My Thoughts on Death Stranding 2 - An Article (STORY SPOILERS)

As I write this I have finished Hideo Kojima's Death Stranding 2: On The Beach twice. Overall I feel mixed on the title. If you're unaware I happen to love Hideo Kojima and his games. I've played them all, a lot at release. Metal Gear Solid was a formative series that I basically grew up with, much like Resident Evil, Final Fantasy, Silent Hill, and many other games. MGS was one of those titles that helped in upgrading my media perception. It made me think more deeply about character writing and the world around me in ways the previous franchise's I mentioned couldn't. MGS was grounded and it took place in a fictionalized, larger than life version of our own world. It's surface level appeal and aesthetic are easy to get into but it's ideas, it's concepts are complex and extremely fun to decrypt. MGS1 and 2 especially tugged away at my heartstrings over and over. Sniper Wolf's teary eyed send off and Raiden's personal journey of self discovery spoke to me on levels I didn't know existed. These games helped me understand writing, and myself, my purpose in life. MGS made me want to write my own characters and worlds, it's safe to say that if I never tried the series all those years ago I may not even be writing this article that you're reading right now.

After I played MGS V: The Phantom Pain, Kojima's final release before leaving gaming mega-corp, Konami, I felt "fine" reaching the credits. I wasn't blown away or amazed by anything the gameplay or story had presented to me, hell I didn't even cry like I had finishing the previous five MGS titles. I just felt okay with Phantom Pain. As the years passed I began to worry, Phantom Pain's story or lack thereof had sunken deeply into my mind. I don't hate Phantom Pain at all and I've played it countless times, but it's narrative, arguably the main attraction of any MGS title wasn't there. A lot of internet conjecture would crop up. "Kojima didn't have time to finish the story!". "Konami screwed him out of finishing his vision!". A lot of the internet consensus definitely appealed to me, but one original thought that kept running through my mind, and this is something I'm sure ran through a lot of yours as well was, "Has Kojima lost his touch?" The idea that one of my favorite videogame writers, the guy who lead the narrative charge and scripting of MGS2 losing his way was truly upsetting. I didn't want to believe that this could be the case. After all, evidence of heavy cuts to Phantom Pain were present in the game's very own code and files, so yea the "Konami interference" plausible deniability was strong.

Thankfully in 2019 with his newly formed Sony version of Kojima Productions, the videogame icon was back and independent! In hand KojiPro would deliver Death Stranding. A unique sci-fi adventure game inspired by Kobo Abe's short story "Nawa" Or The Stick and the Rope. The thesis of the story explores the concept of humanity's history with connection and rejection. As homo sapiens we've used physical sticks to push away aggressors those who wish to harm our lives, while on the opposite end of the spectrum, ropes are tools that allow us to connect with each other. The concept of sticks and ropes isn't only a literal one as in our modern everyday life a rope can be a phone call, a text, social media. Sticks can apply to people entirely, a volatile person can be a stick, a rude remark, a physical weapon, all metaphorical sticks to keep people away.

In Death Stranding we play as Sam Porter Bridges, a normal everyday mailman or in this game's case "porter" who delivers packages to isolated people in a post apocalyptic American wasteland. This nightmarish version of the USA is consumed by all sorts of otherworldly threats. The rain in Death Stranding rapidly degrades and ages whatever it touches, people, places, none are safe to the rain's cold deathly embrace. When it rain's it falls! Mule's are former porters driven mad by a rare brainwashing high developed from delivering cargo. These human enemies driven mad don't want to kill any other humans, they just want to steal their stuff. The souls of the departed lay in between the world's of the living and dead, stranded forever. These ghostly entities are simply referred to as BTs (beached things). When a human being dies in Death Stranding they go necro, and become a BT, this then draws in the appetite of other BTs. If one of these terrifying ghosts devours a human corpse a voidout is triggered! Voidouts are spiritual antimatter blasts equaling that of nuclear explosions. Death and destruction are things to be avoided in this world. So killing is out of the question. To aid in the navigation of BTs, humanity has discovered a way to plug into "the other side". Braindead women who've given birth produce BB's bridge babies. These infants that physically exist in the world of the living are also connected to the world of the dead.

Some of you may remember that I actually made two videos on Death Stranding back in its release year. These videos got copywrite claimed for the use of the game's original soundtrack funnily enough! Needless to say I loved the game with all my heart. It's fresh and fun delivery/traversal focused gameplay and lessened emphasis on violence and killing had me hooked for hours! Playing Death Stranding felt amazing, I was so happy getting to play the latest Kojipro game and not only enjoying gameplay but loving the world and story. Kojima being the innovator we all know him to be, asked a simple question, how do we make open world games more interesting? The answer, make the world itself the gameplay. Death Stranding I feel often times gets labeled as a boring walking simulator, and while you do a lot of that, how you move through it's treacherous world is its actual gameplay.

Traversal is a meditative experience that requires careful consideration of foot placement and focus. Use of climbing tools, like roped anchors and ladders help you get up and over certain terrain. Ziplines and building drivable roads help bypass challenging hikes all together at a larger cost to your time and materials investment. The title's online community elements helped make the journey less intimidating, by being a rope and connecting the in-game NPCs to the in-universe internet, patches of the world map connect to the chiral network. This in-game social network opens up a new world of possibilities adding in real life player created bridges, roads, ziplines and emplaced tools to help you get around easier. Your traversal reward for being a rope in a world full of sticks is a meaningful gameplay connection to the overall player community and the in-universe story progression of Sam's journey in reconnecting the continent. Every single thing you do in Death Stranding feels meaningful, it actually feels like you're rebuilding this destroyed America alongside other invisible player controlled porters. It's a beautiful feeling seeing it all coalesce in front of you.

Death Stranding's gameplay perfectly fits it's narrative theming and without getting too deep into its story, DS's narrative had me hooked from start to finish. Despite its trailers showing of some unusual imagery DS is one of Kojima's most accessible and exciting stories to date. In typical Hideo fashion the game is front loaded with a lot of world building and cutscenes that perfectly set up Sam's quest, but these sequences aren't difficult to understand or overstay their welcome. After a lengthy intro, you're in gameplay for a while. When you're not in gameplay, the narrative unfolds brilliantly like a sci-fi mystery novel. All of what's built up in the story is paid off perfectly remaining true to the theme of connection showing the dichotomy of those who choose to be sticks or ropes. DS1 ends pretty definitively with its message being that the rope, the connection, the bridge to the future is the way we have to be if we're to survive whatever catastrophes may come our way. We need to work together through peace and diplomatic expression if humanity as a species should continue.

In its story and gameplay Death Stranding 2 is way more of an action shooter than the first and they make that very clear out of the gate. To say that the second game betrays the themes of the first would be an extraordinary understatement. Delivering is still the core of the gameplay but now everything you do has its edges sanded down. Traversal gameplay is much easier and the new open world maps are now made up of mostly flat plains of land. There are mountains but each have multiple obvious footpaths up and down that are impossible to miss. In the early hours of the game I used a few tools to get around the Mexico map but ultimately didn't need them much for Australia's open sands. In the first DS, there were a variety of weapon types, most were non-lethal but actual deadly fire arms existed. They were in the game to let you know that this option was available to you should you choose to lay waste to the various Porters and Mules you'd cross paths with. Of course you'd never actually use real fire arms if you wanted to avoid BT voidouts that would actually destroy parts of the open world map! In DS2 all weapons use "MP ammo" which knocks unconscious everything! Mules, BTs, and Mechanical aggressors! Just fire away without consequence. Fire and forget. Removing the option to use deadly means feels like a unconfident lore addition to the world of Death Stranding. Like oh wow all of a sudden we've made a miracle defense system that can magically deal with all threats! As a hardcore re-player of the first game, jumping into DS2, was genuinely confusing. Why was the game forcing me into combat encounters with human Mules and giving me lethal orange guns, not realizing that all the default ammo types were nonlethal this time around. It was an incredibly jarring realization that felt like a small but present red flag in my DS1 loving mind. The civilian preppers that you'd help out in the first game would often reward you with traversal tools or equipment that made the journey easier. To say I was taken aback by the "musician" prepper (literal Japanese pop-star Hoshino Gen) giving me different shotgun upgrades every time I leveled up his connection level wouldn't do my reaction justice. In the first game every civilian prepper would give you a new color for your backpack or hat, or in DS1's case THAT game's musician gave Sam a harmonica to play for his BB (Bridge Baby).

I should point out that while the gameplay is much more combat focused the ability to play stealthily was available for every single Mule camp I crossed paths with. In some cases it was imperative to sneak in and grab whatever cargo I needed, hightailing it out of there. I can't stress enough how strange it is seeing Sam Bridges "the great deliverer" brandishing a wide variety of fire arms doing straight up Gears of War style gameplay. You can even roadie run like Marcus Fenix! Full on gun combat was something you really had to build up and plan towards in the first game. At the half way point a terrorist faction is introduced that wants Sam dead. using your non lethal guns felt like a meaningful and risky experience going into terrorist camps to exchange gun fire with enemies that actually wanted you dead. You had to be careful, knowing where entrances and exists were. In the first game camps weren't just small zones where the enemies stayed put. DS1's Mule's would follow you for what felt like ages. Here you can lose them rather easily and I think that's intentional to facilitate the stealth playstyle. By the way, you can literally play DS2 like it's Phantom Pain. Reflex mode, and all the silly decoys make a return as well. In my first playthrough I played how the game wanted me to, I used all the big expensive rocket launchers and heavy machine guns to take down the admittedly easy assailants. It was a breeze, but on my second playthrough I wanted to try going down the Porter's path, only choosing to use the bola gun and Sam's rope to tie up unsuspecting enemies. After I tied up and carefully knocked everyone out I'd collect all their guns and recycle them into meaningful materials for building! It felt like something Sam would do as a true Porter! This play style was a hell of a lot more fun for me personally especially when played on the highest difficulty, but therein lies a problem. I had to ignore all of the new and innovative tools of destruction the game constantly handed me. Every time I got a new gun I would question how much cooler it'd be to get a new piece of gear or equipment that made traversal more fun or enjoyable, but then I'd be hit with the reminder that the game world isn't really built for hard traversal anymore. What use would a upgraded climbing anchor or a stronger chiral ladder do me in a map made up of flat land for one on one combat?

In light of all the gameplay simplification, my favorite thing about DS2 is Kojima's second attempt at animal rescue and conservation. If you remember in Phantom Pain Venom Snake could save animals caught in the line of fire, bringing them back to his base's conservation platform. This aspect of MGSV's base building was fun but not as involved as it could've been. DS2 reaches that idea's full potential. All throughout the Australia map are wildlife native to the area. From Kangaroos and Emus to Koala's hiding up in trees! You can carefully wrap these little guys up in animal carriers and either entrust a shipment to deliver them to the zoo or hand deliver the little buddies yourself. The idea of saving animals in the Death Stranding world makes for amazing world building. In the face of such impossible and terrifying events this hostile world throws at human life, the fact that animals are out here trying their best to survive makes my heart melt. Such precious friends need to be saved, and I will be the one to save them! One scripted set piece sees Sam having to save an injured Kangaroo from a forest fire. It's an incredible moment in which you can deal with the situation in a multitude of ways! Carefully navigate the flames with a kangaroo on your back, or use a tar cannon to dowse them yourself!

One of the best things that happened during my second Porter playthrough, was during a particular animal transport order, I had to deliver an emu to a scientist miles away. I decided to talk this trip on foot with it being hours since my last actual hike in this game. I had placed the funny little guy in my floating carrier that trailed behind me. Most of this walk was peacefully mundane, I'd place a ladder here or there, I'd have to brace myself going down hill, the usual Porter fair. Near the tail end of my journey, unbeknownst to me I had accidentally stepped into BT territory. The skies went dark and the world around us filled with tar. A tar that was slowing down my movement speed quite considerably. My eyes darted back and forth along the horizon looking for any signs of danger but nothing was around. That was until a massive BT octopus shot up out of the tar scaring the shit out of me and my fuzzy pal. In that moment I felt like I was playing Death Stranding 1 again. I had no weapons, nothing but my feet and a very scared Emu attached via rope. Instead of freaking out I kept thinking about the screaming animal bouncing off the walls of his carrier, the little guy was losing it which meant I couldn't. I stayed focused and watched carefully as the BT thrashed about wildly. Near miss after near miss, using rocks as cover and I made it through the nightmare zone untouched. The Emu stopped screaming as Sam dropped to his knees, his stamina was fully drained forcing him and I to take a deep contemplative breath before moving on. It was one of the most immersive moments I've had in a game. Everything in my mind kept telling me DO NOT LET THIS PRECIOUS EMU GET EATEN, ITS LIFE IS MORE SACRED THAN MINE, HE DESERVES TO BE HAPPY. Delivering this silly creature to his destination lead me to another delivery; this time it was too the animal shelter. My second adventure with this cute long necked thing was a calming uneventful walk. After all we went through together It was emotionally rewarding seeing him join the rest of the little guys I had saved up to that point. In spite of every issue I may have with this game's design that moment made me see that there's at least one thing DS2 does extremely well. That's filling its world with life that needs saving. That is an undeniable improvement over the first Death Stranding.

I wish the lessened emphasis on hiking the post apocalypse was my only issue with DS2. The story doesn't fair too well compared to the first entry. For the first few of hours, I was loving what the game presented. After leaving his government job behind, Sam Bridges now a father to the BB he traveled with in game 1, lives off the grid. His child, Lou, now 11 months old after the first game lives happily alongside her father. The quick glimpse we get into their lives is nothing but pleasant. Going on hikes and having playtime, Sam looks content with world he's built for himself and his child. Right away we're reintroduced to our game 1 comrade, Fragile, a porter who also broke away from her own delivery service to join a freelance porter team. Fragile asks Sam to help her connect Mexico and Australia to the ever present Chiral Network much like the first game and Sam reluctantly agrees. This time his decision costs him a lot more than his personal freedom. Sam's child, Lou, is killed in a home invasion where not so attentive comrade, Fragile fails to protect the innocent child. Sam's child is murdered for almost no reason, other than Fragile came into his life and ruined everything; and with almost no hesitation he joins her new crew of whacky cronies on an overall tonally dissonant and silly adventure packed with MGS references both symbolic and literal. The ship our heroes travel around in is shaped like Metal Gear Rex's head, a cyborg samurai shows up to help Sam multiple times, and a mysterious spirit soldier wears a bandana making him look almost exactly like Solid Snake.

The narrative suffers from a lot tonal whiplash. We get some fairly dark plot beats that are almost always bookended with jokes, or silly happenings, or worse yet nothing. Like Phantom Pain, things will just happen and the story moves forward. No time for contemplating the meaning behind why these things happened, they just occur and we move forward. Something that genuinely disturbed me about the story and its cast of characters was how often the game relied on telling/showing us their children dying. Tarman, the captain of the Metal Gear shaped ship watches his son get eaten by BTs, aging and mangling his body in a horrific display of violence. Tarman barely bats an eye at this. The wayward captain never really talks about or relates to Sam about what the trauma of losing a child is like. Outside of his backstory which you can skip over Tarman is an exposition quest giver. Most egregiously, the character Dollman, an admittedly very annoying talking doll that's strapped to Sam's belt for ALL of the game also has a horrible origin story about losing his own kid. Before I get into that, just like Venom Snake's companions would constantly rattle off the same tips and tricks about avoiding enemy choppers and snipers in Phantom Pain even 100 hours into the game; Dollman unfortunately does the same. Every single time you collect all the cargo needed for a large order Dollman will verbally communicate to you that you've got everything needed for delivery, and it's like YEA I KNOW, I've been playing the game for hours at this point! If you accidentally fabricate an unsilenced sniper rifle he'll out loud warn you of the noise the gun'll make every time. If you fall down and your cargo goes flying, he'll let you know that you no longer have cargo on your back, as if you weren't looking at the screen. It's staggering the amount of talking that goes on in this game especially coming from this chatty Doll. The first game was borderline silent for most of its run time. DS1's gameplay was meditative, and forced you to take in your surroundings, playing into the theme of isolation everyone in this world has to deal with. In DS2 the game wants you to know you're never alone, all the while I desperately looked for the option to leave Dollman on the ship.

Back to this game's child killing problem. In one of the worst cutscenes we get to see Dollman in his past life as a human sprit medium looking for the BT ghost of his dearly departed wife, in the hopes of sharing one last moment with her. This event could've worked if handled well but Dollman decides for some reason to bring his child along with him. As you'd imagine they both get mauled to death by a pack of BTs. His soul is then transferred into the doll his daughter was carrying but we actually see the corpse of this little girl dead and covered in tar and it feels wrong. It feels like shock value for the sake of a cheep emotional thrill. What's worse is the game makes it seem like this event happens not too long before Sam's journey, making Dollman's nonchalant nature come off schizophrenic. It's like oh well, children just die I guess. Again at no point do Sam or Dollman have an actual serious conversation about what it's like losing a child let alone HIS. In DS1, life was treated as something sacred that everyone goes out of their way to preserve as to not risk a potential nuclear voidout. The ending of DS1 gives us an emotionally hard hitting scene of Sam crying over Lou's seemingly dead body, he desperately massages her feet and back to wake the infant up. He cries out in pain, CMON LOU WAKE UP! It's heart breaking to see this lone drifter who finally found purpose in life desperately cling on to his most meaningful connection. The difference there was he actually wakes her up. The love of a father saves the life of a child. It's played straight, it's serious, it's sincere. In DS2 Dollman's horrible scene plays out and then you can watch a silly performance of him dancing alongside the real life J-pop star, Daichi Miura. Watching these moments back to back had me questioning if I was really playing the sequel to Death Stranding.

At the start of DS2 Sam tricks himself into thinking the soul of his baby has returned to the BB pod that he wore on his chest throughout the first game. The entire game, we, as the player know this isn't real, Lou's soul isn't in that pod, but when the story finally reveals to Sam that his child's soul is truly gone forever he has a breakdown over it, suffering from bereavement syndrome. This is played off as a some kind of epic emotional reveal but I and everyone else I've spoken too about this game knew that wasn't the case from the beginning. The scene and reveal falls flat on its face. To add insult to injury another extended mystery that you slowly uncover is who that Solid Snake look alike really is to Sam. He's a ghost from the past, a guy called Neil Vana, an ex soldier/porter who smuggled women into America to be used in the government's still mother/BB experiments. Neil, GET THIS, cheated with Sam's long departed wife, Lucy. I honestly don't really know where to start with this story point so I won't go to deep into it here but needless to say I was extremely let down by this reveal and how it played out. It's a very uncomfortable, I'd argue, meaningless addition to Sam's character and backstory. Hasn't he suffered enough?! Why retcon his wife cheating on him when that wasn't part of anything to do with the first game. The ending of the game is jam packed with very fun action set pieces, and an honest to god DANCE NUMBER starring my favorite character from DS1. Sadly by the time I reached the credits I was even more disappointed with the ultimate character related reveal of the story (that I won't spoil) that I found myself feeling exactly how I felt when reaching Phantom Pain's credits.

It goes without saying the biggest narrative issue DS2 runs into is its betrayal of game's 1 theming. The stick and the rope are flipped on their head this time around. Sam and his squad, are constantly on the offensive against the automated enemy faction. You might think because the game has you committing acts of violence out of the gate that the story might explore some kind of message about this but it ultimately doesn't. You do more action combat, because that's what our real life society deems to be "fun" for videogames. you guys know I love me a great action game, and DS2 can be that if you want it to be, but I personally wanted it to be Death Stranding.

You'll have to excuse my ranting and raving; I absolutely loved Death Stranding and still do! I'd even say I liked DS2 a lot as a videogame. Its hours of entertaining action packed deliveries also had me hooked for over one hundred hours across two playthroughs. The issue is where playing the first game felt like my mind was always turned on as I discovered more and more of the world and carefully navigated it; DS2 is undeniably mindless fun. DS2 feels so unlike Death Stranding to me. I feel like I played a very well made Metal Gear spin off, which is kind of the exact opposite thing I'd want out of a Sequel to one of the freshest modern PlayStation IPs out there. Death Stranding felt like a bold new step for Kojima. He and his team were exploring uncharted territory and managed to pull out a game so narratively ahead of its time that it would personally take me a few years to truly understand its deeper meaningful themes. DS2 feels like a modern predictable Hollywood sequel made to fulfill a contractual obligation. Its themes are barely existent, and what its trying to say is still a mystery to me. Should we forget the past? Should we carry our departed loved ones memories into the future? Is it or isn't it wrong to be a stick in a world full of ropes? Can we actually solve peace through fighting? I can ask myself these questions all day but what I do know is that Death Stranding made me want to connect with others and helped me value my existing connections in a world ravaged by an isolating pandemic. It was a reminder that no matter how hard life would get my my bridges to other people would remain strong as long as I cared to maintain them.

So that was a heck of a first article. Kept you waiting huh? Ya know... that famous Higgs quote. I don't think Kojima's lost his touch at all with stories like Phantom Pain or DS2; I think Kojima knows exactly how to produce incredibly fun marketable games under incredible stress when needed. Death Stranding 2's story being disappointing isn't cause for worry. The first game ends so perfectly and completely that I'll always hold onto what it was saying. After a lot of contemplation on 2 I've sectioned it off in my brain as supplemental material. I think of it as a bizarrely tone def holiday special where all the of the previous game's characters are acting unlike themselves. I'm still very much looking forward to what Kojima Productions does next with OD and Physint. Hideo Kojima is and will always be one of my favorite creators, and who knows what kind of stress the team was under after DS1's divisive launch. It's entirely possible that a lot of DS2's narrative and gameplay wonkiness was under Sony's mandate. I know Dollman definitely felt like one of those constant reminder characters we often see in modern Sony games. I'm looking at YOU Atreus! Anyway I still love Kojima, I'm so glad he got to make Death Stranding at all! I got to chat with him at Summer Game Fest and he was very welcoming and kind! At the end of the day you're still getting a content rich fun videogame worth the asking price out of DS2! I hope you liked reading this article, and let me know if you'd like more rambles such as this! Have a great day and thanks for the support everyone!