At scattered moments during your journeys across the rocks and rivers of Death Stranding, your player character Sam Porter Bridges will mutter little encouragements to himself, or simply scattered half-thoughts. “Sam, Sam, he’s our man,” a slogan uttered with an edge of bitterness, as he was essentially manipulated into this job of carrying endless packages of cargo across a broken America. Sometimes it’s more straightforward motivational exercises, like “one foot in front of the other,” or at one point, “I’ve scaled higher mountains than this.” And sometimes it’s a rare acknowledgment that he actually finds joy in this work – checking in with the companion strapped across his chest, or staring out across a forbidding yet beautiful wasteland and remarking “I always liked the quiet.”

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