Stranded in Life and Death

Once upon a time, I was a Boy Scout. As a Boy Scout does, I spent two weeks at Philmont, backpacking around in the New Mexico branch of the Rocky Mountains. It can be eerie at times; miles away from civilization, the only things you hear are the sounds of nature, the banter of your crew, and your own labored breathing when the banter runs out. Despite this, you never feel properly alone; there is always someone in front of you or behind you, and one can always look forward to pitching camp at the end of the day, barking orders, chirping the navigator, and moaning about the food. Death Stranding is nothing like that.

Death Stranding, frankly, reminds me more of my own life as a student. I'm a pretty solitary guy, and I have spent a lifetime pulling off the "alone in a crowd" gimmick, but the experience that Death Stranding is most reminiscent of is after-hours at a nerd event⁹. You're walking back to your apartment at around midnight on a Sunday morning; there is no raucous sound of partying as there would be 24 hours prior. Your head hurts from slamming caffeine on an empty stomach while wrangling technical problems, and the streetlights cast eerie shadows. All is quiet; the birds, the cars, and the humans all sleep, and all you really want to do is reach your destination.

Despite being a game about connecting others, you, the player, are never really connected to anyone. Sam is an entirely passive user of the chiral network, despite being the bearer of it; he only ever receives mail, never sending any, and ignores all the other social aspects of the chiral network¹⁰. It'd be like an atheist handing out copies of the Book of Mormon to convert pepole.

You do meet and talk with other characters, but they are almost always through holograms or over the door intercoms; the characters you meet in person you only see once or twice¹¹. The world fills with life as you make your deliveries, but only after you've left it behind¹².

This may be a boon; all the chiral-connected people that you work with are paranoid of monitoring¹³, and your "phone"¹⁴ is literally a pair of handcuffs¹⁵. Yeah, Amelie¹⁶ tells you:

"They're not shackles, Sam. They're a symbol of our bonds"

but she turns out to be the main villain¹⁷, so what she says should be taken with a grain of salt.

In seeking the frontier, Sam escapes the chiral network despite his connection to it and bearing of it¹⁸; he remains aloof from the UCA's simulacrum of the United States of America²³ and eventually abandons it fully by burning his cufflinks to rescue Lou and raise her as his own²⁵

As a single, childless man²⁶ who doesn't participate in anything promoting fecundity, this is gonna ring a little hollow, but it's an important theme nevertheless. In fact, it's directly referenced within the game (through the lens of asexuality²⁷):

It is also the centerpiece of two major narrative arcs: that of Mama and Lockne, and that of Amelie and Sam.

Mama and Lockne's arc is the first one that directly addresses it²⁸. Neither Mama nor Lockne could conceive alone, but Lockne wished for a child after falling in love with an unnamed Bridges worker. As identical²⁹ twins, they believed they could cheat by pairing Lockne's eggs with Mama's uterus using Lockne's parterner's sperm; this worked until the hospital in which Mama was staying³⁰ was attacked by terrorists³¹ and she gave birth to the child as a BT. No dice³².

No one alone³³, then, can continue the human race, while those together³⁴ can; however, the ultimate failure of the project (as the baby arose as a BT due to those others outside the primary Mama-Lockne unit) demonstrates the failures that a community brings with it^{35 , 37}

Amelie and Sam's arc, meanwhile, is the first to begin, but is only revealed later in the game. Amelie, while originally introduced as Sam's adoptive big sister, is shown to be soul of Sam's adoptive mother³⁸ and the sixth Extinction Entity³⁹, and thus the ultimate creator of the world's sterility⁴¹. Her bodily form, Bridget, meanwhile, works to sabotage the fertility of the world through an indirect method: the creation of Bridge Babies (or BBs). BBs are fetuses prematurely extracted from their mother's womb and held in simulacra of wombs, and are able to sense when BTs are nearby and alert their "operator"⁴². Obviously, this limits the reproductive capacity of the world at large, but this is reinforced by the UCA's continued reminders to their employees to view and treat BBs only as pieces of equipment⁴³ and the cremation of BBs after they have outlived their usefulness⁴⁴.

Amelie herself goes even further, giving her operatives a ruined baby doll to place into the incubation pods⁴⁵. Reproduction is fully undermined as the Extinction Entity separates humanity from itself⁴⁷, then eats away at the necessity of reproduction⁴⁸ and the ability to follow it through⁴⁹. The chiral network fails to provide a cure for the destruction she has wrought due to its inability to reproduce biological material.

There is a third arc that goes on mostly behind the scenes: that of the Junk Dealer and the Chiral Artist. Amelie indirectly destroys their relationship before the beginning of the game, before Sam is able to rekindle it by bringing them together once more⁵⁰; however, their marriage falls apart quickly after Sam leaves⁵¹. There is a bright spot, though: after the end of the game (at least in my playthrough) when Amelie is eliminated, they are able to come back together once more⁵².