Sam's Westward Expedition was a one-year expedition undertaken by Sam to connect isolated survivor communities across the North America to the Chiral Network and rescue Amelie from Homo Demens in Edge Knot City. This expedition is in direct succession to the Bridges I Westward Expedition.
Life as a freelance[]
A delivery that ended in tragedy[]
Sam, as a freelance porter, in the middle of a delivery.
Freelance porter Sam is transporting cargo to Central Knot City when he is interrupted by the approaching Timefall. Sam loses his trike while evading a mysterious woman and takes shelter in a nearby cave. There, he learns that the mysterious woman’s name is Fragile. After evading a BT in the cave, the two have a short conversation and Fragile offers to hire Sam under her delivery company, Fragile Express.
Sam arrives at Central Knot City and discovers that a citizen has committed suicide with the body on the verge of necrosis. As a repatriate with DOOMS, Sam is given an emergency assignment to accompany Igor Frank and Corpse Disposal Team 6 in a truck to drive to an incinerator and dispose of the corpse. During the ride, Sam and Team 6 encounter Timefall and a zone full of BTs. The truck is overturned, and Sam becomes unconscious.
Central Knot City destroyed by a voidout.
When he wakes up, the corpse they were transporting starts to become necrotic. The driver, trapped under the vehicle, is grabbed by a BT. Igor shoots the driver, preventing him from being consumed and causing a voidout. Suddenly, a hooded man appears before Sam and Igor, pointing at something in the distance. Igor starts shooting and is soon grabbed by gazers. Afraid of being consumed, Igor tosses Sam his BB unit and attempts suicide by shooting himself in the head. He misses, and something unseen yanks him upward, causing him to begin levitating. He attempts to kill himself again by stabbing himself in the torso with a knife. Sam picks up the BB unit that Igor tossed him, and the oradek points toward what the hooded man indicated: a colossal BT. Igor, floating toward the giant BT, is consumed by it, triggering a massive voidout that kills Sam and destroys Central Knot City.
Westward expedition[]
Back to Bridges[]
Sam revives and is later taken to Capital Knot City where he meets Deadman, a member of Bridges' medical team. Deadman 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. She makes a contract with him using her last bit of strength before dying. Sam later takes her body for incineration but, on site, refuses to incinerate BB-28, the Bridge Baby involved in the Central Knot City voidout. With BB-28's assistance, Sam evades a horde of BTs that are approaching him due to the increasing chiralium in the area. He then decides to take BB-28 as his own Bridge Baby.
Upon returning to Capital Knot City, Sam receives a message from his estranged sister, Amelie Strand. She informs him that over the past three years, she led an expedition across what remains of the continental United States. During this expedition, she made contact with isolated cities and settlements, and set up terminals that would connect them to the Chiral Network. The Chiral Network facilitates instant communication and data transfer across vast distances through the Beach.
Sam begins his expedition.
However, upon reaching the last city on the west coast, Edge Knot City, Amelie was captured by a terrorist group known as the Homo Demens. This group opposes Bridges' reconstructionism and wants to guarantee Edge Knot City's independence. Amelie pleads with Sam to follow her expedition and complete the Chiral Network, thus "reforming America." Sam reluctantly accepts the mission, with the ultimate goal of rescuing Amelie and having her take Bridget's place as the President of the United Cities of America.
The expedition begins[]
Following the instructions of Die-Hardman, Bridget's personal aide and Director of Bridges, Sam begins his journey by connecting the Bridges facilities in the eastern region: the Waystation West of Capital Knot City, the Distribution Center West of Capital Knot City, and the Wind Farm. After three years of isolation, the people at these facilities had begun to lose hope.
Upon finally arriving at Port Knot City, the last city in the region from which he can reach the central region by navigating the large Ground Zero, Sam confronts the same hooded man from before, who introduces himself as Higgs. Sam fights an aquatic BT which Higgs spawns, but thanks to the hematic grenade made with his blood, Sam defeats the BT and can continue his journey thanks to Fragile, as Fragile Express is the only company with a ship that can traverse the lake.
Sam and Fragile talk during the traverse of Ground Zero lake.
During the traverse, Fragile tries to speak to Sam about Higgs, but the porter falls asleep. During the sleep, Sam dreams, or remembers, one of his ecounters with his sister, Amelie, on the Beach when he was a child. Here Amelie comfort little Sam by giving him a dreamcatcher, convincing him to return to the world of the living. Upon his awakening Sam has arrived at the port of Lake Knot City and here he is assigned the task of connecting not only the remaining cities, affected by terrorist attacks, and the structures of the region, but also of the prepper communities. Lacking the resources to build new structures and nodes, Bridges decided to use prepper shelters to boost the chiral network and leverage Fragile Express's credentials to build popularity. In his private room, after another "dream-memory" of his younger self and Amelie, Sam is approached by Fragile who gives him her misanga, that gives him ID as an associated of her company, that will help him with the preppers. Here Fragile, told briefly of her situation and, given the continuous meeting, suggests to Sam that something keeps bringing them together.
After that Sam begin his journey to extend the chiral network from Lake Knot to South Knot City, first by connecting the first three preppers of the zone and then continuing down, passing by the Distribution Center South of Lake Knot, to deliver the prototype of a delivery bot, connecting another group of preppers, including two who later decide to get married, and then arriving at the gates of the South Knot. At one point Higgs, disguised as a member of Bridges, delivers a package to Sam for South Knot. During the journey Sam has a doubt and discovers, opening the package, that what he is carrying is a thermonuclear bomb. Fragile, who relives what happened in the past, advises the courier to throw it in the tar pit just outside the South Knot. Having saved the city, Fragile opens up to Sam, telling him everything and making him promise that, once Higgs is defeated, he would leave him to her for revenge.
Nightmare in open dreams[]
Sam wake up in a Beach, shaped like a battlefield.
Sam is left with nothing but to connect the South Knot but once he does, a supercell appears above the city, sucking Sam inside it. Later, a mysterious man, who repeatedly appeared to Sam when he connected to his BB, climbs a tar pit pulled by skeletal soldiers who he then sends into action.
Sam wakes up in what appears to be a battlefield. Sirens, tanks, soldiers and planes battle it out as an incredulous Sam tries to cross, until he reach a treanch. Here he as a vision of the mysterious man who seems to sense him. During the fight, between Sam and the skeleton soldiers, the man keeps murmuring that he wants "his BB back" and "remember". Eventually Sam manages to get the better of the man who, with a last effort, clings to BB-28's capsule. During the contact Sam experiences another vision of the man seen from inside a capsule. Later Sam finds himself outside the South Knot distro center, visibly shaken and confused about what happened, and is contacted by a worried Mama. Sam joins her in the laboratory, Mama can't go out because of her baby, and here he not only meets Mama but also discovers that her baby is a BT and is attached to her with an umbilical cord.
One soul in two bodies[]
Mama and her Bt-like baby.
Sam is surprised to see the BT attached to Mama who is not only breastfed but once finished "falls asleep", confirming the harmlessness of the creature. Here Mama explains to the porter that even though her daughter is dead her body still produces breast milk for her. After the explanation for her impossibility to get out, Mama explains to Sam that the event he experienced in the supercell really happened but that in the real world it happened in a few seconds even if the HQ is still analyzing the data. Suddenly a new chiral peak occurs which not only knocks out the lab's electricity but also wakes up Mama's BT which starts crying. Mama expected chiral spikes as Sam connected structures but the spikes are more than she expected. Anticipating this possibility, Mama and Bridges had inserted a limiter in Sam's Q-pid that evidently doesn't work as it should. To avoid making the situation worse, like another Death Stranding, Mama gives Sam a new Q-pid in which to install a limiter, but she has to take it to someone who can rewrite the software to make it work properly. The only person who can do that is Lockne, who is in Mountain Knot CIty, on the other side of the mountain range.
A new spike shakes the lab and not only is BB-28 agitated but a BT tries to take Mama's daughter. Knowing she can't keep going like this, Mama opens up to Sam about how, while awaiting a C-section, a terrorist attack hits the facility, leaving her trapped under rubble for days. She survived giving birth there and her daughter died who became a BT. Incredulous Sam doesn't understand how she can remain tied to the dead and not live on the outside and Mama sarcastically replies: "C'mon, you of all peolpe?", since he had been doing pretty much the same thing for a decade. Before dismissing him Mama asks Sam for a sample of his blood, which due to his being a repatriate can be useful. While taking the sample Sam notices that Mama's touch is as cold as a dead body. A new peak make Mama's BT starts crying and Sam walks out of the lab. Once out his task is confirmed: he must connect Mountain Knot to the network and in the process also add a waystation and a distro center.
Die-Hardman then advises Sam to leave Lake Knot again, with Fragile who has lent herself to help him. Once the two structures are connected, passing through a field of Homo Demens and rescuing a member of Bridges in the middle, Sam has a new dream of the beach and a crying baby, when both Amelie and Higgs show up, stabbing the woman in the unresisting neck and takes her Quipu. Sam comes to with the hologram of Amelie in front of him informing of how Higgs and his men entered Edge Knot City, with her trapped in a now dead city full of BTs. Though Amelie has managed to hide for the time being, she pleads with Sam to continue expanding the network in order to save her. Sam notices that Amelie doesn't have her Quipu around her neck but before Amelie can answer him, the woman leaves. Once he arrives at Mountain Knot, however, Sam is chased away by Lockne herself who should help him. Here Die-Hardman, knowing the importance of Mountain Knot, reveals to Sam that Lockne is Mama's twin and that, following Mama's accident, the two no longer speak and Lockne has cut ties with Bridges. The only one who can help him in this situation is Mama, so he joins her at her laboratory.
Sam must sever the connection between Mama and her beached daughter to deliver Mama to Mountain Knot City.
Once there, Mama gives Sam new handcuffs to which she has incorporated a weapon, made with her blood, that can cut BTs' umbilical cords. There is nothing left but to test them, and Mama volunteers by offering her daughter who confesses to be Lockne's daughter who, unable to have children, had asked her sister to act as a surrogate mother. When the child died, Mama didn't feel like telling her sister and disconnected from the network. However, realizing that she cannot go on and wanting to tell her sister the truth, she decides to sever the link with her "daughter". A reluctant Sam proceeds to sever the cord: the BT is taken by another and Mama collapses to the ground. In a race against time to get Mama to her twin, Sam is forced to face Higgs again who summons a leonine BT from the tar. However, this new creature is beaten by Sam who manages to bring Mama to Mountain Knot. Here the twins finally succeed and reconcile. Mama asks Lockne to fix Sam's Q-pid and connect to the network the two of them have designed to bring the world together. When Mama breathes her last, Locke explains to Sam that Mama's body was dead but was kept alive by her daughter's BT, then she puts on the handcuffs and something unexpected happens: Mama's soul reaches her sister becoming one again, like in the uterus. From here Sam can reach Edge Knot and Die-Hardam informs him that in the supercell he was in a battlefield of over a hundred years ago, probably some kind of Beach. In the private room, however, Sam realizes that Lou, so he started calling his BB, is not there when Deadman suddenly appears with Lou in his hand, who has a serious problem.
Reallign "Lou"[]
Deadman, states that the infant requires realignment between the worlds of the living and dead after having veered too far towards the former by bonding with Sam, a factor that could not only create problems for its functions but also dangerous for the world. Furthermore, Deadman reveals that the realignment procedure may erase Lou's memories, but that failing to perform the procedure would result in Lou reaching the end of her functionality within merely days following. In Sam's private room shower stall, Deadman divulges to Sam classified knowledge of BB technology, and what he has managed to discover regarding Bridget and Die-Hardman's questionable history. Sam is left without Lou to create distance between himself and the infant for the realignment procedure's efficacy, and works to expand the Chiral Network coverage in the area surrounding Mountain Knot City by connecting nearby preppers to the network: the Doctor, Roboticist, Mountaineer, Photographer, and Spiritualist.
Sam once again need to fight the Combat Veteran in the Beach.
After expanding the network to the area surrounding Mountain Knot City, Sam travels to a cabin in the mountains to meet Deadman and reunite with Lou; just as he nears the cabin, a supercell sweeps over the area and transports the three to a WWII war-torn Beach. After rendezvousing with Deadman in a sewer and reconnecting to Lou, even if Lou seems to be more bonded with Deadman this time, Sam is able to again defeat the Combat Veteran and, when the porter again makes physical contact with the Combat Veteran, he, Lou, and Deadman are subsequently transported back to the world of the living. During the contact Sam experiences another vision of the man, badly injured, seen from inside a capsule.
Awakening after an entire day inside his private room, after the nightmare of a doll inside his BB pod, Sam is again confronted by Deadman: he is the one who brought the two inside after the supercell events and reported to Capital Knot, thanks to Fragile's umbrella. Here Deadman apologizes with Sam, having found out that "Lou" was the name that Sam and his wife, who committed suicide ten years earlier, had chosen for their unborn child, thus discovering the truth about Sam and Bridges. When he confesses this to the porter, Sam denies it and Deadman tells him his true story and how he does not have a soul, as he is born artificially, but now he feels connected to him and to the BB. Deadman also reveals to Sam the true identity of his pursuer on the Beach: he is Clifford Unger, a former Special Forces soldier of the United States military. After the conversation Sam is taking a shower when he's contacted by Heartman who tells him the Beach is a type of multiverse and that all the deaths in the battlefields have created a war-torn Beach, where the deads experiences cycle endlessly, like a loop.
Snowing truths[]
Approaching completion of his mission to make America whole, Sam travels to Heartman's lab, bringing the researcher Mama's non-necrotizing corpse as well as dog tags taken from the Combat Veteran. Here Sam discover the conditions of Heartman, who's heart stop every twenty-one minutes that he spent on the Beach in search of his family, and tell him his story, then he moves on to examine Mama's non-necrotizing body, Clifford's dog tag and then, Bridget's umbilical cord, a cord that Heartman immediately realizes is not human but more that of a BT. After a cardiac arrest, Heartman asks Sam to connect to the network the research centers of the scientists of the first expedition intent on studying the earth before the Death Stranding, and the secondary station near Edge Knot City.
Sam finally connect the mountainous region to the network.
Finally, Sam connects three nearby preppers to the network: the Geologist, Paleontologist, and Evo-Devo Biologist. Heartman confides to Sam that Mama's dead cells were full of chiralium, and that her daughter, although a BT, was her soul, so the body does not decompose, a condition similar to Bridget. Suggesting a possible Sixth Extinction, and the presence of umbilical cords in five undecomposed ancient entities, Heartman suspects that Bridget, and consequently Amelie as well, is an extinction entity, like the previous creatures. Not trusting Die-Hardman the conversation is not recorded.
Finishing the Rebirth of America and final showdown[]
The expanded network coverage from having connected the aforementioned preppers to the network allows Sam to expand the network to a waystation construction site in the deep southwestern part of the central region near the shore of the western tar belt. Once Sam brings materials to the site, the waystation-to-be is connected to the Chiral Network, providing the final push necessary for the network to reach the West Coast, what is left for Sam is to cross the tar belt to reach Edge Knot City. In the end Sam finds a way to cross the tar belt in peace, until he finds Amelie who makes him sink into the tar.
On the Beach, Sam finds Amelie singing "London Bridge Is Falling Down" and when he tries to follow her, the man sinks again only to wake up on the other side of the tar belt, outskirts of a decimated Edge Knot City, where he is briefly harassed by Higgs, showing off his abilities, about Amelie's status as an extinction entity and challenging Sam to reach her first. Sam later retrieves the last key, a BB pod, of the network that he will use to connect the last node to Edge Knot, but the road is full of common BTs and Jellyfish-type, which makes the crossing difficult. However, Sam reaches the last terminal, connects Edge Knot City to the chiral network and in this way finally America is reconnected, Bridget's dream is reality. After a bit of well-deserved rest, however, the emergency alarm sounds, Higgs is out ready to face Sam and to do so he does not hesitate to summon a BT Titan-type again in which he traps Amelie, Sam's only weak point. However, the porter manages to defeat his rival, who invites him to join him on the Beach for the final and decisive showdown, taking Amelie with him.
The "good old fashioned boss-fight" between Higgs and Sam.
Higgs wants to connect the network knots to Amelie's Beach so he can start the Sixth Extinction, to stop him Sam has no choice but to rely on Fragile, as she is the only one who can "jump" him there and he is the only one who has been on that Beach, Fragile manages to transport him and falls to the ground exhausted. On the beach Sam sees Higgs kneeling in front of Amelie and when the two notice the porter, Higgs takes control of Amelie again, using his golden mask, and after a nihilistic speech begins his last fight against Sam, a "good old fashioned boss fight". Unarmed, Sam manages to defeat Higgs, but as the porter is about to approach Amelie, Higgs lifts the tar and a bare-handed fight begins between the two, a fight that again goes in Sam's favor. The tar returns to normal levels and Sam drags his rival to the shore where Fragile is waiting for them, who in the meantime has managed to reach Amelie's Beach. In a last and desperate attempt to gain victory, Higgs still tries to control Amelie but fails, he has lost the favor of the EE, and the woman lets Sam hold her. Alone and "broken" Fragile punches Higgs in the face.
Before leaving, Sam gives Fragile Higgs' rifle (ready to take revenge) and she gives him Lou (she managed to pass it off as equipment) when Amelie abruptly interrupts the two and starts running with Sam at her side along the Beach, the sound of a gunshot is then heard in the distance. At a certain point Amelie asks Sam to wait by moving away, but curiosity is too much and Sam sees in the distance Die-Hardman, invited to the Beach by a doll, talking to a revived Briget. Die-Hardman is ready to shoot the woman, guilty of having deceived everyone, but the shot has no effect on her. At a certain point Cliff and his skeletal soldiers emerge from the water. Die-Hardman recognizes Cliff and he his old subordinate, before pointing the gun at Bridget and then, on her advice, at Sam shouting that he wants his BB back. Amelie suddenly appears and pushes Sam away into the land of the living.
Averting the Last Stranding[]
Race against time[]
Sam wakes up at Edge Knot under an incessant alarm, the chiral network is unstable, and so he has no choice but to put on his boots and return to Capital Knot, where Fragile has meanwhile transported Sam's team, while the chiral peaks are too strong due to the Beaches that are merging, transforming the region . Once he reaches Lake Knot, however, Sam is swallowed by a supercell, which transports him to a Vietnam war-torn Beach and to the final clash with Cliff. Defeated but still eager to reunite with his BB, Cliff whistles the lullaby as he did decades before only that it is not Lou who answers but Sam, he has always been "his BB". Sam wakes up later in Port Knot, Viktor found him on the shores of the Ground Zero lake after returning from the supercell. Here Deadman shows Sam a video that Die-Hardman had left in case he disappeared: a video where he reveals his identity, that he was invited to the Beach and his doubts about Amelie and Briget, how they are the "Ka" and "Ha" of the Extinction Entity and how "they are" the cause of the Death Stranding. But no time to rest, Capital Knot is "two steps away" now.
Fragile is abot to "jump" Sam on Amelie's Beach.
Before leaving, an exhausted Fragile confesses to Sam that she did not kill Higgs and that, looking in his pod, she found a doll similar to the one delivered to Die-Hardman, a doll identical to the one used by the terrorists and Cliff, they were all puppets in the hands of the EE. The chiral spikes make the network and the Beaches unstable so Sam must continue the journey on foot.
On the wake of Capital Knot Sam has to face a BT never seen before, a flying Whale-type, someone just doesn't want him to reunite with his team. Defeating the BT, Sam reunites with the others and makes Fragile, which lies unconcious due to overuse of her abilities, eating the Cryptobiotes Sam had delivered to get her back on track, which works. In this way Fragile, with the help of the others, manages to send Sam to the beach of Amelie, but not before leaving Lou in the hands of Deadman.
The Final Confrontation with the Extinction Entity[]
Sam wakes up on Amelie's Beach, full of beached whales and fish and a blood-red sea, and, at the end of his song "London Bridge Is Falling Down", he confronts Amelie who tells him everything, how "Samantha America Strand" does not exist, how both her and "Brigdet" are the Extinction Entity that was supposed to start the Last Stranding. How, in an attempt to make sense of her nightmares, she tried to investigate the Beach by continuing the BB Experiments, delaying the Stranding, and how, to right a wrong, or atone for a sin, she brought an infant Sam back to life, making him a repatriate but opening the doors of the world of the living to the BTs.
The last moment between Sam and Amelie.
Now that all humans' Beaches are connected to Amelie's, they will be flooded by a vast wave of antimatter, destroying the world, and Amelie gives Sam two choices: one, to stay there with her and do nothing, watching the end of the world together; the other, to cut off Amelie's Beach, condemning her to eternal solitude, and delaying the extinction. Amelie gives Sam Die-Hardman's gun and walks away, waiting for Sam to make his choice. Sam decides not to shoot Amelie but to hug her, he is there for her as she was when Sam was a child and found himself alone on the Beach. One of the possible futures that Amelie saw, and that she shared with the suffering of DOOMS, was coming true, the one in which Sam, making choices that Amelie showed him, saves the world. A sad, but smiling Amelie, says goodbye to Sam, aware that she must stay on the Beach to block, even "temporarily" the Last Stranding. After a last hug, Sam falls into the Seam, and finds himself for the first time on his Beach.
On the Beach, time is meaningless and Sam finds himself wandering with no way to leave it, until voices, the voices of his friends, push him out to sea and an apparition of Amelie tells him that he is "still connected", pointing to five figures in the sky. Deadman emerges from the water and drags him under, he is there with Lou and they help him return to the world of the living.
One Last Delivery[]
Inauguration...[]
Two weeks after temporarily stopping the Last Stranding, during his inauguration speech as the first president of the United Cities of America, Die-Hardman removes his mask from his face, thanking the "unknown hero" (strongly implying towards Sam) who single-handedly reunited America. Sam, who left the room just as Die-Hardman was thanking him, is stopped by Deadman who, discovering that the porter has overcome his Haphephobia, holds him in a tight hug and tells him how they brought him back from the beach: the revolver Sam had with him, the connection between him, Cliff, Bridget and Amelie.
When Die-Hardman arrives on the scene, Sam tries to ignore him when he is stopped by him, who, not expecting forgiveness, cannot continue to live with the remorse for his past actions and falls to his knees in an emotional confession. However, Sam picks him up, telling him that the UCA does not need a president like that and hands him back his revolver, telling him the same words Amelie said to him:"That gun won't help you here", before leaving.
Sam reaches Deadman and a lifeless Lou, so Deadman gives Sam two options: take Lou to the nearest incinerator and avoid a voidout, or take Lou out of the pod to see if she can survive outside, breaking the law. He also disconnects his Cuff links, so no one can monitor him and, after a final hug, the two, now friends, part ways. Fragile arrives and, now part of the UCA as the first official delivery company, asks Sam to work with him again, as she did in the cave during their first meeting. Sam however refuses again, as he still thinks the same and does not want to "connect" with others, for fear of losing them. Fragile tries to stop him by reminding him that he was the one who reconnected America but Sam is adamant and leaves, leaving a sad Fragile behind.
...Reveal...[]
At the incinerator, Sam connects to the pod and experiences a long flashback, eventually discovering the truth about his "birth": informed that his BB will soon be taken to a new facility, Cliff is aided by his old comrade Die-Hardman, still known as John, in a plan to take him away. Before disconnecting the pod, Cliff kisses his comatose wife, before shooting her dead, and attempts to escape. However, he fails and during the escape attempt is wounded, which forces him to return to the room. Here the man tries to calm his son when the security forces enter the room, further injuring Cliff, John and Bridget. Bridget orders John to shoot Cliff but he hesitates, even when the woman squeezes his hand to encourage him. Sam, who in all this has been like a spectator tries to intervene, but can do nothing about what has already happened, when Cliff turns to Sam, recognizing him as his son and giving him his dog tags when, after a final embrace between the two, a shot is fired.
The shot, however, did not kill only Cliff but also the BB, who had left the pod without anyone noticing, this makes Bridget despair and the souls of the two end up on the Beach. Here Amelie recovers Sam's "body" and, with a gesture of her finger, heals the hole in his belly bringing him back to life and making him return to the world of the living, under the gaze of a Cliff who then walks away. In the real world, Bridget decides to adopt Sam and continue the BB project in secret, however, Amelie's gesture has opened the realm of the living to the souls of the dead, speeding up the Stranding and the sixth extinction.
...A new Life[]
After the flashback, Sam chooses to remove Lou from her pod and tries in every way to revive her, but nothing seems to work but, even when it seems that Lou is destined to become a BT, in a last desperate hug the little girl lets out a cry and Sam is relieved to see Lou alive and greeting and holding a quipu that he knows well, it is Amelie's, a gift, the little girl's life, from him. Hugging Lou close to him, both of them step outside and into the now normally rain, with a regular rainbow and birdsong in the background, a sign that the world has returned to normal.
Aftermath[]
As a result of his actions at the incinerator, Sam heads to the former Mexican border, where there's minimal connection to the chiral network, to escape the UCA's attempts to track him. For eleven months, Sam resumes freelance porter work and raises Lou in their shelter, hidden from uninvited sight using holographic technology that projects rocks, timefall and BTs into the area.
Things are changing within the UCA: APAS 4000, originally a support program for porters making deliveries within the network, is developed and it soon begins managing and operating deliveries completely autonomously. When deliveries become fully automated, Bridges withdraws from the sector, and private organizations like Fragile Express dissolve. Over time, APAS expands, entering all areas of life within the network, from childcare to healthcare, and even selecting the best candidate for UCA president, which leads to Die-Hardman being replaced by another president. However, porters are still needed to make deliveries outside the network, which is why Fragile creates Drawbridge.
Unbeknownst to anyone, during Sam's expedition near the research laboratory, a rift begins to form in the southernmost area of the former Mexico. It initially appears as a microscopic distortion in space, but then grows larger and allows people from the Australian continent to pass through to the American continent.
Notes[]
- Sam's westward expedition take inspiration from the novel Journey to the West, a Chinese novel published in the 16th century during the Ming dynasty and attributed to Wu Cheng'en.
- Another inspiration, which the game also mentions through a line from Sam, is Super Mario Bros, a platform game developed and published by Nintendo where the protagonist, Mario, need to traverse the Mushroom Kingdom to rescue Princess Peach Toadstool from King Koopa/Bowser. In the game Sam compare him to Mario and Amelie to Princess Peach.
- If the player delays making a choice, or doesn't make the right one, and Amelie walks away from the Beach, a cutscene will show her turning to Sam, crying tears of blood, floating in the air, and a huge explosion will hit her and Sam. Eventually, the message "Connect again?" will appear on the screen to give the player a second chance.