Voidouts. BTs. Bridges. BBs. The United Cities of America. Chirelium. Extinction Entities. The world of Death Stranding is vast, weird, and at times, can feel impenetrable. But if you, like me, read all the optional emails and interviews in the first game–and did as many deliveries as you could stomach–you too can piece together a chronological sequence of events that help make sense of Kojima Productions’ sequel.

With the long-in-development sequel now out, we’re taking a look at the original game and how it introduced a strange new world where humanity was teetering on the edge of extinction. If you’re looking for an easy-to-digest recap before you jump into Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, this guide will get you up to speed on the main characters, the world they live in, and everything else.

This is the complete Death Stranding timeline (spoilers, of course), and it starts with the Big Bang.

Billions of years ago, life began when matter and antimatter collided. Think of matter as the substance of life, and antimatter as the substance of death. The explosion that resulted from the collision was a catalyst for matter to grow and evolve into the universe and all life within it.

However, whether through simple, unconscious machinations or some unknown divine will, the universe continuously attempts to correct itself back to net zero and wipe out all life within it through extinction events.

In her youth, Bridget Strand would have consistent, apocalyptic nightmares. If that horror wasn’t enough, she also developed uterine cancer in her early twenties. Whilst undergoing an operation to deal with the disease, Bridget’s body and her soul split in twain, although the two continue to be connected. Her body remains on Earth, and her soul goes to a place known as the Beach.

Every human has a Beach. It’s essentially purgatory; a metaphysical space between the land of the living and dead where time stands still. Most people can only travel to their own Beach after they die and as they move onto the afterlife, but as the Extinction Entity, Bridget’s soul can travel to them all.

It is here that she comes to understand her destiny as an EE, and that her apocalyptic nightmares are actually visions of the future. Since time stands still on the Beach–and is a conduit between life and death–the complete knowledge of the entirety of the universe is at her fingertips.

At first, Bridget’s soul is determined to do whatever she can to stop the sixth extinction event, and plans to utilize her essentially unlimited time and unlimited access to knowledge to figure out how to do so.

Meanwhile, Bridget’s body in the real world continues to age with the passage of time. She becomes a politician, working her way through the ranks until reaching the office of Vice President of the United States.

The beginning of the titular Death Stranding arrives when a doctor performs a C-section on a pregnant woman who has suffered brain death, the physician attempting to save her dying baby. However, the splitting of Bridget’s body and soul has created a crack in the walls separating life and death, and this event further erodes that separation.

The child dies, and in its wake leaves behind a BT or Beached Thing; a soul that cannot pass onto their Beach. A creature of pure antimatter. And when the matter of the doctor comes into contact with the antimatter of the BT… boom.

The government covers up the event, claiming it to be a terrorist attack. But Bridget knows what it really is: the beginning of the end. Eventually, more antimatter will spill into the world, and her nightmares will become reality.

Whilst her soul has eternity on the Beach to figure out a way to stop it, her body is running out of time. She devises an experimental program under a new department, Bridges, hoping to better understand what caused the Voidout to prevent future ones. This program requires babies born to mothers who are brain-dead: stillmothers. They dub the children Bridge Babies, or BBs for short. One of these early experiments goes wrong, however, causing another Voidout that decimates the entirety of Manhattan.

The next candidate for the BB program is brought in, Lisa Unger, whose war veteran husband Cliff brings to Bridges to save not only her life after an accident that left her brain dead, but to save their son’s, unaware of the true nature of why Bridges needs their child.

However, it just so happens that the man Bridget put in charge of the Bridges program, John Blake McClane, is a former soldier that once served under Captain Unger. When he realizes that his former commander, a man who saved his life countless times in war, is the father of the BB, John informs Cliff of Bridges’ true intentions with his son.

John offers Cliff a chance to escape with his child, although he insists nothing can be done to save Lisa. Cliff mercifully ends his wife’s life, and attempts to escape with their son, but he is unsuccessful.

Bridget, desperate to get back what she believes is the key to stopping the sixth extinction, orders John to kill his former Captain. When he hesitates, she pulls the trigger for him, but tragically kills both Cliff and his son.

Sam is raised by both Bridget’s body and soul. Her body, now considerably older-looking than her soul, creates the lie that her soul is actually her daughter, Amelie. Sam grows up believing that Amelie is his sister, and he forms memories with her on her Beach, which, thanks to the connection formed when she saved his life, is a place he is able to travel to.

That pivotal event also gave Sam two additional afflictions. The first is that he is a repatriate, someone whose soul is able to return after death to their body via the Seam, the watery passageway between a person and their Beach. So ostensibly, Sam is unable to die. The other affliction is DOOMS. A select few humans have developed DOOMS, each in different ways. Sam’s DOOMS allow him to sense the afterlife, as well as share and suffer in Bridget’s nightmarish visions of the apocalypse.

This event comes to be known as the Death Stranding, causing humans to disconnect and retreat into giant walled cities and underground bunkers. They begin to burn their dead, which is a way to prevent a soul from becoming trapped and turning into a BT. But it’s too late: the surface is an extremely inhospitable place. Not only is it crawling with BTs, but rain and snow have become Timefall, meaning anything they touch is rapidly aged.

Bridget and Amelie not only look upon this bleak future, but reflect upon the horrors of their own actions, realizing that the steps they’ve taken to prevent the sixth extinction have just ended up making things worse. They lose all hope in the inevitability of it all, and their plans change: instead of trying to prevent the sixth extinction, they’ll attempt to bring it about faster. To give humanity a swifter, more merciful end rather than the long, drawn-out one they’re going through. A Last Stranding.

They then twist their plans for a network to connect the worlds of the living and dead via the BB program to bring about this more “humane” extinction.

The scope of Bridges now includes a plan to reconnect America by providing a delivery service between human settlements and outposts, which Sam begins to work as a porter for. Another private delivery entity also forms, Fragile, which is named after its founder’s daughter.

As Amelie and Bridget begin to enact their plan to bring about the Last Stranding, Sam meets a woman named Lucy. Lucy is, at first, Sam’s therapist who helps him cope with his visions of the future, which she dismisses as just nightmares.

But the pair fall in love, get married, and become pregnant. Unfortunately, a side effect of having Sam’s child is that she too now suffers from DOOMS, and she begins to have the same apocalyptic nightmares that Sam experiences.

Bridget confirms to her daughter-in-law that, yes, the apocalypse is coming and that there is nothing that can be done to stop it. The despair is too much for Lucy to handle, and upon returning from a delivery one day, Sam discovers his wife has committed suicide. Since no one was around to burn her body, a BT remains in her place.

Sam comes into contact with it, triggering a Voidout. He repatriates, waking up in the crater left over from the explosion. The devastation of losing his wife and his unborn child, as well as being the source of the Voidout killing untold amounts of people, causes Sam to resign from Bridges and detach from Bridget and Amelie.

Years go by, with humanity’s future becoming bleaker by the day. Bridget and Amelie execute the first steps of the plan, by having Amelie lead a Bridges team across the country to convince cities and settlements to join their new United Cities of America.

As they do so, parts of the team break off to establish the foundations for the network they hope to set up, with the expedition group shrinking in size as they get closer to the west coast. Toward the end, Amelie meets Higgs, and realizes that not only does he have DOOMS, but that she can twist his desire to save humanity.

Amelie lets Higgs in on her knowledge and her plan to bring about the Last Stranding, and Higgs becomes enamored with her, realizing her powers far exceed Fragile’s teleporting abilities. Amelie increases his DOOMS capabilities, giving him control over BTs and Timefall, and uses him and acolytes he amasses dubbed Homo Demens to create more Voidouts, further breaking down the walls between life and death, and making it easier to bring about the Last Stranding.

Higgs uses Fragile to unwittingly deliver bombs to two major settlements, Middle Knot City and South Knot City. Middle Knot is destroyed first, and upon learning that she is the cause, Fragile realizes what she has delivered to South Knot. She tries to get it away from the city, but is stopped by Higgs.

He gives her two choices: teleport away and leave South Knot to its fate, or continue her attempt to drop the nuclear bomb in a tar pit, but do so whilst almost completely naked in Timefall, save for her face, which Higgs will cover with a mask so everyone will recognize her still as the person that delivered the bombs.

Fragile tragically chooses this fate, and her body is rapidly aged by Timefall. Despite this tragedy, she continues to run her late father’s company, whilst Higgs and his Homo Demens continue to terrorize the country.

Now that Amelie has convinced enough settlements to join the UCA, all that’s left to do is connect them and form the Chiral Network, named after Chiralium, a mineral that comes from the Beach in both black liquid and golden solid forms.

Bridget calls upon her son Sam to carry out this mission. But Sam has become a recluse over the years, and couldn’t care less about reconnecting America. Bridget then lies to everyone and her son, stating that Higgs has Amelie trapped in Edge Knot City, the most western settlement. As Bridget passes away from her cancer, Sam agrees to save his sister, the only person he has left that he has any connection to in the world. Sam is given a BB to enhance his DOOMS and help him detect BTs on his journey.

Over time, the pair form a strong bond, and every time he connects to BB, Sam begins to have visions. He and his team believe these memories to belong to the BB, but they are actually Sam’s own memories from before he was first killed; when he and his mother Lisa were being detained by Bridges, and his father Cliff would visit them. As their bond deepens, Sam comes to call BB Lou, the name he and Lucy would have given to their own child.

Sam continues across the country, adding Knots and outposts to the Chiral Network, whilst meeting new members of the Bridges team and working with Fragile. As his journey progresses, he encounters giant storms that he gets sucked into. They drop him on different battlefields every time, and at the end of them, he is confronted by Cliff, who is calling out for his BB, which Sam believes to be Lou.

Upon returning to the real world, he discovers that no time has passed, and his team deduces that he must be being teleported to a collective Beach, one created by the shared trauma of the souls of war veterans.

Sam ultimately makes it to Edge Knot City, where it is finally revealed that completing the Chiral network has actually been a catalyst to bring about the Last Stranding. Sam confronts Higgs, and is able to best a gigantic BT of the Homo Demens leader’s own creation.

Higgs then retreats with Amelie to her beach, Sam and his team still under the impression that his sister is still Higgs’ prisoner. Fragile is able to teleport Sam to Amelie’s Beach, where he faces off against Higgs in combat. Upon defeating him, Sam leaves Higgs for Fragile to decide his fate.

Amelie tells Sam that in order to make it back home, they simply need to run along the Beach. As they approach their destination, Amelie runs ahead of Sam, telling him to hang back. But he doesn’t, and stumbles upon an unexpected sight. Die-Hardman, the Director of Bridges who is really John Blake McClane, with the same gun he and Bridget used to kill Cliff and Sam.

He is confronting who he believes to be Bridget, but is simply Amelie presenting herself as such. As like much of the events that transpire in Death Stranding, this confrontation is by Amelie’s design.

Die-Hardman has come to realize Bridget/Amelie’s true intentions, and tries to kill her with the gun. But it doesn’t work. At this moment, Cliff arises from the waters of the Seam, looking for his BB. Amelie points him towards Sam, but then teleports next to her “brother”, and pushes him into the water. This is seemingly out of fear that Cliff could harm Sam, and if Sam dies on the Beach, he cannot repatriate.

Sam wakes up outside of Edge Knot City, and communicates with his team. The Director is still missing, and the amount of BTs and Timefall appearing across the country is at an all time high. The walls between the lands of the living and the dead are about to be completely torn down.

Fragile is able to quickly gather the members of Sam’s team back to Capitol Knot City, where Sam began his quest. But teleporting them so frequently, across Beaches that have now become extremely volatile, has left Fragile weak, and she cannot offer the same luxury to Sam. He must return home by himself, and from there she can take him directly to Amelie’s Beach.

Sam crosses the country back to the east coast, but just before arriving at his destination, he is caught up in one last storm of Cliff’s design. At the pinnacle of their final confrontation, Cliff comes to realize the truth: that the BB Sam is carrying is not the one he’s looking for, but instead, Sam is his child. He embraces his son one last time before passing on, his quest to reconnect with Sam fulfilled, although Sam has not had the same epiphany as his father.

Sam awakens, this time in Port Knot City, within spitting distance of his final destination. It is here that one of his team members, Deadman, reveals a discovery to Sam via a recording left behind by the Director in case he were to not return from Amelie’s Beach.

Die-Hardman reveals that he was able to get to Amelie’s beach thanks to an invitation from the extinction entity herself. He then explains that, due to the timing of Bridget Strand’s cancer, Amelie cannot be Bridget’s daughter. In fact, has anyone ever actually met Amelie in person or only interacted with her via hologram? Sam swears that he has, but when he thinks about it, he realizes that the only time he ever had physical contact with Amelie was on her Beach.

Sam takes the time to ponder everything as he completes the final leg of his journey, bringing a vat of Cyptobiotes, edible creatures that help alleviate the effects of Timefall, for Fragile in order to wake her up from a coma she fell into after teleporting everyone to Capitol Knot City.

Upon awaking, Fragile tells the team that Higgs, who she left alive, revealed that Amelie was the one behind his powers all along, and that he was enacting her plan for a Last Stranding. To avoid it, Sam only has two options. Travel to Amelie’s Beach, and convince her to stop the Last Stranding, or kill her, but wind up being stuck on her Beach for eternity.

On her Beach, Amelie explains everything to Sam. About how the Universe is attempting to correct itself to net zero, and is doing so through her as an Extinction Entity. About how she initially wanted to stop the Last Stranding, but when she saw the steps she was taking to do so only caused more suffering, she decided to bring it about even quicker to provide a merciful ending to existence.

As the Last Stranding begins, she explains that he has two choices: he can either stay with her on the Beach and watch the Last Stranding unfold, or he can try and disconnect her Beach from the real world, which would only delay the inevitable. The Last Stranding will happen, whether it’s today or years from now. But Sam chooses a third option: to embrace his sister.

Sam remembers a time when they were together when he was a child, and she told Sam that he was the only one that could stop her. Amelie explains that her visions of the apocalyptic future were never the same, they were always different, and she never knew which ones to trust. So she spread DOOMs to humanity to help her make better sense of it all, and see if those connections could help her come up with a solution.

She sees now that Sam’s choice to try and save humanity after having reconnected with it isn’t as futile as she believes. After every previous extinction, life has found a way to survive, and maybe if she can contain the Last Stranding to her Beach, she can buy Sam and humanity enough time to figure out a way to stop it. She pushes Sam under the water, just as the Last Stranding occurs on her Beach.

He washes ashore on his own Beach, his soul trapped there. As he futilely attempts to escape, Amelie reaches out to Sam and explains her history: how she became separated from the Body of Bridget Strand. Along with Bridget, they initially attempted to avert the Last Stranding by building a network that would allow them to access all of the knowledge of the Universe, and figure out how the Big Five previous extinction events failed to wipe out all life.

She now theorizes that maybe, like her, the previous five EEs had a change of heart, and chose not to unleash the Last Stranding upon the world. To let it become stronger and wiser, let it live to fight another day, giving it a shot at figuring out how to stop the Last Stranding.

Lastly, she reveals to Sam that it was her making him a repatriate that caused the Death Stranding, and that it was her that reunited Cliff and Sam, hoping to show Sam that he wasn’t abandoned. Sam, however, still does not understand that Cliff is his father.

Sam continues to exist aimlessly on his Beach, and he turns to the gun that once killed him. Maybe there was a way to use it to end this eternity in limbo, just not in the way he is thinking. Him pulling the trigger in a suicidal attempt allows his team back in the real world to pinpoint his Beach, and using BB as a connection to it, they are able to pull him out and back into the land of the living. It seems that Die-Hardman’s invitation to join Amelie on her beach was actually to get that gun into Sam’s hands and provide him a way to return home.

Months later, the world is able to rebuild somewhat, using the chiral network to quickly and easily move supplies across the country. Die-Hardman becomes the new President of the United Cities of America, and vows to not let Sam’s hard work go to waste. He also expresses deep regret of the part he played in helping Bridget with her plan.

Deadman then comes to Sam with some unfortunate news. BB has finally expired, as all BBs eventually do. He suggests to Sam that he could attempt to revive it by taking it out of its pod, but that would be against the laws of the new UCA. He tells Sam that he must take it to the crematorium lest it turn into a BT, and that he will deactivate Sam’s cuff link giving him a window to lose it and drop off of the grid.

Sam ventures to the crematorium and hesitates to put BB in the machine. He connects to BB one last time, and is finally able to understand through one final flashback that he is Cliff’s child, not his BB Lou. After getting a short pep talk from his father from beyond the grave, he realizes that he wants to do everything he can to bring Lou back to life. He leaves his cuff links to be cremated, whilst trying everything he can to resuscitate Lou, who is becoming a BT before his very eyes.

He cradles the lifeless body of the child, preparing to go out in a Voidout, when Lou begins to coo. Sam looks down, and Lou is holding Amelie’s quipu, suggesting that Amelie repatriated Lou as they crossed over. Sam embraces the BB, before stepping outside into the rain, which is no longer Timefall. This is because Amelie has closed off her Beach from the world, bringing an end to the Death Stranding.