation almost.

[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..

[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

[xukies]

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?

[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