There was a time when big releases were almost a social event unto themselves, a kind of cultural nexus point that drew in all and sundry whose only connection was the thing that we all were going to play. Sometimes you’d be there at a launch night, rubbing shoulder to shoulder with your fellow gamers as the underpaid retail staff did their best to corral the unruly horde. Other times it was a less intense affair: you’d get an email or txt saying your preorder was ready and you’d make your way down to the local. After they’d got your game you’d exchange a few words with them, maybe talk about the previous title in the series and sometimes even get a recommendation or two about other titles coming up before heading on your way. It hasn’t been that way for a long time though, in part due to Covid but it was a dying trend even before then.
When I went to pickup my redicoulsy oversized collector’s edition of Death Stranding 2 I was reminded of how much of a core part of the gaming experience that used to be. The employee who got my order had no idea about the game but her friend had played the original. It was a delightfully weird interaction, trying to explain to someone how the baby in a bassinet on the outside of the box was relevant to a delivery simulator game. I left them with a joke that this would be my life for the next couple weeks which gave them a small chuckle before I headed out the door.
Here I am, some three weeks later, and I’ve only just put Death Stranding 2 down for the first time.
SPOILERS FOR DEATHING STRANDING BELOW
Taking place about a year after the original game Death Stranding 2 puts you back with Sam Porter and his daughter/former BB Lou. Sam has managed to evade Bridges, thinking that he’s still probably wanted for defying their last order and not wanting to get involved in the politics that surround rebuilding the new country of the UCA. However the UCA has need of him again and has engaged the newly former Drawbridge corporation, headed up by Fragile, to begin the process of expanding the chiral network beyond their borders. The first target is Mexico, specifically a lab where another former team member, Deadman, has been doing research. Sam agrees to take on the mission on the condition that he and Lou receive full pardons and will be left to their own devices for good. A deal is formed and Sam heads off to Mexico, doing the same thing he always did for the UCA, and leaving Lou in the hands of Fragile. This is the humble beginning of a journey that will eventually change the world, and Sam, forever.
Now I’m well known visual candy enjoyer and suffice to say that Death Stranding 2 delivers that in absolute spades. The game’s opening scenes are just littered with screenshot worthy moments, showcasing the Decima engine’s ability to deliver stunning visuals in both wide open and tight in spaces. All of the screenshots you’ll see in this review are on an original PS5 running in performance mode too which was able to keep the framerate rocksteady in all but the most demanding situations. For those among us who are sporting a PS5 Pro the recommendation seems to be to opt for performance mode as well as the visual differences appear slight at best. Doing a compare/contrast to the original Death Stranding‘s visuals the step up is incredible, showing that whilst the visual language has remained the same everything about the environments, models and scenes had to be redone to achieve this level of detail. All the marks of incredible craftsmanship are still there too: an incredible and varied soundtrack, diverse and interesting foley, truly dynamic weather systems and so much more. Whilst Death Stranding 2 isn’t a last of its generation title (we’ve still got a year or two until the PS6 is released, or so I read) it has certainly set the bar for others to reach for until then.
The core cargo delivery loop remains in Death Stranding 2; pitting you against the environment and all the challenges that comes with trying to move hundreds of kilos of things from once place to another. The shared world aspect is a lot more present and richer than it was previously with many more structures to be built, more resources to leverage and which leads to a whole bunch of quality of life improvements that make the game far more enjoyable earlier on. You still have the initial (and to some extent perpetual) tutorial to get you familiar with the ropes of the game but access to vehicles, roads, zip lines and a host of new types of structures means that you have many more options at your disposal to make terrain traversal that much easier. That, in turn, means the shared world also includes more of those elements as well. Combat has also evolved too, again mostly with the addition of more options, but also with some enhancements to make it much more in-line with the core gameplay. Death Stranding 2 is best summed up as being the original but more of it with mechanics added in to ensure that that “more” isn’t just more of the same.
In that vein the combat system got a bit of a rework with the early weapons you’re given access to being of the Multi Purpose variety, I.E. they’re effective on both humans and BTs alike. This saves you from the previous game’s need to carry around duplicate weapons. This makes early encounters a lot less painful as you’re not spending the first opening moments assessing your large inventory to select the right tool before engaging with the enemy proper. The encounters themselves still play out much the same: usually with you using a nearby watchtower to assess the area, attempting to stealth in, taking out a few enemies before one of the others sees a body or catches a glimpse of you before it turns into a full on firefight. Given the additional weaponry and improvements in the overall combat systems I wasn’t dreading getting into a firefight as much as I used to.
Stealth is done a lot better too as most of the game’s weapons can be had in silent varieties along with a slew of new additions that are specifically targeted at stealth first players. I’ll admit I didn’t get around to using them much, preferring to rely on my superior firepower to get me through almost all encounters, but it’s clear that if you want to play Death Stranding 2 as a sealth first game you’re much more able to this time around. The only other improvements I’d like to see here are a better detection indicator system as it’s hard to tell the difference between an unaware enemy, one that’s on alert/investigate and one that’s on the edge of alerting everyone. Sure, it’s easy enough to tell when you’re in the area of detection (the yellow flash) but how that changes their behaviour is hard to know from just that one signal.
Whilst deliveries are the main motivator to get you out in the world exploration whilst you’re doing that is certainly one of the games major objectives. Whilst the game makes a bit of a song and dance around the planning of your route, using the most viable approaches and building infrastructure along the way, the most satisfying way to do that (for me at least) was to try and be as dumb about it as possible. I.E. I would usually just head in a straight line and see how things would go. Given how the shared world will carve paths for routes that are often used by other players I don’t think I was particularly alone in this strategy, often finding myself treading in the same direction without meaning to.
This was also enabled further by the game’s rather generous abilities for the vehicles this time around. Whilst before it was entirely possible to take vehicles into the most challenging of areas if you wanted to it certainly wasn’t easy or fun. I can remember abandoning multiple vehicles in the original game simply because I couldn’t figure out a way to get them where I wanted to go and instead opted for getting there on foot. Indeed reading my previous review I was reminded of my time in the mountains which I recall was bereft of any vehicles for an extended period. Death Stranding 2 however shies away from that completely, allowing even the pickup off roader to make its way to some of the highest peaks in the game once it’s been fully upgraded. To be sure there are times where that’s not possible, like in the above screenshot, but that at least felt like a challenge the game was putting forward to me: sure, use your vehicle, but it’ll be way harder than it would be on foot.
Of course that route was only hard on the way there. As I knew what I was getting into I made sure to load myself up on PCC2s, materials and all sorts of other goodies that would ensure I could build ziplines along the way, ensuring that I could make a swift return without as much hassle. That wasn’t without its own challenges of course, especially when I was trying to work my around the edges of the chiral network to get the ziplines in place. But I got there in the end and I’m sure that infrastructure is turning what was one of the most troubling and tiring missions I did into an absolute cakewalk for those who are lucky enough to have my ziplines in their shared world.
Which is what kept me playing for 2~3 hour stretches at a time for a good week there: building infrastructure. The addition of mines, which will create resources for you over time as well as allowing you to dump chiral crystals for a big stack of resources, means that acquiring the necessary materials to build/upgrade structures isn’t as troublesome as it once was. I initially started off my infrastructure building journey by raiding armed survivalist camps which works wonders initially but I quickly found myself running ahead of the pack of other players who were building roads. This meant the resource costs for me started to skyrocket which, without the mines, would’ve meant either waiting or only building out a handful of structures. That started to change a bit after I left the main storyline for a while and focused on unlocking some of the weapons and other kit I wanted, but you’ll often find bits of infrastructure that are somewhat neglected making your road building journey far more costly than you’d anticipated for.
I’ll also share the gripe that some others on Reddit have put forward: it’s not clear why certain structures are well liked/used and others seemed to get nothing at all. Monorails and zip lines, for instance, seemingly generated no likes for me whatsoever, even though I know that mine must be showing up in other’s worlds because they were showing up in mind. Conversely any roads I built in the early/mid game area could generate something like 10,000 likes in 30 minutes, especially after I’d upgraded them. I’m sure someone will eventually have a detailed breakdown around how the sharing function works as for some things it’s not quite clear how it all works.
Still the act and reward of building out the shared world with others really is one of, if not the, defining feature of the game to me. Seeing those names roll by, the connection levels increasing (I only ever got to 2 stars from what I could see), chargers placed in life saving areas, cargo shared by other porters who’d 5 starred a place, all of those things make what would otherwise be a terribly lonely experience feel like something that’s exactly the opposite. Since beating the game I’ve gone back to build out roads again and, honestly, just doing that was enough to keep me playing for a couple hours just to see the likes rolling in. I’ve seen it described as the first truly good social network and, as a very active participant in it only for the sake of making other’s journeys easier, I’m inclined to agree.
PLOT SPOILERS BELOW
Those of you who’ve played the game (and if you skipped my warning above just know I am really, really going to ruin the story for you here. You’ve been warned, twice) can probably hazard a guess as to what the tagline of this post is alluding to. Yep, those opening moments where you lose Lou, cut me so deep that I struggled to keep playing the game for a good long while. That kid I had when playing the original? She’s 6 now, joined by her brother who’s 3 and sympathetic pain I had for Sam’s loss was palpable for hours after it happened. It then turned into something darker, a scar over my heart that felt like it was preventing me from fully engaging with the game. This was only made harder by having Lou there throughout the game, pushing me to try and google whether or not she was really dead or if she happened to be a repartirate like Sam. I was confused, hurt and grieving, so I lost myself in the work instead.
I’m sure there’s plenty of you out there who probably picked up on the breadcrumbs earlier than I did when it came to some of the game’s more pertinent plot points. I had my suspicions about Tomorrow for a while, although will admit I didn’t make the link until Fragile mentioned saving Lou. I was pretty sure that Chris was Die-Hartman, which turned out to be true in the most spectacular fashion (I mean him as comic relief is honestly a great foil for his previous character, I love it) but the lack of clarity around Lou’s fate was still a weight around my heart up until the game’s later hours.
Which, I will say, did a fantastic job of bringing everything back home. Whilst yes, I probably should’ve seen it coming given it was the same kind of twist that the original pulled it still managed to hit all the right emotional beats to have me in a crying mess for hours as the end played out. My heart was healed briefly when I got Lou back, only for it to be ripped back away into the final battle with Higgs for it lastly to be renewed with Tomorrow’s transformation into Louise. I can see why Kojima has said that, whilst he has ideas for Death Stranding 3, someone else will have to do it. There’s definitely a lot more to explore in this world, and it’s setup well to do that, but the 2 cycles of Sam’s life have been well explored and Kojima likely feels like he’s fulfilled his vision for the connection based narrative he set out to tell all those years ago.
PLOT SPOILERS OVER
All this being said there’s still a few questions left to answer. Is it a better game than the original? In some respects yes: it’s bigger, more ambitious and improves/streamlines/removes the less-than-stellar parts of the game to ensure that it’s more cohesive overall. But it’s still standing on the shoulders of giants here; a lot of the greatness comes from the initial concepts being realised so well in the original. So I’m hesitating to say it’s better, instead it’s more of what we want and less of what we don’t. Whether that classifies as “better” is an exercise I’ll leave up to the reader.
Which follows onto: is it worth playing? That’s a resounding yes from me, on the proviso that you’ve played the original of course. Stepping in at this juncture would mean that a lot of the game wouldn’t have the same impact it otherwise would and, honestly, playing the original at this point in time is probably going to be a much better experience overall due to the well built out shared world. The same could be said for this one too, waiting is not a bad thing here.
Death Stranding 2 then is another feather in the already well adorned cap that Kojima wears. I sincerely do hope that he continues with the franchise as I think the concept and the world has so much more to give. This is one of the few games that even if you feel it isn’t for you I’d encourage you to at least give it a go; it’s approachable enough now that I think everyone could take something away from it. Much like Bloodborne was the gateway to the soulslike genre to me Death Stranding is the gateway to Kojima, one I think we can all benefit from exploring.
Rating: 9.5/10
Death Stranding 2 is available on PlayStation 5 right now for $108. Total playtime was approximately 48 hours with a total of 52% of the achievements unlocked.
