Kojima Productions revealed another trailer for its Death Stranding sequel, Death Stranding 2 On The Beach, during the January 31 Playstation State of Play. Kojima Productions’ founder—video game auteur and nascent watchmaker Hideo Kojima—first debuted the sequel at last year’s Game Awards.
In the new trailer, we see characters from the past game exploring a large, new ship. Once again we see Sam (played by The Walking Dead’s steely-eyed Norman Reedus) helping to reconnect people together. And this time he has a weird little talking puppet…guy? Who is animated in stop-motion style? I don’t know. I’m just excited to deliver more packages again.
“Humanity is still in danger. Still on the brink of extinction,” says Fragile from the first game. Things aren’t going well for the planet it seems. And now Sam is working with a new group that helps people outside of the United Cities of America (UCA). This new group is called Drawbridge.
Death Stranding 2 continues Sam’s story with Last of Us voice actor Troy Baker reprising his role as antagonist Higgs Monaghan, alongside newcomer to the series, The Great’s Elle Fanning. Higgs is back from death to get revenge on those who killed him. And he looks like he’s in a Kiss cover band, too. Which is fun. This is all very fun.
Players spent hours staring at protagonist Sam and his hunched back, weighed down by heavy packages, in the original Death Stranding, but that doesn’t make it an easy-to-summarize commentary on the gig economy. Kojima’s 2019 open-world action game—his first release after 2015’s Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, and Kojima Productions’ first title ever—was a cargo-laden epic that Harper Jay, in a Kotaku review, said “is breathtaking in scope, consistently intelligent in design, and beautiful to behold.”
“Death Stranding is set in an alternate future where a cataclysmic event called the Death Stranding has devastated most of the world,” Harper wrote. “The world has been fractured into a few remaining cities and pioneer outposts. Connecting them are delivery services, staffed by porters who brave the expansive waste and sneak through [enemy-infested] territory to bring essential supplies to the disjointed smattering of humanity that remains.”
Sam is one of those essential couriers, spending the majority of the game traversing snow and difficult mountains, getting caught in a political hellscape along the way.
Death Stranding 2 On The Beach launches on PS5 sometime in 2025.
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