How Death Stranding Should Have Ended
3. Define Higgs' Role In A Cutscene, NOT A Text Entry
Higgs should have been this game's Liquid Snake - a character people love to quote, see every last concept sketch of, and whose screen-dominating presence immediately makes him iconic for future generations.
Sadly though, despite Troy Baker giving it his all as a screen-chewing psychopath, Higgs is utterly one-dimensional. He's evil because he's evil; he has crazy lightning powers "just 'cause", and though there's word of a rivalry between him and Fragile, it ultimately amounts to one cutscene with her being scarred in the rain, and little else.
To actually understand Higgs, you need to either read his missable diary entries, or you can track down his home base after a certain point in the story. Do neither, and your final interaction with him is a Metal Gear Solid 4-style final fight, where you trade blows as two life bars deplete, and slow-motion face smashes pop off all round.
To fix, Higgs needed some proper, in-game or in-cutscene character development. He can stay as a seemingly one dimensional "chaos particle" (hence the name) to a point, but when he has so much agency in the story - interacting with Sam, saying "you don't understand what's happening, do you?", even attacking Amelie or conjuring a giant version of her, making him want to destroy the world and nothing else feels spectacularly empty.
There's a reason the MCU's Thanos is memorable and nuanced, and Justice League's Steppenwolf is just an evil smush to be overcome.
In Higgs' final scene, when Sam journeys to his Beach - where the rules of death are different and you can die forever - why not visualise or have Higgs' talk about his uncle's physical abuse. Why couldn't Higgs' role as a rampant murderer be the reason his beach is so warped, and have that double as the explanation as to why Sam can now die.
You can read about his past, and how his morality warped as he realised killing was bolstering his DOOMs abilities, but that's it.
Fragile plays an important role in all this too, being his former boss and porter companion, but she only comes back at the very end to finish Higgs for good.
Ultimately, Higgs is another example of being underwritten where it counts, and having the majority of his 44 minute screentime devoted to taunting the player, referring to himself as a "boss fight", or threatening to end the world.