Death Stranding 2 Fans Are Still Trying To Figure Out Why Sam Looked So Old In On The Beach's Reveal, And One Of The Theories Sound Spot-On

Summary

Death Strandingfans are trying to figure out why Sam looked so old inOn the Beach’s initial reveal trailer, a state we’ve not seen him in during subsequent trailers.

It doesn’t feel like that long ago when we first learned that Death Stranding 2: On the Beach was in the works, but it was actually all the way back in 2022 at The Game Awards.Our first look at the sequel, which was simply titled DS2 at the time, teased many things about it, including showing off Sam looking a lot older than in the first game.

Since Fragile looked to be the same age,it raised a lot of questions about whether On the Beach was going to have a massive timeskip of some sort. The latest trailers have confirmed that isn’t the case, though,as the sequel takes place 11 months after the firstand Sam doesn’t appear to be much older at all.

Death Stranding Fans Have Some Good Theories About Sam’s Age In On The Beach

In fact, we haven’t seen Sam with grey hair like we did in the first trailer at all since he was first shown looking so old.Over on the Death Stranding subreddit, Dense-Baker asked fans what they thought “the deal” was with Sam looking so old in that scene considering he wasn’t shown like that at all in the recent trailer.

While I’d love to go through them all, it does seem like Redditor Captain_Grn_Thmbs, who has the most up-voted comment on the thread, has got it in one, as they suggest it’s because Sam hasn’t repatriated in a while. So, at the start of the game, he might look a lot older before repatriating at some point and getting a “new skin suit” he has for the rest of On the Beach.

For anyone wondering what repatriating is, it’s basically like being reborn in the Death Stranding universe, and it’s something that Sam and a select few others can do.

Considering the Sam we see in the most recent trailers has clearly been living quietly since the first game with Lou, it does make sense that he’d not repatriated for a while. Some of the other theories in the trailer include Sam having trouble with timefall, simply being stressed on the job, and, my personal favourite, getting gray hair after trying to understand the game’s lore.