Kojima Productions recently invited a handful of games writers to Tokyo to play Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, and reading through the impressions, this sounds like a real glow-up for the fledgling franchise.
The game takes place in both Mexico and Australia, with the Chiral Network protagonist Sam helped create in the original game now taken over by the Automated Porter Assistant System. Effectively, the character’s job has been replaced by AI. Topical!
Some big features of the new environments include a greater emphasis on weather, with rain leading to floods and heavy winds blowing you off course. You’ll need to use fresh technology to help with your delivery missions, with everything from your backpack to vehicles being customisable.
Many sites, like Eurogamer.net, are describing this as a Metal Gear Solid to Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of the Liberty-style upgrade; the foundations that were established in the first game have been dramatically expanded upon here.
Combat sounds like it’s been completely redesigned, and it’s channelling Kojima’s past Tactical Espionage Action adventures in all the right ways. Gunplay, against both humans and the nightmarish BT monsters, is much more rewarding, and there are greater opportunities for stealth and new approaches. It sounds like there are even camps to clear out in the open world, much like in Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain.
And the element of online connectivity remains: once again you’ll need to use your resources to install infrastructure around the world, which will earn you social media-style “likes” from other players. This time, in addition to ladders and bridges, you’ll be able to create entire monorail systems and more. But central to the game is the question: should we have connected?
One other detail worth mentioning is that the previews were played on a base PS5 console, in performance mode. We haven’t read or seen any criticism of the performance, so it sounds like this is going to be a rock-solid 60fps experience – and presumably one that looks and plays even better on the PS5 Pro.
For reference, you can read some of the previews through here if you’d like more information:
To co-opt a phrase from the kids these days, it certainly sounds like Kojima has cooked here. Clearly this is still Death Stranding, but the Metal Gear Solid-style combat and overall refinement to the gameplay should help make this yet another masterpiece from the legendary video game maverick. Oh, and it looks incredible, too.
- Related Games
- See Also
As the Editor of Push Square, Sammy has over 15 years of experience analysing the world of PlayStation, from PS3 through PS5 and everything in between. He’s an expert on PS Studios and industry matters, as well as sports games and simulators. He also enjoys RPGs when he has the time to dedicate to them, and is a bit of a gacha whale.