Prologue: Porter
We begin Death Stranding with our golden boy Sam Porter Bridges en route to Central Knot City to deliver some cargo. For a split second, he sees a young woman in his path. In an attempt to avoid her, he swerves and crashes his bike just as it begins to rain. To keep dry, he finds shelter in a cave close by.
The rain, known as Timefall, quite literally accelerates the age of whatever it touches so people generally stay indoors whenever possible when there’s a downpour.
The young woman, who also dips into the cave for some shelter, introduces herself as Fragile. And, as it turns out, a while back she was drenched in Timefall from the neck down which is now covered entirely by her clothes.
While waiting, the duo is attacked by invisible entities known as Beached Things or BTs for short. Sam can only sense the BTs while Fragile can see them entirely, explaining that they’re on different levels of DOOMs, a kind of supernatural scale.
Tears are also an allergic reaction to “chiral matter” or, essentially, anything that has to do with the Death Stranding. Which is why everyone’s crying in literally every promotional photo for the game.
Fragile bids farewell once the rain has stopped and Sam continues on to the city where he’s tasked with a few others to dispose of a corpse.
On the way to an incinerator, the team is attacked by BTs that kill everyone in a massive voidout.
We discover that Sam is a repatriate, someone who can come back from the Seam or pretty much Death. When he wakes up, all that’s left is a giant crater. Before one of his companions died, he threw Sam his Bridge Baby which Sam still has after the explosion.
He passes out again and awakens in Capital Knot City handcuffed to his bed where Deadman, a member of the company Bridges, informs him that Central Knot was entirely destroyed in the voidout.
