Courier continues on his dangerous rounds in the haunted wastelands of a ruined world

For those who haven’t played the original, the game is set in a world where a catastrophic event, known as the Death Stranding, has collapsed the boundary between the living and the dead.

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As a result, Beached Things (BT), effectively ghosts of the dead, now roam the planet, hunting the living.

Sam is a courier, a worker tasked with delivering supplies to isolated American colonies and reconnecting them with the world via a wireless communications system called the Chiral Network.

The first game saw him carrying a precious cargo, a Bridge Baby - an unborn foetus kept alive in a pod designed to mimic a womb. Now the sequel, set 11 months after the events of the first game, introduces Lou, who is no longer a pod baby but a toddler.

On The Beach makes a lot of assumptions about previous knowledge of the world in which it exists, and I'd say you’d probably be better off having a passing acquaintance with the original. But there’s a quite excellent glossary feature that does a great job of explaining the game's lore.