Death Stranding 2

[mmmark]

 

[DisturbedSwan]

Hype!

[one-armed dwarf]

Did you ever complete the original?

 

I'm curious what that directors cut stuff added to the game. DS1 was cool but plateaued in a fairly major way with the zipline mechanic. A better variety of tools for traversal and a lengthier progression to its mechanics would go a long way. 

 

I think in particular there needs to be a bit more danger in the open world that isn't just BTs and mules, in the form of some light survival mechanics (but none of that eating and drinking stuff). In a way DS1 felt the most similar to a game like BOTW out of all the other open world efforts out there, where both games are more about the journey than destination. imo it's a really good 7/10 that had the potential to be an actual 10 with some changes to how the mechanics get integrated into open world exploring. Less said about the story and cutscenes the better tho

 

I wonder what this game will even be tho. The tagline is saying 'should we have connected', or whatever, so it might be doing something fairly different. Either way it's cool that he made a AAA game that was about something mundane like delivering boxes and built out so many systems around that so I hope it sticks to that as a core thing

[DisturbedSwan]

Unfortunately not @one-armed dwarf I ended up fucking myself on one of the saves and got myself in a right kerfuffle, accepted one of those mission where you need a truck to transport stuff and then didn't have a truck on me so it auto loaded onto my eco-mech whatever you call it and then I walked at a snail pace but my previous saves were no good either for a reason that escapes me as of now lol. 

 

But yeah, I would love to go back to it and finish it, I think I've got the PS5 DC on PS+ Premium, apparently saves transfer too maybe so if I could find one that wasn't fucked I could carry on from where I left off, realistically I can't see a window I can slot it into anytime soon though. 

[one-armed dwarf]

Taking convo away from sony general

 

 

 

I think DS is a messy and meandering game and it didn't really get the tonal balance right, it also had some of the worst over-acting I've seen in a game (which was praised as amazing acting in other quarters, but I don't know why). But when I got on board with it I found it a breath of fresh air in the sense it wasn't just another AAA game about murdering people. I give out about Sony and other massive AAA publishers having titles which are coalescing more and more into these risk averse templates but Death Stranding was one of those exceptions that didn't. Granted it does throw the towel in eventually and decide 'actually, we also do a bit of murdering around here'. But at least those sections were mercifully brief, drop the game to very easy mode and just rush through.

 

I think too many games are about chasing adrenaline but there's something also to be said for a game which will have stretches of mundanity and have the game be about that, letting players sit with some negative emotions for a bit can actually conjure up powerful moments of catharsis when it isn't being like that. Which is super invigorating when done right. It has a lot in common with BOTW imo, where a lot of both game's friction comes from rationalising ways of dealing with the environment and its resources/terrain. BOTW and TOTK are much more rich open world puzzle boxes though, while imo I'll still say that ziplines just surfaced too quickly in the game and made the exploration options very linear when it did. So hopefully the sequel is a bit more rich in that sense, mechanically

 

I also think DS is probably Kojima's most cinematic looking game, but outside of its actual cutscenes I mean. More games need bleak scenery like this.

 

That said, nothing in this trailer specifically does much for me cause a lot of the story driven stuff was a pretty big misfire in the first one. It felt like they wanted its style to also be its substance, but found neither. 

[DisturbedSwan]

That trailer was absolutely fucking phenomenal.

 

I never finished the original and never fully got on with it but am definitely up for trying the sequel. 

[Maf]

There was a hour and a half stage demo for this at TGS. I haven’t seen that, but this appears to be a cut of all the gameplay clips

 

It’s still frustratingly weird. The graphics look amazing, though 

[one-armed dwarf]

Maybe it was already announced that George Miller is in this but that's so weird. Explains why he name dropped Kojima a while back when talking about Mad Max games. The puppet guy is some Turkish director I've never heard of, might look his stuff up

 

Crazy that he hasn't rang John Carpenter up. Maybe he's too grumpy to do something like this but you'd think he'd be game cause he's so into games already

 

I liked the first half of the original but found the second half so hard to get through with its terrible story. Maybe I just missed the point tho and it's more ironic than I took it as.

 

I do think it's the most interesting thing Sony have on PS5 right now, even if it's a timed exclusive. I like that it's this polarizing thing that will piss some people off with its design decisions. Something AAA badly needs a bit more of

[Maf]

I ordered the Director’s Cut yesterday after watching the video 😓 I honestly really like what they’re showing. It looks so fucking stupid 

 

The more time has gone on the more I think I really, really like Death Stranding. I like pretty much everything about it except the points it’s trying to make about loneliness, connectedness, everyone existing behind a screen, etc. They’re so shallow and obvious but layered in to something so dense and weird I find it frustrating the core meaning doesn’t match all the expression going in to it, if that makes sense

 

But from a gameplay perspective, and this is really important, from a gameplay perspective I think it actually hits those notes beautifully. The argument for years about games having dissonance where story and the buttons have no relation to each other. I think this is one of the very few games that actually pulls it off amazingly well

 

Which is why I ordered the Director’s Cut. Because they added so much crazy video game shit to it I want to see how it affects the game. They added rocket ramps, jet packs, motorbike tricks it’s like…how does that impact the game? I kind of want to know

 

Lastly, bringing it back to DS2, I wonder which way this game will lean. Will it be more like the original version where it’s very stripped back and melancholic, or will it be more like the DC version where it’s very video gamey 

 

The cinematic shown in the trailer don’t hint either way.

[DisturbedSwan]

Also on Sony Pass.

 

If it wasn’t so long I’d give it another go, might just watch the story beats on YT before this comes out.

[one-armed dwarf]

See, I couldn't do that. I'm doing my best to forget it 😩

 

To be clear, I enjoy the stuff where it's like ghosts are nukes cause theyre antimatter trying to contact our matter, or whatever, and how the Internet is piped through fiber optic in the river Styx. You can't find that stuff not cool on some level. It's just that the exposition and acting performances are what makes it much less cool

[mmmark]

Ten bloody minutes 

[one-armed dwarf]

I don't know yet if I'll be skipping the cutscenes in this and if I'll even see ten minutes of them. That said, the dude at the start here is in that Mussolini series I was watching and he's extremely good. Conflicted, cause I know this will be dog dicks to watch but still

 

btw at a glance, this looks like a really varied game. Kinda seems like they're iterating on the original in a way that'll make this a much more broadly enjoyed game I think. I could see it being amazing, but for fuck sake those cutscenes were so bad in the first one damn

 

edit this trailer goes heavy on the Metal Gear stuff

[mfnick]

That looks fucking incredible. I love everything going on in that trailer. Such a shame I couldn’t stand playing the first one so no doubt this won’t be for me either  

[one-armed dwarf]

On 09/03/2025 at 21:40, one-armed dwarf said:

That said, the dude at the start here is in that Mussolini series I was watching and he's extremely good

He's a big metal gear fan apparently

 

https://x.com/HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN/status/1899334415807070370

 

Quote

Luca Marinelli, the man we asked to play the role of Neil. I first learned of him through his role as the antagonist (Fabio Cannizzaro/Zingaro) in the Italian film "They Call Me Jeeg," and I fell in love with his amazing acting in Jack London's autobiographical film, "Martin Eden," which was released in Japan in 2020. It was a great film, and I was asked to help promote it when it was released. That was when I was contacted by a representative of the Japanese distributor. He told me that Luca had read my comments and wanted my contact info so he could convey his feelings directly to "KOJIMA-SAN.” Soon after, I received an e-mail from Luca. 

 

“I grew up with Metal Gear. I am a big fan of yours. I am very honored that you saw the film I starred in. I wanted to tell you this directly." 

 

During the pandemic, I was casting for DS2. Neil would be an important role that replaces Cliff from DS1. The fans would not be satisfied unless the casting would surpass Mads. 

 

I also watched Luca in "The Old Guard" on Netflix. I decided that Luca was the only choice for the role of Neil and sent him an e-mail with an offer. Apparently, Luca was in the mountains of Tibet filming "The Eight Mountains (2022)" at the time. I don't know if it’s true or not, but he had just come down from the mountains where he was filming and happened to be thinking about me before he saw my message, and Luca said, "This has been a spiritual experience." 

 

After that, I zoom called with Luca once he was home, pitched the idea of DS2, and he agreed to play the role. When I told him that I was looking for someone to play Lucy, he introduced me to his wife, Alissa, who is also an actress (and filmmaker). We did their scan and pcap during the height of the pandemic, but their on-set performance was excellent. You can see that in the digitized results from even the small bits of the trailer. I can only thank Luca and Alissa for agreeing to perform when we didn't even have a script yet.

 

[DisturbedSwan]

Absolutely loved that trailer, the music by Woodkid was hauntingly beautiful.

 

I liked the first one but messed it up for myself around 19 hours in by trying to carry a pickup load all on my own 😂 never went back to it unfortunately but have always wanted to.

[one-armed dwarf]

One thing I hope is the whole traversal element is a little more challenging. Like I want to get punished for that kind of bad planning but it didn't feel like it happened often, when it seemed designed in a way like it should have. The "venture forth" part feels like it's supposed to be more fraught than it is

 

The thing that comes to mind always is how holding both triggers down mitigates totally the balance mechanic, most of the time

[Maf]

Finally watched the trailer and it looks much better than the first game, which I like as a sort of experimental effort. But it looks like this time the technology is in place, they have more money, they’re making a real, full video game

 

I could be wrong but the trailer gives that impression

 

Even though I still don’t understand the world or what’s going on, this trailer gives a bit of hope it’ll make more sense, maybe? 
 

I understand in the first game they used their limitations to make a story of characters being stuck in structures and centre it around isolation, connection and loneliness. But again because of a bigger budget it looks like it can go more ‘all-in’ and things will actually happen instead of just walking from point to point and then people telling you, in a really nonsensical way, about things that already happened. 
 

DS1 was like what if Kojima didn’t answer to anyone and got experimental with it and tried to subvert what a video game can be - with moderate success

 

DS2 looks like what if Kojima only did that because that’s all he could do at the time and this time he wants to get back to doing some MGS shit.

 

I don’t know it could go in so many directions. But it looks promising and looks like it could be much better than the first game 

[one-armed dwarf]

I figure this belongs more in here, I dunno

 

https://deadline.com/2025/04/a-quiet-place-day-one-michael-sarnoski-death-stranding-1236360094/

 

Quiet Place Day One director may be doing a film of Death Stranding produced by A24. He did a film with Nicolas Cage called Pig that is also supposed to be really good so maybe he's a good choice transforming Kojima's overwrought original into a more streamlined yet somewhat artsy blockbuster type of thing. Which seems like a direction that A24 are trying to push towards more and more with stuff like Civil War.

[DANGERMAN]

Pig is alright, a bit overrated but interesting. Quiet Place Day 1 was pretty shit