Hideo Kojima has remained silent about what his studio is working on next. However, many rumours and leaks have revealed it to be a sequel to his 2019 horror sci-fi video game, Death Stranding. But given players’ frustrations with the first game, could Death Stranding 2 deliver on fans’ requests and expectations?
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Death Stranding is an open-world action game developed by Kojima Productions (who helped develop Silent Hill and the Metal Gear Solid series) and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Released in 2019, it was the first game directed by Hideo Kojima after separating from Konami. In 2021 a director’s cut version was later released for the PlayStation 5.
The game follows the main character Sam Porter Bridges (voiced by actor Norman Reedus who plays Daryl Dixon in The Walking Dead), a courier who suffers from DOOMS and is a repatriate. He is tasked with delivering supplies to the many isolated colonies across what once was the USA and reconnecting them through a wireless communications network.
Despite fans complaining about certain gameplay elements and the storyline, Death Stranding received heavy praise for its brilliant soundtrack, incredible visuals and voice acting. The game has done so well that major plans for developing a second game seem to already be in motion.
But before we look at Death Stranding 2, let’s look back at the first game.
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The Story So Far
In Death Stranding, we start with Sam, in the process of delivering cargo, having to briefly take refuge from Timefall and BTs before continuing his journey to Central Knot City. When he arrives after some assistance, he is assigned to join a team on their way to incinerate the body of a suicide victim because he is a repatriate and has DOOMS. Unfortunately, an encounter with a BT leads to a voidout (explosion) that destroys Central Knot City.
Sam revives and finds himself in Capital Knot City, where he meets Deadman (voiced by Guillermo del Toro), a doctor who has him deliver morphine to a dying Bridget Strand, his adoptive mother and the president of BRIDGES who begs him to return to BRIDGES and help assist their mission to reform America. Unfortunately, she dies, and he takes her body to be incinerated but refuses to do the same to the Bridge Baby, BB-28. Instead, he takes her on as his own and nicknames her Lou, the two quickly forming a bond.
He returns to Capital Knot City and finds a message waiting for him from his sister Amelia, who tells him that she’d been captured by a group of terrorists known as the Homo Demens after almost three years of trying to connect the different isolated cities and was being used to ensure Edge Knot City’s independence. She asks him to complete her mission and rescue her so she can take her place as president of the UCA (United Cities of America).
After reluctantly accepting the mission, Sam begins his journey across America following the instructions of Die-Hardman (voiced by Tommie Earl Jenkins), the Director of BRIDGES and his late mother’s personal aide. While on a mission to deliver cargo connect the various cities and settlements, he helps with the research done on the Death Standing (the catastrophic event that led to the ultimate destruction of America) by the characters Mama (the only person “alive” who has a BT baby connected to them), her twin sister Lockne (voiced by Sarah Margaret Qualley) and Heartman (voiced by Nicolas Winding Refn).
When connected with Lou, Sam experiences memories in which he sees Clifford Unger (voiced by Mads Mikkelsen) and is often pulled into his Beach, where he is forced to fight a BT version of Clifford, who is desperately looking for his unborn baby.
As he continues his journey, he encounters Higgs Monaghan (voiced by Troy Baker), the leader of the Homo Demens, who reveals to him that Amelia is an Extinction Entity (a being whose very existence will eventually trigger an extinction level event), and spends a lot of time thwarting their plans.
He eventually learns that Amelia was the soul of Bridget that had been separated from her body and allowed to work apart from it during early experiments and explorations of Beaches. Amelia turns out to be the true leader of the Homo Demens and had created the Chiral Network (the system being used to link all the cities and settlements together to establish communication and data transfer between them) so she could set off the Last Standing.
Sam manages to get to Amelia and convinces her to delay the Last Standing before he returns to the living through the help of his allies.
Unfortunately, before Sam can appreciate his victory, he learns that Lou is dying. In an effort to save her, he removes Lou from the pod and once again connects with her, discovering that the memories he’s been viewing are actually his own and that Clifford had been his father and the two of them had both been killed. Amelia had revived Sam (giving him his repatriate abilities) and triggered the Death Stranding.
Lou’s life is saved thanks to the spirits of deceased BBs, and Sam decides to go off the grid to live a relatively peaceful life and raise Lou without disturbance.
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What Fans Disliked
The Balance Mechanics
Throughout the game, Sam is running around delivering supplies all over the former USA. Unlike many games, where the inventory doesn’t really affect the main character, Death Stranding’s inventory directly affects Sam’s balance and movements. Players are not only forced to find a way to balance all of Sam’s deliveries so that they stay safe but they are also challenged with keeping him upright as he journeys across the extensive worlds.
It is particularly frustrating for players. Many were relieved when Sam was finally given a vehicle, as it made his deliveries significantly easier (though there were several moments where the terrain made it impossible to use those vehicles, so it was back to square one).
The Mules
Sam encounters a couple of enemies along his journey, and the Mules, in particular, are a bit confusing. When Sam gets more popular as a courier, he starts to get ambushed by enemies that are intent on stealing his packages so that they can deliver them themselves.
They are described as having “porter syndrome” after having been replaced by automation. Unfortunately, several players didn’t understand their point besides making Sam’s journey a bit more complicated than it needed to be.
Sneaking Passed the Beached Things
While players found that the BTs were a cool concept and had the added effect of bringing an extra creepy element to the game, they started to become incredibly frustrating the further you went into the game.
When you encounter the BTs for the first time, they are established as ominous and terrifying presences that could very easily destroy the world if you’re not careful; that led a lot of people to live in isolation so that they would be safe, so sneaking past them is stressful. At first. They quickly become tedious to walk through and do nothing but significantly slow down an already slow game.
They start to get a little more fun when Sam finally gets his hands on some weaponry, but for a lot of the game, they’re just going to be a nuisance.
The Overwhelming Amount of Fetch Quests
Many gamers are familiar with fetch quests: meet a character, get sent on a mission to find something for them, return with that, and receive an award. Unfortunately, they’re usually side missions that are occasionally used as lore dumps and are not very well-liked in the gaming community, given that many of them are not particularly interesting.
Kojima took that concept and ran with it, making the entire game a long series of fetch quests that had players running around doing endless tasks for the majority of the game just to earn likes so that they could carry more supplies (and then have to deal with the balance mechanics).
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Everything We Know About Death Stranding 2
Leaks
Discoveries By Gamers
In September, a private document was leaked. This leaked document appeared to be a list of upcoming PlayStation titles. Included in the list was a game that Kojima Productions was said to be working on called Ocean. ResetEra user Dusk Golem (a well-known and trusted leaker with a history of horror-related game leaks) very quickly deduced that Ocean was a codename for Death Stranding 2.
When it was later reported that Kojima would be working on an Xbox Exclusive game, a couple of players started to wonder if the creator would be developing the Death Standing sequel with Xbox rather than Sony (and a few thought that it would be developed for the Google Stadia), but Dusk Golem was quick to put those rumours to rest:
“The deal with Xbox was never meant to be Death Stranding 2, this rumor is just false, Sony and Kojima Productions have a multi-game contract that expires after Death Stranding 2 and at present it being decided by both parties whether to continue their relationship or end it after Death Stranding 2.”
Players were also reminded that Death Stranding is a uniquely Sony project, and the chance of them letting Kojima develop a sequel for Xbox is highly unlikely.
Revealed By Participants in the Project
Besides the unintentional leaks, there have been a few hints about Death Stranding 2 dropped by Reedus and even Kojima himself (though fans suspect that Kojima orchestrated even the leaks revealed by Reedus).
In an interview with Leo Edit, unrelated to the game, Reedus spoke about how they leapt into working on a second game after seeing how well the first game had done. Later Kojima responded on Twitter, jokingly telling Reedus to go to his Private Room, in reference to the safe room from the first game.
Further hints for a future game became more frequent, and fans have gotten progressively more excited over the not-quite reveals.
In September, an image accompanied by the Kojima Productions logo began floating around the internet around the time of the Tokyo Game Show. The image was a silhouette of a woman’s face along with the words “Who Am I?”. The face was later confirmed as actress Elle Fanning.
Following that, in October, a QR code was spotted during the PAX Australia gaming event and led to a poster that Kojima Productions hosted. This poster once against features Fanning’s face which was accompanied by the phrases “Where Am I?” and “A Hideo Kojima Game X Elle Fanning.”
Both these “leaks” were followed by a tweet from Kojima in which he posted both images along with a cryptic puzzle that suggested there would be another image soon that would follow the same patterns and ask another cryptic question. Several fans believe that the third image will be revealed at the next major gaming event: The Game Awards, which are being hosted by Geoff Keighly this year. It is suspected that this is where the most information about the new game will be revealed.
The fire was further fuelled when Kojima posted pictures of himself with several people related to his upcoming project, including executives of PlayStation’s marketing department (Eric Lempel and Craig Malanka) and the Head of PlayStation (Herman Hulst). He also posted a picture of himself in a video call with Elle Fanning (some fans noticed that Geoff Keighley was also in the call). In the last two images, he was wearing a shirt depicting the baby doll that appears in Death Standing. This was followed by a final image of him with Sony Interactive Entertainment’s CEO, Jim Ryan.
Most recently, on Kojima’s quest of vaguely posting about his upcoming projects, he tweeted an image of a logo that vaguely represents an umbrella (which fans believe to be a reference to Fragile and the Fragile Express delivery company from the game) along with the words “From ‘WHERE’ to ‘HOW’”. This was followed by an image on the Kojima Productions site with the phrase “How Come?” that fades to reveal the face of Shiori Kutsuna, the actress many will recognise as Yukio from Deadpool 2. Across her face is the phrase “Where Am I?”.
Fans are more convinced than ever that this is all publicity for the upcoming game, Death Stranding 2.
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Rumours
Elle Fanning’s Role
The inclusion of Fanning and the emphasis Kojima is putting on her have fans speculating about the role she could be taking on. Several think that she might end up playing an adult version of Lou in Death Stranding 2. However, given how much she is included in the vague promotional posters of the project, it is more than likely that whatever character she plays will be central to the story.
What Players Can Assume From the Director’s Cut
If the Director’s Cut of the first game is anything for players to go on, Death Stranding 2 will be a little more fast-paced and action-packed than the original game (something I think many players will appreciate). As a result, players may get to do more than spend numerous hours playing through monotonous tasks and an endless open world.
Death Stranding 2 may also utilise the features of the Dual Sense controller, including adaptive triggers and haptic feedback.
The implication of the Codename
A few players suspect that the codename Ocean is more relevant to the game than might have previously been thought. For example, it could be in reference to a new terrain that players may have to deal with on their journey (you may have to prepare yourself for a lot more swimming).
What Fans Want to See In Death Stranding 2
1. More Multiplayer Input
In Death Stranding, there is no set multiplayer mode. Instead, players can build structures or leave behind items that will be generated in other players’ worlds either as a helpful way to progress or as a way to cause confusion (such as ladders that go nowhere). The elements give an added level of interest to the game and allow players to interact with each other differently, further emphasising the game’s theme of reconnecting.
It would be cool to see this mechanic further developed in a way that will allow players to interact with each other even more in Death Stranding 2.
2. Space Exploration
Given that Earth is on the brink of another extinction-level event (though it has been delayed for the time being), it may be time for the remaining humans to find a new home, and space feels like the natural next step.
Players have already seen Death Stranding playing with the idea of travelling to space. Not only has the Ludens mascot of Kojima Production been treated as an astronaut by multiple characters in-game, but a number of them have mentioned something about their dreams to one day explore different planets.
This would be the perfect excuse for the team at Kojima Productions to take creative liberties and create an even more interesting-looking world than the one they designed in the first game. It’d be cool to see what the company can do outside of the limitation of Earth.
The supernatural elements and ideas for death they created for Death Stranding already have an otherworld feel, so creating a whole new world wouldn’t be too difficult for them.
3. Better Threats
While the enemies that the protagonist Sam Porter Bridge faced throughout the game were interesting, as the story progressed, they became less and less of a challenge and, at some points, more of a nuisance than a threat.
Going forward, Kojima Productions has the opportunity to create an enemy that will give players more of a challenge in Death Stranding 2. Bringing in more action and fighting will make the overall game significantly more enjoyable and has the potential to include a couple of new elements into the story.
4. More to do at Different Locations
The world of Death Stranding is wide open, and there isn’t much to do while you walk to different delivery locations. Putting more into the world for players to do will vastly improve gameplay.
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Expected Release Date
As things currently stand, there has yet to be an official announcement date for Death Stranding 2, though it has been three years since the original was released. While Kojima has been almost open about the potential sequel, any news of a release date has been kept very quiet.
Fans expect to hear more about the second instalment of the game in mid-late 2024.
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