So in various chats with my friends, I have a whole head canon about the premise of Death Stranding [and I’m prolly totally wrong and this has probably already been rehashed on reddit but idk and idc] Also sorry mobile users, this is tl;dr.
First, the trailers released arent in order of the game’s story and are somewhat of an overwhelming detailed precursor to the game. Also that the trailers still have gaps missing in their own timeline.
The first part is the infamous “Norman Reedus naked on the beach” trailer. While everything seems hella surreal, the dogtags are grounded in the reality of the equations engraved in them, which relate to quantum mechanics [and time travel]. And, as crazy as this is, this is a premonition of Norman’s character and what needs to happen.The relief of finding the infant and holding it to him is portayed as more important than him knowing where he is or him doing the very human response of looking for shelter. So this means that he had to have already known what to do and this is then ending of the prologue.
Guillermo del Toro’s trailer was the second trailer released but the beginning of the prologue. The most blatant fact is that there is some kind of war and that they are hunting/collecting some type of animal. The viscera on the tanks doesnt look human meaning that humans are fighting against some kind of monsters for survival. Mads Mikkelsen’s character and the soldiers emerging from the dark end of the tunnel, and most likely the black tar that keeps appearing whenever someone is holding the infant, is actually a huge clue to what is [in my mind] going on.
The final trailer that was just released at the 2017 Game Awards is the middle story but all the holes are starting to get filled. The most important thing to note is that Norman references the begining of the universe; “once there was a bang” monologue. Second but also equally important is that black tar is sentient and creates the physical forms around the “ghosts” and that they need life energy to sustain themselves [as seen from the aging man]. Their presence is always preceded by the dead crabs, indicating that the ghosts are feeding off lesser life forms.
So what does this all mean and what about the baby?
A brief gloss over any sort of paranormal “research” has many annecdotes of young children being able to see ghosts - the baby in Death Stranding plays two roles. If the ghosts need life energy to survive on a physical plane, what better specimen to obtain than a human who is essentially in a perpetual state of youth? Or an altenative - rewatching the recent trailer, the flower gear that Norman and his crew have attached to them only works when one of them is physically holding the baby - playing on the theme that this infant is the only thing that can detect the ghosts and help people survive.
Although Norman is traveling and working with his crew and protecting this infant, he is the only one who seems immune to death. He is touched by these ghosts but the tar doesnt select him to feed on and he doesnt not age when the ghosts are near. In the scene of him under the ocean, he has sunken to the sea floor where other humans float to the surface which seems to symbolize that he is an outlier of humanity. The dogtags might indicate that he is not from the current timeline or even from the same universe where all these events are taking place and therefore, the ghosts cannot affect him [in a sense, he is stranded in a world of death] If true, he may know how to stop humanity from reaching the point of getting the universe ghosts attention and put humanity on a better path.
Finally coming around to it, my theory of the game is that humans as a species have reached too far in their grasp for knowlegde and superiority and have become a danger to everything in the universe. The ghosts are actually beings of ruin and creation that were probably born during the origin of the universe and are trying to wipe out life on Earth and start again. And these ghosts achieving this by creating some sort of common enemy in the animals seen on the tanks and the false soldiers; humanity is “fighting itself” [one of the few things we are good at] and creating a long drawn out mass extinction.
tl; dr - Norman Reedus is basically trying to save humanity and he can only do that with an all-seeing baby and will reset his timeline as many times as he needs to to ensure human survival ends up in the good timeline.
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