Death Stranding 2 Review – Beach Walkabout
“If everyone likes [your work], it means it’s mainstream. It means it’s conventional. It means it’s already pre-digested for people to like it. I don’t want that. I want people to end up liking things they didn’t like when they first encountered it, because that’s where you really end up loving something.” – Hideo Kojima
Death Stranding 2 comes from developer Kojima Productions, headed by namesake auteur-ish writer/director Hideo Kojima, an artist who isn’t shy about wearing his influences on his sleeves. Drawing from the work of many other filmmakers, musicians and more, this latest entry in an already extensive oeuvre once again meditates on many of his preoccupations and obsessions – existence itself, the role of communication and connection in humanity’s current and future predicaments, government interference, birth, death, hope, finding purpose, grief – the litany of topics Death Stranding 2 touches upon in both profound and passing manner across more than 40 hours of runtime is admirable, never mind a gameplay experience that feels more cohesive and guided than its predecessor.
Death Stranding 2 picks up shortly after the end of the first game as the aptly named Sam Porter Bridges and his adopted daughter Lou, formerly known as BB-28, have taken up residence near the Mexican border. Having successfully reconnected the USA via the Chiral Network, Sam abandons the newly formed ‘United Cities of America’ to devote himself fulltime to raising Lou. Not quite following, or would like some more details around BB’s, the UCA, and the Chiral Network? Kojima Productions have your back and placed a near-compulsory Recap of Death Stranding’s events and character overviews located in the DS2 main menu for those who either didn’t finish (roughly 78% of players according to Trophy data) or never picked Death Stranding up in the first place. I fall into the former category and upon rolling credits, found in myself the urge to venture back, such was my experience with Death Stranding 2. However, this impulse was quashed after refreshing myself on our coverage of the first game for some context; it would appear that Kojima himself also surmised that yes, there were a few things that needed to be ironed out for a Death Stranding sequel to be successful. I do wonder if I’m more receptive to Death Stranding 2 having forgone the first, as I suspect the gulf between the holistic experience of both would suffer for familiarity breeding contempt, compounded by pining for the sequel’s improvements.
For some disclosure, my experience of Death Stranding 2 was unique for the circumstances; homebound for four weeks following my fourth back surgery in under a decade – with a planned Kumano Kodo trip in the coming months following some rehab and training – taking on the role of Sam Porter Bridges as a man capable of carrying large backpacks across treacherously beautiful terrain was an oddly satisfying power fantasy, servicing humanity and fighting off mechs, BT’s and bandits across parts of Mexico and the entirety of Australia just icing on the proverbial cake. Make no mistake, while aspects of Death Stranding 2 can feel repetitive, almost every system in the game received improvements to the point that it more successfully embodies a permissive sandbox game, a player’s approach to dealing with the many missions required to see the story through fairly open. The early hours are the most restrictive, with Sam lacking both equipment and context, the game tutorialising many of the new and returning systems in a way that feels much less heavy-handed and overwhelming than the first but may still grate for those coming fresh off the back of its Remastered Director’s Cut. Broadly speaking, everything in Death Stranding 2 requires traversal of some sort, but more often than not engaging in combat or cutting a course over the most difficult path imaginable to avoid it are left up to player preference. It’s equally viable to load up a vehicle with your cargo and a few battery upgrades before plotting the safest possible route or instead strap an array of equipment to Sam and head directly over a Mountain on foot, Shotgun in hand for any conflict that might arise. Some missions will dictate player approach, requiring an amount of cargo well beyond Sam’s manual carrying capacity or forcing combat encounters, but player skill and equipment access also figure heavily into what will best resolve each Order.
Leaning into a particular playstyle improves Sam’s respective stats such as Endurance, which is boosted when pushing through rivers and tough slopes on foot, while holding Sam’s breath during stealth will increase his lung capacity over time. Weapons skills can also be upgraded by using one of the six major types, increasing reload speed and reducing reticle sway and recoil for firearms or the power and number of melee attacks Sam can dish out. The new APAS Enhancement system works in tandem with this to function like a skill tree for Sam, giving passive upgrades to equipment and weapons that can increase or change functionality, like warning Sam when a melee attack is coming from behind or doubling the distance that Sam’s Odradek scanner can reach. Players can enable and disable these functions at will, but each requires a set amount of Memory which increases as Sam completes Orders and raises his Star Rating with Shelters. Finally, the Porter Grade system rates the actions Sam takes during an order across five categories; Porter, Combat, Stealth, Servicemanship and Bridge Link. By engaging with the many systems on offer it’s possible to build this evenly, but in my case I tended to split evenly between Combat and Stealth, left Bridge Link lagging as I pushed to complete the story for review and spent a lot of time in vehicles which meant the Porter aspect was somewhat diminished in its assessment of me. With these refined and new systems, it’s apparent the team at Kojima Productions recognised the traversal of Death Stranding as simultaneously its most distinctive and aggravating feature, slowing to a snail’s pace often and eventually mitigated by a number of additions in the Director’s Cut, many of which carry over to Death Stranding 2 and are pushed even further in service of cutting down travel time. While the trucks of the first game are gone, the new Pickup Off-Roader vehicle proves itself to be hugely adaptable provided the driver isn’t a total nonce who gets it wedged between rocky outcroppings or stuck in a river.
Optional VR missions (shocker!) get players up to speed on both Combat and Stealth mechanics and were a welcome inclusion given I hadn’t been hands-on with Sam Porter Bridges in six years. For someone that greatly disliked the combat and stealth in Death Stranding, especially against BT’s, I found the revamped and polished combat of the sequel far more my speed. Being able to pivot from a clumsy stealth alert to firing off a Grenade Launcher willy-nilly might run counter to some of the underlying themes of the game but it goes a long way toward making the gameplay experience enjoyable and in turn usually gun-shy players like myself far more likely to cut through a bandit encampment when planning a route than try and go the long way around. It’s one of the areas Kojima clearly took some feedback on board given the negative feedback loop it could create in the first game – avoiding combat often makes the traversal take far longer and become tedious, a vicious cycle of tedium that evaporates once one half of that equation is now less of a slog than actually slogging across a mountain.
Sam Porter Bridges is no stranger to the gig economy entrenched in Death Stranding 2, making me wonder if he’s running around with a giant ‘Will porter for exposure’ sign around his neck. Sam’s overarching task is to connect all of Australia to the Chiral Network – think of the internet if it used some ‘timey-wimey’ loophole by running everything through purgatory to make data transfer instantaneous, where even a YouTube video loads at the same speed and resolution the ads do. Thanks to incredible advances in both data transfer and 3D printing technology, money has been eliminated and schmucks like Sam get paid in Likes, a pseudo-form of currency which dictate the upgrades and equipment unlocked at each major Shelter or smaller Prepper site dotting the landscape. Prepper sites tend to be off the beaten path and feature many interesting cameos which further reveal Kojima’s tastes in film, music and popular culture at large. I found the few I recognised exciting thanks to the level of detail in the facial capture and the often interesting writing, while others led to a quick Google search and a shrug. Each Shelter focuses on a particular piece of equipment or playstyle, and delivering Main Order cargo or lost packages scattered across the land back to their rightful owner will increase Sam’s Star Rating with them that in turn unlocks further tiers of their equipment type. It’s possible to offload some of this to other players, which significantly decreases the number of Likes received. Creating equipment, vehicles and roads costs a significant amount of resources; metals, chemicals, ceramics and other resources can be recycled from items or equipment found in bandit encampments and out in the wilderness, while each Shelter will also provide Sam with some of each resource based on his Star Rating. The resources required for building roads and other infrastructure is such that unless it becomes the sole focus of play for a number of hours, most players will instead get to experience these conveniences through a joint effort with other Porters playing online, each chipping in some of the requirements to get the job done. This ‘together alone’ co-operation translates some of the themes into gameplay terms and lifts the experience when it fires on all cylinders.
Playing smarter and not harder when taking on Orders keeps the runtime and engagement level of players to acceptable standards, because it’s possible to make things incredibly difficult when failing to properly prepare for the situations which appear on any given route. The new Day/Night cycle has a significant impact on Sam, stumbling around in the dark a trip hazard in every sense of the phrase while vehicle headlights will drain batteries quicker than an Atari Lynx. The trade-off is that stealth at night is far more effective, as well as upping the spooky factor in BT infested areas. Taking on multiple orders at a time is usually worthwhile if a route happens to pass close to a few locations, while other times it felt better to make a straight shot for the next story beat. Something that will no doubt offset traversal difficulties following wider release will be the online integration, which was switched off in the latter parts of the review period and had a marked effect on the in-game world during my first twenty or so hours as myself and other players built roads, bridges, charging stations and generally tamed the rougher stretches of terrain. Without any raw data and winging it on vibes alone, the pacing of upgrades and their linked Locations felt very tuned, the ratcheting tension of Sam’s situation manageable with the help of those he’s formed bonds with. And boy howdy, does Sam have a lot of celebrity friends on his side. Guillermo del Toro, Elle Fanning, George Miller, Troy Baker, Lea Seydoux and many other new and familiar faces help elevate the stodgier material here, Norman Reedus going a long way to making Sam a character the audience can empathise with. Stealing most scenes he’s in however is Jonathan Roumie, knocking it out of the park with his performance as Dollman and taking what could have simply been an expository device masquerading as a character and imbuing it with warmth and levity.
Even after 40 hours and despite embargo restrictions, I don’t really feel confident in discussing swathes of Death Stranding 2’s story beats and overarching plot, not only for fear of spoilers in a game where the primary driver is often narrative in nature, but also as with many Kojima joints, it has me questioning my own intelligence – is the game smart? Am I an idiot? Vice versa? Porque no los dos? With a background in film studies, I can easily identify numerous sources of inspiration, from Roeg’s affecting yet technically un-Australian Walkabout (1971) and Death Stranding 2 supporting star George Miller’s own Mad Max series to 1957 novel On the Beach and its subsequent film adaptation – like Garth Marenghi, Hideo Kojima thinks subtext is for cowards. As a director, he frequently uses imitation as a sincere form of flattery, but I wonder if some homage herein isn’t more surface level instead of holding any deeper meaning. If I had to crystalise Death Stranding 2 down to its most important theme though, it would be hope – for good or ill, well-placed or misguided. For a post-post-disaster dystopian setting it sure has a pleasant feel most of the time, at least when it isn’t raining Time and spooky umbilical ghosts aren’t turning the ground into tar and you into a human explosive device.
A heavily curated and collaborative soundtrack from WOODKID and Ludwig Forssell does a lot of heavy lifting in setting mood and tone, featuring both licensed and original tracks from the aforementioned pair alongside Low Roar, CHVRCHES, Hania Rain, Gen Hoshino, Silent Poets and many more. Much like Quentin Tarantino likes to write scenes to music, it’s easy to imagine Kojima and his team tweaking each lower-third title music credit fade-in as players approach or return to a key location, swivelling and craning the camera at just the right angles to convey their intended emotion. Many of Low Roar’s included tracks feel especially poignant given frontman Ryan Karazija’s tragic passing in 2022, with the posthumous track Field of Dreams’ lyrics taking on new meaning in the wake of his absence. Kojima’s focus on music as a means of reinforcing theme remains a strength, executed with more technical skill than previously and the included music player saw regular use as a result during my treks across deserts and snow-blasted mountains
Running on the Decima engine, Death Stranding 2 is visually arresting, a postcard-perfect mishmash of Australian landscapes that become even more breathtaking when the sun dips below the horizon. The layout of Australia itself is substantially more abstracted than the map would have you believe, a rough approximation with one particular section that seems to heavily overrepresent certain weather conditions for both gameplay and dramatic effect. With both floods and bushfires appearing in-game though, there is a clear affection for the rugged landscape of the interior, recalling the visual qualities of Walkabout and its portrayal of the Outback as both beautiful and isolating. Watching the landscape slowly transform via the combined efforts of many Porters online is joyful in gameplay terms and yet an indictment on the cost of convenience for the environment, here a concern for Kojima expressed via the inclusion of a dedicated Animal Shelter location to which players can capture and conserve different species. Offering the now-standard Performance and Quality modes, playing on a screen with VRR enabled I didn’t find the boost in framerate worth the visual trade-off in Performance mode. This might be a different story for those wanting to turn Sam into a guns-blazing action hero, but the staid pace of much of the game, trekking across treacherous undulating landscapes in search of the next Shelter, seems to better align with the increased visual fidelity.
Kojima’s lament at the top of this piece, the idea that organic discovery and having to strip back and interrogate initially negative responses to deeply appreciate something rings true to me in some ways, not to say that there’s any shame in falling head over heels at first blush. I really didn’t gel with the first Death Stranding for a multitude of reasons and alongside the apparent majority of PlayStation players, abandoned it a handful of hours in. Outside of refusing the review, I didn’t have the same choice available to me with Death Stranding 2 and subsequently found things to enjoy about it. Perhaps we’re spoilt for choice, but somewhere deep inside I feel that the proliferation of content, product, whatever term we like to use – the sheer overabundance of stuff with which to fire off our dopamine receptors at will and cast aside anything that doesn’t immediately warm us to it is troubling. We have more choice than ever, but rarely do I feel connected to media the way I did in the past, when circumstance forced me to dig deeper and interrogate my negativity and bias and sometimes just plain old ‘suck it up’ when my game shelf received additions only once or twice a year. Real ‘Old Man Yells at Clouds’ energy, and perhaps that’s all Kojima and myself are at this stage.
Sure, engaging with challenging media instead of outright dismissing it can lead to a deeper love of something, but it can also veer into ‘the juice not being worth the squeeze’ at best and Stockholm Syndrome at worst. This process is easier in practice with other forms of art – music, film, visual arts, all are digestible in relatively short time frames and falling in love with a deep-cut you used to skip is a universal experience for music fans everywhere, but Death Stranding 2 is not a four-minute B-side on a 40 minute album. It’s a sprawling, multi-faceted epic by a creator struggling against ego, the requirements and restrictions of the medium & the inherent flaws in the structure of AAA games which need to provide progression across lengthy periods of time, unforgiving of real-world schedules and lapses in memory. All clear indicators as to why most developers are lucky if more than 20% of their players see the credits in-game as opposed to a streaming platform. If true love is accepting flaws, then I suppose I loved Death Stranding 2, it’s foibles and peccadillos apparent but of no real consequence during my time with it. A few days out from full release, I still haven’t quite digested everything Kojima and the many, many other people that worked on Death Stranding 2 are trying to say, and maybe I never will. Hope abounds however, both in myself and in Hideo Kojima.
Death Stranding 2 was completed on a PS5 using code kindly supplied by the publisher.
