Almost Everything About Amelie
Death Stranding dropped the ball on us with Amelie.
We know that Amelie is an Extinction Entity, someone meant to bring about a seemingly routine extinction of the current dominant species. We also know that her body and soul were literally and permanently split in half in her 20s with Amelie residing on the Beach and Bridget being in the physical world.
It’s weird how literally no one questioned that Bridget suddenly had a random daughter no one had ever seen before, that no one also continued to not see for the next few years. They simply just believed she existed.
And wouldn’t Bridget and Amelie have looked exactly the same? Amelie wasn’t always wearing Die-Hardman’s mask before she and Bridget split so wouldn’t pictures of Bridget’s “daughter” Amelie look a little too much like Bridget herself?
Also, why would Amelie want to reconnect America when she knew the sixth extinction was going to happen and that she was personally accelerating the process in the first place?
She even says that making the sixth extinction come sooner would be a mercy for humanity. Then, why didn’t she do it sooner?
Amelie was also “trapped” on the west coast and captured by some unknown people but, since we know she doesn’t have a physical body, nothing was particularly keeping her on that side of the U.S. other than her manipulation of Sam.
That also means they didn’t need to have that weird beach running scene near the end of the game.
Frankly, I have a lot more questions about Amelie but I’ll cut it here to keep from turning into an essay.
Our Bridge Baby
It is established in Death Stranding that Sam and BB-28 are separate individuals and that the memories we see when Sam connects with BB-28 are actually his own from when he was still a baby.
Though, what that has to do with BB-28 remains to be seen. Did connecting with a Bridge Baby trigger some part of Sam’s memories that made him see his own past or do Bridge Babies have some weird telepathic network that allows them to all share memories?
Also, how did our darling Lou end up with the exact same trinket that Clifford Unger put on Sam’s pod over 20 years ago? In the final World War Beach, BB-28 reacted to Unger singing the song he sung for Sam as if he had sung it to him personally. Though, we know that he didn’t because he sung it to Sam.
It could be that Sam’s memories were the ones bleeding into BB-28 but that still doesn’t explain the trinket.
Timefall Degradation
According to Death Stranding, Timefall ages everything it touches. Even plants and structures are affected by the rain. However, the clothes Sam wears and, like, everyone wears has no problem in a downpour. Fragile’s umbrella and whatever BB’s pod is don’t have any issues in the rain either.
So, why isn’t everything made out of that stuff? Porter clothes might just have a very, very good resistance to Timefall but, either way, it would still be a good idea to make most things out of them.
Also, with how often it rains, wouldn’t ruins of any kind barely exist? We end up seeing quite a few ruins throughout the U.S. on our cross-country road trip but with the fact that Timefall appeared around the same time as the Death Stranding, those ruins should be completely gone by now.
Certain structures that people live in don’t seem to show much wear and tear either so I guess Timefall isn’t too terrible for buildings.
But for humans? You go from 0 to raisin in 2.5.
The Beaches
The Beaches were explained in Death Stranding a few times throughout the game but they never really got defined. From what I understand, a Beach is a manifestation of a kind of area between life and death for someone. It’s where your soul goes after your body dies.
But why is it possible to “travel” between Beaches and why can you move within a Beach to cross a certain distance in the physical world?
I mean, we all know about that weird slow-mo beach running scene between Amelie and Sam.
They called Beaches a kind of multiverse thing with Amelie’s being on a higher plane but multiverses generally don’t really work like that. Granted, multiverse theory is just that, a theory.
So, you can take liberties with it but Beaches relating so much with the living world seems really odd especially since they’re supposed to be beyond the physical world.
But these questions might just help give Death Stranding its charm.
Of course, they don’t keep Death Stranding from being a great game. We even gave it a pretty good score on our review. They’re just something to consider. Feel free to write in the comments what your thoughts are as well.
About the author
