Personally Asking, What's Death Stranding 2 About?

So I’ve been playing Death Stranding 2 almost non-stop. And let me tell you, it’s a very MENIAL game. So was the first title, but here, it’s almost as if things feel a bit too breezy, and just couch comfort for my experience.

DS1 was a challenging game with so much peril thrown at you. The strenuous task of going from geological positions and their establishments, one another for delivering packages. You deal with otherworldly beings that are trapped in this void between the real world and the afterlife. Called The Beach.

If the terrain ahead is tricky, you just build stuff around it like bridges, charging stations, umbrella roofs against Timefall, as well as new toys to play with like Beach Jumpers, Chiral Bridges to walk over cliffs, Jump Ramps, Hovercoffin, multiple new weapons, and so on. It’s an ad nauseam of things added. Did you know you can parry attacks? I bet you didn’t know you can do the last one in the first game.

The OG and sequel on their own are tremendous packages. But where the first game was about humanity’s need to reconnect, the second one is about picking up after itself, and dusting off. Just something about the lackluster last arc, and revelations seems to have thrown me off here, wasn’t Kojima known to be crazier than that?

There’s a recurring motif that ties to the previous game. Something about the past not having moved on, and feeling like more answers are still there. I have played through hours and hours of the game to get to those cutscenes and story parts.

And it feels really stretched out. I’m thankful for the PCCs in the mid-act that ‘bridges’ unexplorable areas. Heck, there’s also the part where you can go full commando like Big Boss in MGSV through band encampments and ridiculous assortments of weapons and gadgets. The BTs are neutered and no longer scary.

This game has a literal anime-inspired ship that swims in Tar, and teleports everything, including my truck, to any facility. Like, convenience is a bigger part of this journey, but it has its own challenges and perils here and there. The sandbox feels more accessible for almost anyone now, and learning curve is not the issue either.

I like the characters, Tarman, Rainy, Tomorrow, Sam meets all different walks of life from one isolated continent, the FedEx Australia experience, and the way they help you by giving you gifts of new things to try out, and their upgrades even. Somewhere I start becoming more lost in that aspect where you play the game more for the labor, rather than pushing through it to get to the incredible story parts.

It’s as if Kojima figured out what makes a game fun again, he took a very strange concept, fixed its edges, and even streamlined it too.

It’s shinier, moldable, and overall fun to play around with. This is a triple A game, way more scaled up and ambitious. While I do wish the story really went somewhere exciting, maybe just accepting that it’s tying loose ends up is an acceptable token to the greater whole of the package itself. Will there even be a Death Stranding 3?

All I can say is, this feels like the other last part of Sam’s journey that was probably supposed to end in small content form, which early rumors did indicate it was planned as a DLC, but I guess they changed their mind. I’m still playing the game, also thanks to its robust social system, making me help out more than usual.

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