Death Stranding
Death Stranding is a 2019 action-adventure game developed by Kojima Productions and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. It is the first game from director Hideo Kojima and Kojima Productions after their split from Konami in 2015. It was first released for PlayStation 4 in November 2019, followed by a Windows port in July 2020. A director's cut was released for PlayStation 5 in September 2021, followed by releases for Windows in March 2022, iOS, iPadOS and macOS in January 2024, and Amazon Luna and Xbox Series X/S in November 2024. Sony published the game on their consoles, while 505 Games published all other versions under license from Kojima Productions.
The game is set in the United States following a cataclysmic event which caused destructive creatures to begin roaming the Earth. The player controls Sam Porter Bridges, a courier tasked with delivering supplies to isolated colonies and reconnecting them via a wireless communications network. However, he is pursued by a genocidal militia group, led by a mysterious masked man known as Higgs, and who intend to wipe out the remainder of humanity. Alongside Reedus, the game features actors Mads Mikkelsen, Léa Seydoux, Margaret Qualley, Troy Baker, Tommie Earl Jenkins, and Lindsay Wagner, in addition to the likenesses of film directors Guillermo del Toro and Nicolas Winding Refn, as supporting characters.
Death Stranding received generally positive reviews. Critics praised its voice acting, soundtrack, and visuals, with more mixed opinions regarding its gameplay and story. The game was nominated for several awards and won the most GOTY awards of any game in 2019. By March 2021, the game had sold copies worldwide. Numerous commentators later noted that elements of the game resembled the COVID-19 pandemic, which began during the months following its original release.
A sequel, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, released on June 26, 2025, for PlayStation 5. Two film adaptations and a television series are concurrently in development.
Gameplay
Death Stranding is an action-adventure game set in an open world, and includes asynchronous online functions. Kojima refers to Death Stranding as the first "strand game", an original genre characterized by the game's incorporation of social elements. Kojima compared this genre to how his earlier game Metal Gear—now considered a stealth game—was called an action game during its release because the stealth genre had not been established.The player controls Sam Bridges, a porter for a company known as BRIDGES. The player is tasked with delivering supply cargo to various isolated cities known as KNOTs, as well as isolated researchers and survivalists, while also connecting them to a communications system known as the Chiral Network. The player is evaluated by the company and recipients based on their performance, including whether the cargo was delivered, and if it is intact, among other factors. These merits are, in turn, used to level up the player's statistics, such as stability and weight capacity, and increase their standing with individual locations and characters. How cargo is packed by the player, and the overall weight being carried, affect Sam's ability to navigate through the environments.
The game extensively uses licensed music, most often from the bands Silent Poets and Low Roar, to score and enhance specific set-pieces and moments of traversal. When speaking on the use of music, Kojima said the music "would match this harsh but beautiful and pure environmental setting. I also felt somewhat of a connection to Low Roar and the game, the matching of Low Roar's acoustic but digital futuristic sound and the concept of Death Stranding." After the death of Low Roar's frontman Ryan Karazija in 2022, Kojima said, "Without , Death Stranding would not have been born."
The player's main enemies include otherworldly creatures known as "beached things", MULEs, and Demens, MULEs who have begun killing porters to claim their cargo. BTs are surrounded by a rain known as "timefall", which damages the player's armor and cargo by speeding up their deterioration. BTs are normally invisible, but Sam's suit is equipped with a robotic sensor referred to in-game as an "odradek" that points towards nearby BTs, and the player can then scan the area to reveal them.
As Sam is a "repatriate", he is taken to an underwater world known as the "Seam" if he is killed, where he can "swim" back to his body to revive himself. However, being killed and consumed by a BT results in a destructive explosion known as a "voidout", which permanently damages the location of the death with an untraversable crater.
As the player expands the coverage of the Chiral Network, they can access maps of areas, and use blueprints to produce consumable items and structures with the Portable Chiral Constructor, including ropes, bridges, and power generators used for charging battery-powered equipment. The Network is used as the basis for the game's online functionality, where players can leave supplies, structures, and messages that can be viewed and used by other players, although structures will eventually be destroyed by Timefall after some time. The player can recover cargo lost by other players to complete their delivery. The player does not directly encounter other players in the world.
Synopsis
Setting
The game is set in an apocalyptic United States, where a cataclysmic event known as the "Death Stranding" caused "Beached Things" —invisible creatures originating from the "Beach", lands thought to be unique to each person that are typically visited during near-death experiences and are said to be the link to the afterlife—to begin roaming the Earth. BTs are created from the dead via necrosis, and when they consume a living human being, they create an explosion on the scale of a nuclear bomb, known as a "voidout". They produce rain known as "Timefall" that rapidly ages and deteriorates whatever it hits. These events damaged the country's infrastructure, leading its remaining population to confine themselves to remote colonies known as "Knot Cities", which form the remaining "United Cities of America".These colonies have relied on the services of a company known as BRIDGES, whose porters brave the BTs, bandits, and terrorists to deliver supplies to the cities. Bridges performs various governmental functions on behalf of the UCA. If they achieve a mental connection to a "Bridge Baby" —a premature child reflecting a state between life and death—it is possible for a person to sense the presence of a BT. Porters carry a BB with them, stored in a pod simulating the womb of a "stillmother". Depending on its severity, a condition known as "DOOMS" allows a person to naturally sense, see, or even control a BT, as well as granting a variety of powers, such as teleportation or travel to other people's Beaches. There are individuals known as "repatriates" who can travel back from "the Seam"—a place between the world of the living and the Beach—upon death. As such, these individuals can effectively return from death, though their deaths will still cause voidouts if killed during contact with a BT.
Plot
Freelance courier Sam Porter Bridges is transporting cargo to Central Knot City but is interrupted by Timefall and takes shelter. He receives assistance from Fragile in evading a BT. Sam arrives at his destination, where a citizen has committed suicide, with the corpse on the verge of necrosis. Due to being both a repatriate and having DOOMS, Sam is given an emergency assignment to accompany the disposal team to an incinerator to dispose of the corpse. However, an encounter with BTs causes a voidout that destroys Central Knot City.Sam revives in Capital Knot City and meets Deadman, a doctor from BRIDGES who has Sam deliver morphine to the dying President of the UCA: Sam's adoptive mother, Bridget Strand. Bridget pleads with Sam to rejoin BRIDGES and help realize her dream of "reforming America" before succumbing to her illness. Sam takes her body for incineration but refuses to incinerate a Bridge Baby involved in the Central Knot City voidout. With the BB's assistance, Sam evades a horde of BTs and decides to adopt it as his own Bridge Baby; against UCA instructions to treat Bridge Babies as pieces of equipment, Sam gradually forms an emotional bond with it and nicknames it "Lou".
Upon his return to Capital Knot City, Sam receives a message from his estranged sister Amelie Strand. She tells him that over the past three years, she led an expedition across what is left of the continental United States, making contact with isolated cities and settlements and setting up terminals that would connect them to the Chiral Network: a system that facilitates instant communication and data transfer across vast distances through the Beach. Upon reaching the last city on the West Coast, Amelie was captured by Homo Demens, a terrorist group to guarantee Edge Knot City's independence. She pleads for Sam to follow her expedition and complete the Chiral Network, thus "reforming America". As this pilgrimage ends at Edge Knot City, Sam can then rescue Amelie, and she can take Bridget's place as the President of the UCA. Sam reluctantly accepts the mission.
Following the instructions of Die-Hardman, Bridget's personal aide and Director of BRIDGES, Sam begins his journey from the east to the west coast of North America. Along the way, he delivers valuable cargo to various Knot Cities and settlements; helps research the Death Stranding with BRIDGES staff such as Mama and her twin sister Lockne, Heartman ; and thwarts deadly plots by terrorists and their leader, Higgs Monaghan. While connected to Lou, he experiences memories depicting Clifford Unger and his hospitalized wife and BB child. Occasionally, he is pulled into Clifford's Beach; there, he fights a BT manifestation of Clifford, who seeks his lost BB.
After reaching Edge Knot City, Sam fights and defeats Higgs at Amelie's Beach. Higgs reveals that Amelie is an Extinction Entity: a godlike being manifested by the universe to trigger mass extinction events. Amelie is revealed as the true leader of Homo Demens, having conceived the Chiral Network to enable the Last Stranding, the end of life on Earth. It is revealed that Amelie and Bridget are the same person; Bridget's soul separated from her body during early experiments into the Beaches and used the alias "Amelie" as a cover. Amelie is conflicted over her cosmological duties, finding the Last Stranding more humane than perpetual cycles of growth and extinction.
With the help of allies made on his journey, Sam reaches Amelie and convinces her to delay the Last Stranding. Moved, she accepts but must separate herself and her Beach from the world forever. Sam is rescued by his BRIDGES allies, returning to the living. Die-Hardman becomes President of the UCA, and Fragile resolves to rebuild her company. Sam is told that Lou is dying. Although UCA law demands dying BBs are incinerated, Sam follows Deadman's advice and removes Lou from the pod in hopes of saving its life. In doing so, Sam connects with Lou one last time and discovers the memories he has viewed are his own: he is Clifford Unger's son, who Bridget Strand had transformed into one of the first BBs, accidentally killed alongside Clifford during a botched escape attempt, and resurrected by Amelie. The spirits of deceased BBs help save Lou's life, and Sam destroys his UCA cufflinks, going "off the grid" to live a peaceful life raising BB, whom he reveals is actually "Louise" in a post-credits scene.