Death Stranding 2: all the news about Hideo Kojima's next game

In 2019, Hideo Kojima, creator of Metal Gear Solid and perhaps Hollywood's favorite game auteur, released his first game as head of his own independent studio, after parting ways with Konami. Depending on who you asked at the time, death stranded It was either visionary or completely incomprehensible, or both. However, it is an unforgettable experience and subsequent editions have converted a good number of skeptics.

Now Kojima is ready to return with Death Stranding 2: On the beach (yes, it's really called that). Like its predecessor, it will combine unique hiking gameplay with exposition-heavy cutscenes, Yoji Shinkawa's striking character designs, and a deeply strange sci-fi plot about building connections between people in a lonely and hostile world where the veil between life and death has vanished. been shot down.

Read on to learn everything we currently know about Death Stranding 2.

Hideo Kojima and members of the Death Stranding 2 cast took the stage on September 29 at Tokyo Game Show 2024 to show off some gameplay footage that revealed some new details, including some character names, the return of the character Heartman, some incidental details about the world, and a couple of… let's say only events in the game. Kojima also confirmed that the game would be released in 2025, but did not reveal a specific date.

The first video clip showed Sam (Norman Reedus) taking a tour of the DHV Magellan, with Fragile (Léa Seydoux) introducing him to his captain and pilot Tarman (George Miller/Marty Rhone) and the living puppet Dollman (Fatih Akin/Jonathan Roumie ). .

The second video clip reveals that Elle Fanning's character is called Tomorrow and Shioli Kutsuna's is called Rainy. Rainy is pregnant and Tomorrow reveals that babies are not born where they come from. Then, they and Dollman sing 'Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head' to the unborn baby.

The third clip reveals the return of Heartman, a character from the first game who dies of a heart attack and is resurrected every 21 minutes. He now has an exoskeleton that keeps him upright. He still has the appearance of film director Nicolas Winding Refn, but is played by Darren Jacobs.

The fourth clip is from a “photoshoot event” during which the player can take Polaroid photos of Fragile, Tomorrow, and Rainy while they strike poses. It's both deeply embarrassing and strikingly photorealistic.

The final clip is of a musical interlude featuring a new song, 'Horizon Dreamer', by Japanese pop star Daichi Miura. In the clip, Miura (it appears to be a video of the singer, rather than motion capture footage) dances with several Dollman.

Death Stranding 2: On the beach It will launch on PlayStation 5 in 2025. That's the closest date we have right now. At the Tokyo Game Show 2024, Kojima said the date had been decidedbut could not announce it yet “due to unforeseen circumstances.” He said the date would be announced in 2025.

Where it will fall in the year is anyone's guess, and it may well depend on the final release date of grand theft car 6which will probably make other game publishers scatter to get as far away from it as possible. If it's any indication, the original game had a release date of November 8, 2019. Kojima's comments suggest that it's unlikely to be delayed until 2026.

Death Stranding 2 It's just one of the reasons Next year will be a year full of great games..

At least initially, yes, but it will almost certainly be released later for PC. Like the original game, Death Stranding 2 is the result of a partnership between Kojima Productions and Sony, and will most likely remain exclusive to the PlayStation console. So far, only its launch on PlayStation 5 has been confirmed.

However, death stranded got a later PC release, courtesy of publisher 505 Games. It would be surprising if the same didn't happen with the sequel, whether through an indie publisher like 505, or even through Sony itself, which recently released its biggest first-party exclusives for PC after a period of console exclusivity.

Oh boy. Good. In the game world, an apocalyptic event known as Death Stranding has caused strange creatures called Beached Things (BT) to roam the Earth. These haunting monsters are created from the dead, and if they consume a living person, they cause a devastating explosion. It is said that the BT originate from the Beach, a strange dimension that is a kind of afterlife or purgatory. There's a lot more to it than that, but that's the basics.

Why is this metaphysical realm called Playa? Good question. Perhaps because it is a transition space between two different states: land and ocean, life and death. Plus… it looks like a beach.

The main cast of Death Stranding 2 features three returning stars and two new faces.

It also wouldn't be a Death Stranding game without cameos from some of Kojima's favorite film directors; The first game had pretty big roles for Guillermo del Toro and Nicolás Winding Refn. Three directors appear in Death Stranding 2 as well as their scanned images, with motion capture and vocal performances by other actors.

Kojima Productions has revealed quite a bit about Death Stranding 2: On the beach across two lengthy cutscene-filled trailers, but as is often the case with a Hideo Kojima game, the more you take in, the less you seem to understand. That's part of the fun!

The first trailer for the game shows Fragile taking care of a baby. This is Lou, the BB (Bridge Baby) that Sam freed from her sarcophagus-like capsule and revived at the end of the first game. Then there is a new scene where Sam and Lou are attacked in their bunker and flee, but Lou dies and re-emerges as a BT (Beached Thing) version of herself in her old pod.

In the second trailer, this BT version of Lou is seen accompanying Sam on his adventure as BB once again. The trailer shows the general setting of the game, which apparently takes place a few years after the events of the original. The chiral network that Sam created in death stranded is up and running and human porters are no longer needed to connect the UCA (formerly America), and Sam's former Bridges co-workers have gone their separate ways.

But a new organization called Drawbridge, run by Fragile and funded by a mysterious private benefactor, is working to connect areas outside of UCA. Sam goes to work for Drawbridge; his hair, which had turned white, turns brown again for some reason. They have a cool mobile base, the DHV Magellan, which seems to be able to travel through the black tar from which the BTs emerge.

Higgs, the antagonist from the original game, has also returned. Despite being left on the beach at the end of the first game, he is alive, sort of. A team of robots transports him in a red coffin. He wears a creepy mask over an even creepier face and has a weapon like an electric guitar. Lou takes control of his robots to fight him. The scene doesn't make sense, but it's both ridiculous and absurdly cool in classic Kojima style.

Back aboard the DHV Magellan, Fragile has a mask that looks like a pair of blue hands and, in the company of Tarman, rescues Tomorrow from another sarcophagus-like object filled with black tar. (In a video clip released later, we learn that tomorrow comes from another place or dimension, where babies are never born, but remain in their mothers' wombs.)

In addition to Lou, Sam is accompanied on his travels by Dollman, who has the appearance of a talking wooden puppet animated in stop-motion style. At some point he reunites with Heartman from the first game, and Rainy, a pregnant woman, joins the crew of the DHV Magellan.

When presenting the second trailer at the Game Awards 2022, Kojima said he had rewritten it Death Stranding 2 to reflect the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Considering the first game's prophetic visions of lockdown and isolation have often been discussed, it will be fascinating to see how these themes play out in the story.

The trailers are much clearer on gameplay details compared to the plot, but what we see looks pretty familiar. It looks like Kojima Productions is iterating pretty gently on the open-world exploration, cargo hauling, and walking of the first game. Considering how unique this perspective remains, that's not a bad thing.

The trailers reveal some new biomes (black, arid desert and rock outcrops) and dynamic landscape effects (flash floods and avalanche-like rockfall). There's also a new vehicle: a four-wheeled, tank-shaped buggy with open seats high up on the body and arm-shaped suspension at the front.