In 2019, Hideo Kojima — Metal Gear Solid creator and perhaps Hollywood’s favorite game auteur — released his first game as head of his own independent studio after parting ways with Konami. Depending on who you asked at the time, Dead Stranding was either a visionary work or utterly incomprehensible—or both. It is, however, an unforgettable experience, and later editions have converted their fair share of skeptics.
Now Kojima is ready to return with Death Stranding 2: On the Beach (yes, that’s really what it’s called). Like its predecessor, it combines unique walking gameplay with exposition-heavy cutscenes, Yoji Shinkawa’s striking character designs, and a deeply strange sci-fi plot about building connections between people in a lonely, hostile world where the veil between life and death has been torn down.
Read on for everything we currently know about Death Stranding 2.
What’s Death Stranding 2release date of?
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach will be released in 2025 on PlayStation 5. That’s the date we have right now. Where in the year it will fall is anyone’s guess, and it could very well depend on the final release date for Grand Theft Auto 6which will likely cause other game publishers to scramble to get as far away from it as possible – perhaps even until 2026, though Sony will be keen to avoid delays to PlayStation exclusives after a quiet year in 2024. If it’s any indication, the original game had a release date of November 8, 2019.
Death Stranding 2 is just one reason why next year is shaping up to be such a busy year for big games, even though 2025 release dates are still scarce.
Is Death Stranding 2 a PS5 exclusive game?
At least to start, yes – but a later PC release 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 a PlayStation console exclusive. So far, it has only been confirmed for a PlayStation 5 release.
However, Dead Stranding received a later release on PC, courtesy of publisher 505 Games. It would be surprising if the same didn’t happen for the sequel — either through an independent publisher like 505 or Sony itself, which recently released its biggest first-party exclusives on PC after a period of console exclusivity.
Image: Kojima Productions/PlayStation Studios
Why is it called that? On the beach?
Oh boy. Right. In the game’s world, an apocalyptic event known as 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 eat a living person, they cause a devastating explosion. It’s said that BTs originate from the Beach, a strange dimension that’s a sort of afterlife or purgatory. There’s a lot more to it than that, but those are the basics.
Why is this metaphysical realm called the Beach? Good question. Maybe because it is a transitional space between two different states: land and ocean, life and death. And… it looks like a beach.
Who’s in the cast?
The main characters for Death Stranding 2 features three returning stars and two new faces.
- Norman Reedus returns as the lead character, Sam Porter Bridges
- Léa Seydoux is back as Sam’s colleague, Fragile
- Troy Bakker reprises the role of Higgs, the antagonist from the first game
- Elle Fanning plays an unnamed new character who seems to have some sort of connection to the beach
- Shioli Kutsuna is in an untitled role that has not yet appeared in the trailers
It wouldn’t be a Death Stranding game without cameos from some of Kojima’s favorite film directors; the first game saw fairly substantial roles for Guillermo del Toro and Nicolas Winding Refn.
This time the creator of Mad Max George Miller will appear as an anonymous Drawbridge agent and a Turkish-German director Fatih Akin (The edge of heaven, In the Fade) appears as a living doll. But in both cases it is merely the director’s scanned likeness; the motion capture and vocal performances are by Marty Rhone And Jonathan Roumierespectively.
What’s the story?
Kojima Productions has actually revealed quite a bit about Death Stranding 2: On the Beach over two long trailers full of cutscenes — but as often happens 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 flee, but Lou is killed and reemerges as a BT (Beached Thing) version of herself in her old pod.
In the second trailer, this BT version of Lou is seen as Sam, once again accompanying him on his adventure as BB. The trailer outlines the general setting of the game, which is apparently set several years after the events of the original. The chiral network that Sam uses in Dead Stranding works and human carriers are no longer needed to connect the UCA (formerly America). Sam’s former Bridges colleagues have also gone their separate ways.
But a new organization called Drawbridge, led by Fragile and funded by a mysterious private benefactor, is working to connect areas outside the UCA. Sam goes to work for Drawbridge; his hair, which had been white, is for some reason turning brown again. They have a cool mobile base, the DHV Magellan, which seems to be able to travel through the black tar from which BTs emerge.
Higgs, the original game’s antagonist, is also back. Despite being abandoned on the beach at the end of the first game, he’s still alive—sort of. He’s being carried around in a red coffin by a team of robots. He’s wearing a creepy mask over an even creepier face, and wielding a weapon that looks 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 style.
Back aboard the DHV Magellan, Fragile dons a mask that resembles a pair of blue hands and—in the company of a character who resembles film director George Miller and who is dressed somewhat like a Nazi—she rescues an unnamed character played by Elle Fanning from another sarcophagus-like object filled with black tar.
In addition to Lou, Sam is accompanied on his travels by the Living Doll, who really does look like a talking wooden doll animated in stop-motion. This extremely strange character is not really explained in the trailer.
When introducing the second trailer at the 2022 Game Awards, Kojima said he had rewritten the game Death Stranding 2 to reflect the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Given that the prophetic visions of lockdown and isolation were discussed frequently in the first game, 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 are much lighter on gameplay details compared to plot, but what we do see looks quite familiar. It seems like Kojima Productions is very cautiously iterating on the rambling, load-carrying, open-world exploration of the first game. Considering how unique the outlook remains, that’s no bad thing.
The trailers reveal several new biomes (desert and barren, black, rocky outcrops) and dynamic landscape effects (flashing floods and an avalanche-like rockfall). There’s also a new vehicle: a four-wheeled, tank-like buggy, with open seating high on the body and arm-like suspension at the front.