torao

1st of all: everything is false. My theory, your theory, everyone's. Because it's a game and only kojima has the key to win it, everything in the trailer is made to make us wrongly assume things about ds2, just like the 1st death stranding trailer, just like the 1st "the phantom pain" trailer and so on

Kojima said himself he wanted people to talk and discuss it and it works simply because it's simply impossible to guess what the story will be about

Now here are several things I noticed or some guesses I or other people I agree with have made:

1) Sam doesn't age

-> Kojima isn't afraid of aging his characters, we see it with old snake in mgs4, or even with Fragile in ds, so if Sam had aged up in ds2, I sincerely believe it would be noticeable

-> So from what we see in the trailer, only his hair has changed, he has the exact same face as before. Besides he isn't the only one to have had hair bleaching; during the fight against Higgs on the beach, we can see his hair gradually becomes gray (and might eventually turn white)

Besides, in the concept art of this scene, they both had white hair at the fight.

Reasons for the white hair can only be guesses;

- maybe fighting on the beach did something to their vital force, hair bleaching being only a side effect of the "drain" - maybe it's related to the both of them having DOOMS (or being homini demens etc), while they fight on the beach it could hurt the source of their abilities - or they both had Marie Antoinette's syndrome at the same time idk

2) Fragile's skin

So Fragile doesn't have the timefall effects anymore

-> It could be due to Amélie's beach having closed, maybe it simply cancelled all the effects of the timefalls

-> She healed: either with cryptobiotes eating (« one cryptobiote a day keeps the timefall away») or with something Bridges or Sam did, either scientific or DOOMS/beach related. I'd seen a theory that Sam healed her, which somehow weakened him in a way that shows with white hair). I liked the idea that by healing she got stuck in her youth but I still think Sam hasn't aged.

-> It's not the same Fragile. Or rather not at the same time, a theory was that the footage with Lou is from a dream or a vision of even another timeline/universe. I find it hard to believe because the multiverse is the too easy solution, besides she could appear with old skin in visions too.

3) Louise dies

So we know it's Louise in the trailer, she has her name marked on her clothes thingy in the trailer, and Sam recognises her in the pod later.

Louise dies. We see Fragile and Louise be attacked by APAC (we can guess the red silhouettes during the escape + the person that shoots Fragile has the same gloves and general vibe as Higgs)

Fragile seems to repatriate but it does feel like Lou just dies in that scene, it could totally be a Kojima trap but I have some theories about it that could make sense;

-> Louise becomes a BT

We can see her reappearing in her old BB pod as a BB sized BT that has little wings like her baby clothes

And then Sam picks her up «Lou?» it would make sense because if the gameplay is similar to DS1 we'll probably get something similar to DS1 Lou to detect BTs and all and imo BT Lou could be used for that purpose.

Now story wise. See next points :

-> Lou survives.

Lou survives and grows up to become a young woman played by Elle Fannings (I still don't think Sam aged, even if in this particular theory it would make sense). I really like the idea of her growing with the cult, kidnapped by Higgs and maybe the plot could be to find her and reunite her with Sam and Fragile, effectively stopping the cult from doing whatever they're doing.

-> Lou dies AND survives.

This one is my own theory: Lou dies and becomes a BT, that will serve Sam as BB

BUT

What if she survives on the beach, like Amélie; Lou has had a very particular birth which could in fact have turned her into some kind of entity or even just homini demens, where she'd have a Ka form on the beach that is out of time (which would explain her being grown up and played by Elle)

So in this theory, she'd be both dead and alive, and the connection to her special beach could also be the way BT Lou detects BTs for Sam in the real world.

But that's not all: if Lou had this link to the Beach, she'd basically work the same way as the dolls the terrorists used, the dolls which were connected to Amélie's own beach. I think it could have something to do with why Fragile has the tar tears similarly to Higgs and Clifford, I don't know how exactly it's all related but there has to be a link.

And this brings me to: the plot would be Sam finding a way to bring Lou back to « Life », reuniting her Ka with the real world and her Ha.

-> Octopus Lou : Kojima/kojipro refer as the octopus in the pod showing alongside BT Lou as « Octopus Lou »

My theory is that she isn't a new kind of BT or anything, but rather Sam's DOOMS has improved enough to allow him to see BTs instead of just sending them; we've seen lots of BT bosses that had sea animals shapes like whales etc so an octopus would make sense, besides it'd help vary the designs for the sequel and change a little from DS1

[ I'll talk about the APAC kidnapping theory at the Higgs part ]

4 ) The Magellan

At the end of the trailer we see this huge submarine boat metal gear red thing

It seems to be called « The Magellan » and has almost all the trailer's logos on it.

-> DS2 happens in another country/ continent

Magellan was a grand explorer and it's pretty easy, even obvious to think that the ship was made to either explore or rally more people.

So we could suppose that the Magellan takes us to another place where we'll have to rally everyone onto the chiral network like in DS1, just in another place.

They way Fragile calls Sam to go and work again makes me think we'll have to do some porter work again at least.

-> DS2 Magellan allows us to travel from beach to beach

What if the Magellan was a gameplay option it would be so fucking cool

In the trailer we can clearly see the Magellan emerging from a tar lake (there's BTs falling down and Fragile and Sam react to the tar by crying bc of the DOOMS chiral allergy)

So maybe the Magellan was made to travel not across the tar but through it. We know the tar can like a portal to the beach (repatriations, BT boss fight etc). The Beach system could've changed due to Amélie's doing, making different kinds of Beach dimensions or something

5 ) What is APAC

So the trailer shows APAC as being evil right.

They attack Fragile and Lou after all, and look like some evil cult that clearly praises Amélie (or the extinction entity in general). But imo it might be a Kojima trap.

-> APAC was good : APAC means Automated Public Assistance Company, it doesn't sound very evil right, moreover; the logo of APAC is on the Magellan ship, alongside Drawbridges logo etc so they probably participated in creating the ship.

From the name it would mean that APAC is simply a drones/robots/androids company, that probably took off after DS1.

-> APAC is constituted of cyborgs/androids: I'm not the only one to think that APAC people are just androids or robots, they look very cyborg ish and they way the lights on their heads react to Higgs (?) Playing the guitar looks like he's controlling them more than giving them orders.

So with this, I'll talk about APAC and the cult as separate things, because imo APAC is just being used as executive force/ army for the cult

6 ) Higgs is back

The entity in the trailer has been proven to be Higgs because of the ear but I'll still separate the both of them when I talk about it.

-> He was repatriated : eternity is long, even longer on the beach. Higgs was already mad before but spending so much time alone (?) can't have helped much so maybe he got sick and tried to get out (or unlifed himself). Fragile became a repatriate in the ds2, so why not him too (if he wasn't already, as a homini demens). It could be 1 way if returning.

-> He was brought back by the cult : if he wasn't repatriated, then taking him back to the real world couldn't have been easy, which could explain why he'd become a cyborg thing as the entity, I'm fairly sure he's the one in the coffin during the pilgrim cult scene, we can see tar spilling from the holes which suggests the thing inside was from the Beach. Besides there's similar symbols to those on their cyborg body.

-> These are not intestines :

I was thinking it could be a huge umbilical cord instead, granting them a stronger connection to the Beach and Higgs Homini Demens powers back (if he did lose them after the fight)

Ik it sounds weird but,,, intestines are not like this either, they are SUPER long so it doesn't make sense, especially if the entity is a cyborg why would they have intestines.

-> He kidnapped Lou. As I said before I really like this idea it makes a lot of sense with the cover of BB'S theme by Troy Baker and the resentment/obsession he shows towards Sam.

So there's different rasons why this makes sense:

- Revenge. As said in the first post, Higgs surely HATES Sam for ruining his projects. As much as I wished he stopped being evil, he could very well try anything in his power to take everything from Sam, from killing Fragile to killing well everyone else, with his army of cyborgs.

- He meets Cliff or sees Sam's memories : If he saw the Cliff flashbacks like Sam does in DS1 when he connects to BB, he could've mistaken BB Sam for BB Lou (same mistake the player and Sam made in DS1), meaning he thinks Lou is Cliff's baby, the one Amélie wanted alive.

- Lou becomes a Beach/extinction entity (either similar to Cliff or to Amélie) : So she'd be a Homini Demens with an access to a powerful Beach and would be used by the cult/Higgs/the entity to trigger a death stranding or accelerate the 6th extinction.

-> His goal isn't murdering everyone : I don't know if this makes sense, it's what I'd like to believe.

Higgs might always have been crazy (due to the abuse and harsh life he grew up with) but he wasn't always evil. It's said in the interviews, he was a very good porter, and in his own journal he says he wanted to bring people together, exactly like Sam, which is why he teamed up with Fragile in the first place. (The pizza booklet in the shelter,,,.,.,,.,.,.)

[I haven't gotten all his journal entries yet so I might edit this later on]

It's clear that according to the last entries that finding Amélie changed him a lot, he went from rallying people to obsessing over her; but maybe this was her own doing, making him her soldier or pawn, like with Cliff.

It could explain Higgs' obsession with Sam, because Amélie only had eyes for Sam, and Higgs only had eyes for Amélie so he just wanted to make sense out of her needs (could also be jealousy).

So what effect would that have on Higgs after Amélie closes her Beach ?

Well one could think he'd stay obsessed with her and crazy; wanting to carry on her work as Extinction Entity and provoke the ultimate death stranding.

But he could also break away from the grip she had (if she did) on him, and he'd find reason, he'd just stop his obsessions. Meaning he could, once he came back, work alongside Sam and the others to help them, as a porter or something. Fragile might would've been able to bring him back to the real world, if she kept an eye on him and realised he'd been manipulated.

But that doesn't mean he didn't become the antagonist again; as one of the first Homini Demens he's powerful and linked to Amélie. So the Amélie cult could find him and turn him into the entity cyborg thing against his will.

-> The cult's goal isn't murdering everyone either: I know this is hard to believe, but it could be the cult's goal at least at the beginning of its existence;

In the end of DS1, Amélie explains to Sam that an extinction is an opportunity to adapt and change in order to survive. DOOMS is (I think) what characterises homini demens, it's evolution, it's said in DS1 too, that DOOMS people are more adapted to the post death stranding world and thus more adapted to survive through it.

So: the cult could have been created in order to help people acquire and train their DOOMS, and help as many people as possible to adapt against the extinction. ( Someone in a yt analysis said that red was the colour of doctors, and thus the cult could be meant to help and heal people. )

And then something went wrong and they became evil (or not, could be a Kojima trap from the trailer), they keep their own ranks of DOOMS haver, and eliminate all non DOOMS haver, exactly like Magneto in xmen with normal humans or Suguru in Jujutsu kaisen with non sorcerers.

I really think adaptation will be a centre plot point for ds2

7 ) Higgs and Amélie are form entity (like liquid ocelot'..)

This makes sense right, Higgs appearing as Amélie (the mask, the hair, the quipu, the colour red everywhere...) They could have fused in a way, to create this entity.

Besides it wouldn't be the first time they sort of appear as 1 and the same person (pls look at my girl I'm so proud of this screenshot I took)

-> Simple fusion : The simplest option would be the both of them just merging into one, willingly or accidentally after Amélie closed her Beach.

Or

Higgs seems to be the one in control (not very Amélie-ish to play the guitar and all, it's really Higgs' vibe). So Higgs would've taken control of the beach and Amelie's powers and come back to the real world in order to provoke the ultimate death stranding.

-> Neither of them wanted the fusion : A body (ha) can receive two souls (ka) like with Mama and Lockne only if they share a beach. I don't believe it's the case of Higgs and Amélie (unless it changed when she manipulated the Beaches to prevent the Death Steanding)

So I've mentioned the cult taking over Higgs to manipulate him, but they could've also provoked a fusion of Amélie and Higgs, for example by separating their ka from their original ha, merging the souls into an artificial body OR putting Amélie's Ka into Higgs ha/body, leaving his Ka on the Beach. Something like that idk

+ sarcophaguses are used to contain stillmothers like Lisa so it could mean there's only a Ha in the coffin thing

-> Higgs controls the cyborg from the beach : the cyborg could be just an artificial body in the shape of Amélie, controlled remotely by Higgs who would be stuck on the Beach

8 ) Higgs is the centre of everything.

Higgs. My man. I love everything about him so much and I blame Kojima entirely.

Higgs is just the Revolver Ocelot of Death Stranding

It's pretty obvious right? He's played by Troy Baker, Low Roar album cover has Ocelot's/kojipro mascot 's side profile etc

It's all in the name, Higgs, the particle of god. He's named Higgs 3 darn times: Higgs (Peter) Monaghan aka Peter (Higgs) Englert (François) AND calls himself « the particle of god (Higgs/BEHHGK boson) that permeate all existence ». He says himself, he's at the centre of EVERYTHING

Now look at the equations on his jinormous forehead (the images aren't mine!!)

I've talked more about it here, but to put it simply, they are equations that describe how a Higgs system evolves under certain circumstances, he has the definition of Higgs

But that's not all

As said in the Reddit post, his equations are meant to go with the equations on the q-pid

The higgs boson is the key to eventually ally quantum physics to relativity

Higgs is the key to rally everyone. He's the missing piece for the q-pid/chiral betwork to work completely,

That or: Higgs is the beginning, as the Higgs field is said to be related to the Big Bang, he could also be the beginning of a new era (the era of homini demens).

My guess is if higgs and sam kissed theyd repair the world by reuniting the equations together, it'd bring all the answers we need..

bonus!