Death Stranding 2

Aug 12, 2025

My Thoughts (Spoilers)

Game of the year for me, sorry Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
I didn’t skip any story this time, unlike the first game where I skipped a lot near the end. A bit disappointed that the ending didn’t let us control Lou.
I mostly used roads (90 %) instead of zip lines like last time. The rail line was nice but too slow to use often.
The visuals are stunning—the most beautiful I’ve ever seen in a game. Loved the night scenes with city vibes—made me wish Kojima would make a cyberpunk game.
Combat was fun, both stealth and brute force.
I liked Doll Man even though many found him annoying—he wasn’t that talkative.
The game’s quirky weirdness kept me entertained and always guessing.

The game takes place eleven months after the original Death Stranding, spanning across Australia, connected via a geo-gate to Mexico. Humanity remains on the brink, with mechanized threats and environmental anomalies rife.
Sam Porter Bridges has retired to the U.S.–Mexico border, living peacefully with Lou, his adopted daughter. His quiet life is shattered when Fragile arrives, asking him to extend the Chiral Network into Mexico.

Sam accepts and entrusts Lou to Fragile. While Sam connects the network terminals across Mexico, Lou is tragically lost during an attack on Sam’s bunker—and Fragile is critically hurt.
Grieving and guilt-ridden, Sam follows Fragile to Australia via the geo-gate aboard her ship, DHV Magellan. Sam and the surviving crew—including Dollman, Tarman, Heartman, Rainy, and the enigmatic President of APAC—embark on rebuilding the network.

Higgs returns, using a phantom army of “mecha specters” to disrupt the mission. Sam is repeatedly drawn into “dark fluxes” where he battles Neil Vana, hauntingly tied to Lou's past.
Sam rescues a memory-less girl from a “coffin-chrysalis,” named Tomorrow by Fragile. Neil is defeated and leaves Sam with critical data from Lucy (Sam’s late partner), revealing that Lucy and Neil conspired to hide Lou’s identity: Lou is indeed Sam’s biological daughter. The Bridge Baby capsule has always been empty—it was all a coping illusion.

As Sam nears completion of the Australian network, the President betrays everyone—revealed to be a collective consciousness of four thousand dead souls fused into APAC’s AI. He plans to place every human’s consciousness forever in their “Beach” to eliminate extinction threats.
Charlie, secretly Die‑Hardman, intervenes—using Sam’s Q-Pid device to sabotage APAC’s control over the network.
Higgs reemerges, capturing Tomorrow and revealing her powers as a new “Extinction Entity” capable of triggering the “Last Stranding.” In the ensuing melee on the Beach, Sam ultimately defeats Higgs—with Lou, now towering in size, dealing the final blow.
Fragile dies—but the twist is that she had already died back during her attempt to protect Lou during the bunker assault; she existed afterward only in a between-realm state.
It’s revealed Lou grew rapidly on Neil's Beach under Fragile’s care. The emotional reunion between father and daughter, reunited with memory and purpose, brings closure.

After the credits, Lou is shown as a grown porter, standing before a new geo-gate—symbolizing her own future journey, a torch-passing from Sam to the next generation.