Image: PlayStation
From stop-motion puppets to glam-rock villains, Death Stranding 2 has it all.
Hideo Kojima dropped a new trailer for the upcoming Death Stranding sequel today at PlayStation’s State of Play showcase, revealing the game’s title in full: Death Stranding 2: On the Beach. The sequel will focus on connecting the entire world instead of America alone, and also feature the inexplicable return of big bad Higgs, who now wields a rock guitar as a weapon. That’s one of the least weird things about this trailer, too!
Here’s the trailer:
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach gameplay details revealed
Kojima Productions’ Death Stranding tasked the player with reconnecting various parts of America after a doomsday event caused the emergence of dangerous creatures called Beached Things. Death Stranding 2 seems to follow the same gameplay format as its predecessor for the most part. You’ll be building structures, like roads and bridges, and making cargo deliveries as you connect various regions to an online network. This time, however, you’ll be doing it all around the world.
The trailer teases that Sam Porter Bridges, a porter played by Norman Reedus who also builds bridges, will now operate out of a ship armed with various facilities to help him on his journey. Most of the cast of the previous game will return, including Fragile (Lea Seydoux) and the villainous Higgs (Troy Baker). Joining the cast are actors Elle Fanning and Shioli Kutsuna. Another new character aboard the ship sports the face model of Mad Max: Fury Road director George Miller - though he will be played by a different actor.
There’s a lot of weirdness going on in this trailer. Higgs reveals himself to Sam, only for a possibly mechanised Samurai-like version of Lou to fight Higgs with a katana. Not to be outdone, Higgs uses his rock guitar as a weapon, firing off lighting bolts with every chord strummed. Metallica would be jealous indeed. There's also a living stop-motion animated puppet - I say stop-motion, because he's animated at a lower framerate than everyone else - strapped to Sam's side much like Kratos' decapitated pal Mimir.
Very weird! But also very Kojima, who lives to make the most out-there games possible by pushing norms in both story and gameplay. Whether that works for you will largely depend on your enjoyment of the first Death Stranding, though this sequel seems to be telling its own story. The original game is also getting a movie adaptation, while Kojima is working on a horror game to Xbox consoles called OD. As if three ongoing projects aren't enough, Kojima Productions also announced today that it currently has a new action espionage game called Physint in development for PlayStation.
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is set to launch sometime in 2025 on PlayStation consoles.