Tomorrow. The promise of dinner is a child's promise, the specific form of hope available to someone who has not yet learned that promises made in the field are the ones most likely to be broken. Sam holds onto it because that is what the promise is for — not as a plan but as a direction, a reason to keep the current session from being the last one, a future small enough to be imaginable.

Death Stranding 2 earns its sentiment by being specific about it. Not let's survive or let's rebuild the world. Let's have dinner once we get home. The domesticity of the wish is its power. Sam is not fighting for an abstraction. He is fighting for the meal, the table, the specific person sitting across from him.