The following contains minor spoilers for Death Stranding‘s first hour.
As a massive fan of Death Stranding, I knew a bit about what I was getting into with Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, but it’s still hitting me harder than I expected. I was with Sam for over one hundred hours in the first game, aiming for S-ranks across the board and completing every delivery in the game, so my bond with his Bridge Baby, Lou, obviously grew alongside his. However, while I certainly shared Sam’s love for Lou in 2019, it wasn’t until 2020 that I had my daughter, my first child.
Now, playing Death Stranding 2 in 2025, I view Lou through an entirely different lens — one that has been shaped by my own experiences as a father — and I find it very hard to leave her behind in order to push the story forward. Not maybe an hour into the game, Sam leaves Lou and his home in the hands of Fragile, whom he knows he can trust, but for a parent, being apart from your kids is never easy. At this point in Death Stranding 2, I know I haven’t even encountered a fraction of its most emotional moments, and yet I’m already being torn apart.
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Death Stranding 2 Makes It Hard to Leave Lou Behind
Parenting Is Weird
Parenting is one of the most rewarding and strangest experiences anyone could have in this life. Ahead of your first child, you have no idea what you’re getting into, regardless of how many parenting books you’ve read or how many children you’ve watched others raise. Even so, when they finally arrive, everything starts to just come naturally. Your protective instincts surface and you somehow know what to give them when they need it, and no matter how much sleep you lose, you push through, and it’s all because you’ve come to terms with the fact that you don’t come first anymore — and that’s okay.
Not maybe an hour into the game, Sam leaves Lou and his home in the hands of Fragile, whom he knows he can trust, but for a parent, being apart from your kids is never easy.
The weirdest thing about parenting, though, is when those moments of weariness and over-stimulation really start to catch up with you. Then you’re grasping at straws, trying to find just five minutes of peace and quiet, away from crying babies and toddlers who are learning how to navigate a wide range of complicated emotions. Then, in that peace and quiet, in that alone time, you find yourself missing your children, and all you can do is scroll through photos and videos of them as though they’ve been gone forever, and you’re just trying to preserve their memory.
Death Stranding 2 Makes Me Miss My Own Kids
This is how I’ve felt playing Death Stranding 2, and yet my daughter and son are only just down the hall asleep in their own beds, kissed by the light of my monitor as it reaches through their open doors. To be fair, I miss my kids every night after bedtime anyway, no matter how ready I was for them to get into bed, just so I could have some alone time or watch Survivor with my wife. But Death Stranding 2 is just heightening those feelings all the more as I watch Sam struggle to leave Lou behind when he heads out on his first job. Like Sam, I wanted to stay in that moment, where Lou was playing with her toys while breakfast was being made and then falling asleep in her high chair, head hanging down just like Sam’s during Death Stranding 2‘s opening sequence.
There’s something special happening here that I know even non-parents can feel, but that many parents will undeniably be familiar with. Death Stranding 2 has only set up the story at this point, and I’ve already been hit by the gut punch that almost every mother and father experiences as they’re about to head out on vacation alone, away from the kids. Of course, Sam isn’t going on vacation, but the feeling is all the same. It’s the first time he has been away from Lou since the events of the first Death Stranding, and he has a hard time letting go — a feeling I know all too well.
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
- Released
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June 26, 2025
- ESRB
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Mature 17+ // Violence, Blood and Gore, Partial Nudity, Strong Language
- Publisher(s)
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Sony Interactive Entertainment
- Engine
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Decima
- Franchise
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Death Stranding
- Number of Players
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Single-player
- PS5 Release Date
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June 26, 2025
