Death Stranding 2: All the latest news about Hideo Kojima’s next game

In 2019, Hideo Kojima – the creator of Metal Gear Solid and perhaps Hollywood’s most popular game designer – released his first game as head of his own independent studio after splitting from Konami. Depending on who you asked at the time, Death Stranding was either a visionary work or completely incomprehensible – or both. It is, however, an unforgettable experience, and subsequent editions have converted their fair share of skeptics.

Now Kojima returns with Death Stranding 2: On the Beach (yes, it really is called that). Like its predecessor, it combines unique wandering gameplay with explanatory cutscenes, Yoji Shinkawa’s striking character designs, and a deeply strange sci-fi plot about building bonds between people in a lonely, hostile world where the veil between life and death has been torn.

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

what is Death Stranding 2Release date of?

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is set to release on PlayStation 5 in 2025. That’s the exact date we have at the moment. When it will fall within this year is anyone’s guess, and it might also depend on the final release date for . Grand Theft Auto 6which will likely prompt other game makers to move as far away from it as possible – perhaps even until 2026, although Sony will be keen to avoid delays to PlayStation exclusives after a quiet 2024. If it’s any indication, the original game should be released on November 8, 2019.

Death Stranding 2 is just one of the reasons why next year will be so packed with big games, even if there are currently few firm release dates for 2025.

Is Death Stranding 2 a PS5 exclusive?

At least for the beginning, yes – but a later PC version is almost certain. 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 the release for the PlayStation 5 has been confirmed.

However, Death Stranding was later released on PC, courtesy of publisher 505 Games. It would be surprising if the same didn’t happen for the sequel – either via an independent publisher like 505 or indeed Sony itself, which recently released its biggest first-party exclusives on PC after being exclusive to the console for a while.

Image: Kojima Productions/PlayStation Studios

Why is it called At the beach?

Oh boy. Right. In the game’s world, an apocalyptic event called “Death Stranding” has caused strange creatures called “Beached Things” (BTs) to roam the Earth. These ghostly monsters are created from the dead, and when they consume a living human, they cause a devastating explosion. BTs are said to originate from the Strand, a strange dimension that is a sort of afterlife or purgatory. There’s a lot more to this, but those are the basics.

Why is this metaphysical realm called a beach? Good question. Maybe because it is a transitional space between two different states: land and sea, life and death. Also… it looks like a beach.

Who is in the cast?

The main actors for Death Stranding 2 features three returning stars and two new faces.

• Norman Reedus returns as main character Sam Porter Bridges
• Lea Seydoux is back as Sam’s colleague Fragile
• Troy Baker takes on the role of Higgs, the antagonist from the first game
• Elle Fanning plays an unnamed new character who seems to have some kind of connection to the beach
• Shioli Kutsuna plays an unnamed role that is not yet seen in the trailers

It also wouldn’t be a Death Stranding game without cameos from some of Kojima’s favorite directors; the first game featured fairly significant roles for Guillermo del Toro and Nicolas Winding Refn.

This time the creator of Mad Max George Miller will appear as a nameless Drawbridge agent, and Turkish-German director Fatih Akin (The Edge of Heaven, Out of nowhere) appears as a living puppet. But in both cases it is only the scanned image of the director; the motion capture and vocal parts are by Marty Rhone And Jonathan Roumierespectively.

What’s the matter?

Kojima Productions has actually revealed quite a lot about Death Stranding 2: On the Beach over two long trailers full of cutscenes – but as is often the case with a Hideo Kojima game, the more you take in, the less you feel like you understand it. That’s part of the fun!

The game’s first teaser trailer shows Fragile caring for a baby. This is Lou, the BB (Bridge Baby) that Sam freed from her sarcophagus-like pod and revived at the end of the first game. There’s then a new scene where Sam and Lou are attacked in their bunker and escape, but Lou is killed and resurfaces as a BT (Beached Thing) version of herself in her old pod.

In the second trailer, we see this BT version of Lou accompanying Sam on his adventure as BB again. The trailer describes the general setting of the game, which apparently takes place several years after the events of the original. The chiral network that Sam encounters in Death Stranding works and no human carriers are needed to connect the UCA (formerly America), and Sam’s former colleagues at Bridges 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 the 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 can apparently travel through the black tar that BTs emerge from.

Higgs, the antagonist from the original game, is also back. Although he was left on the beach at the end of the first game, he is alive – more or less. He is carried around in a red coffin by a team of robots. 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 makes no sense, but is simultaneously ridiculous and absurdly cool in classic Kojima fashion.

Back on board the DHV Magellan, Fragile wears a mask that looks like a pair of blue hands and – accompanied by a figure resembling film director George Miller and dressed a bit like a Nazi – rescues a nameless character, played by Elle Fanning, from another sarcophagus-like object filled with the black tar.

Besides Lou, Sam is accompanied on his travels by the Living Doll, who actually seems to be a talking wooden doll animated in stop motion style. This extremely strange character is not really explained in the trailer.

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

Image: Kojima Productions/PlayStation Studios

What do we know about the gameplay so far?

The trailers contain fewer details about the gameplay compared to the plot, but what we see looks pretty familiar. It seems like Kojima Productions is fairly cautiously repeating the hiking, load-carrying, and open-world exploration of the first game. Given the game’s uniqueness, that’s not a bad thing.

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