Death Stranding 2: On the Beach

Death Stranding 2 On the Beach is perhaps Hideo Kojima's least surprising, least transformative, least creative, most derivative work in his entire career, an iterative step after the original Death Stranding's explosive imagination of a post-apocalyptic United States of America brought to the edge of extinction by ghosts that can only be seen when equipped with a unborn baby. And yet, or maybe because of this, it is the most rounded game of his catalogue. A culmination of thirty years of themes, ideas, absurdities, gameplay iteration and visual refinement into something weirdly grand.

The game's story has a distinctive just one more job tone, perhaps a leftover from the 80'ies movies where Kojima pull inspiration for his action heroes, but here it feels overly forced. Events transpire which allows the story and gameplay to match the exact structure of the original: Integrate a continent into a American-controlled communication network, one town at a time, by convincing the inhabitants to allow it, often by trudging through difficult terrain to deliver them a manga they really like. This loop is interrupted by three (3) scheduled boss fights against humanoid enemies in a dream-like sequence and a great big cinematic showdown at the end. The story and cutscenes and lore and emotional moments that occur between finishing an order and starting the next are sometimes interesting diversions, and sometimes excuses to change the parameters of the next order slightly. The game provides a travelling home base of sorts which experiences issues so often that it actually felt silly. "Sam, It's Tarman. Before I explain the mission details, I need to tell you that you can't use the fast travel mechanic for the duration of this mission, just like all the other missions, you gotta walk it or drive it or mono-rail it or skate it or shot-out-of-a-cannon it. I just wanted to make sure you knew that, even though I mention it every mission. Alright, the mission is to bring me some Pizza from the other side of the map; I can't bring the ship closer because of reasons."

Hideo Kojima's over the top ridiculousness remains present as always. I've learned to appreciate it more over the years, though it still sometimes mystifies me why he adores his dumb character naming, which rapidly switches between one-word tech company name (Fragile, Tomorrow), nounman (Deadman, Dollman, Tarman) or the profession (there are some good ones: The Chronobiologist, The Metageneticist). His penchant for robot ninjas make a return, along with some new rock and roll themed music sequences (perhaps inspired by Alan Wake II?) that goes pretty hard.

I must confess though, that while the story was interesting enough to keep me playing along, it was not, in sharp contrast to the previous game, what I appreciate the most about the game. The fifty hours I spent in the open world was definitely the highlight. Never have I seen so beautifully rendered a world, and never have I taken quite so many pictures in a game.

The world's fidelity is certainly a miracle. The landscapes are sharp and precise, a moon-rock version of reality, populated by ghosts and terrorists, along with the structures built by yourself and other players. The moon-rock landscape is, as I once read a critique of Death Stranding say, "unrealistic", but the point of the moon-rocks is to act as a contrast for when the player revisits the area and sees that the path they took, previously treacherous with moon-rocks, is cleared, a small safe path through the landscape, which widens with each use, not only by you, but also other players. You are not only accomplishing a task, you are terraforming the world, either actively by building structures, roads and monorails, or passively by moving through the world, such that your primary tasks become easier.

As a policy I've read no critiques of the game before writing this, but it would not surprise me to learn that people appreciated the story a lot more than me. It is a sort of inversion of the recent trend of Dad Games (such as The Last of Us and God of War (2018)). Unfortunately, it feels completely subservient to the gameplay formula and the conventions of the Hideo Kojima catalogue, and it struggles to find space for its own themes within what is at this point a very crowded apartment. The mandatory grand conspiracy thriller story thread has some interesting ideas doesn't capitalize on them. Troy Baker's Higgs is a great character that chews the scenery to a pulp, but his motivations are mostly unsatisfying and his story ends without resolution. The only story thread with a satisfying resolution is Sam's own, but he is unable to serve as a story agent during the game, passively observing the other characters act out their story, while he is relegated to the role of player vessel, which makes whatever resolution he obtains feel completely unearned, even though he single-handedly rebuilds the infrastructure of an entire continent.

It is weird that something so well-produced and cinematic is so bad at executing it's own story, but then again, Kojima is a weird man. I have yet to regret playing one of his games, and Death Stranding 2 On the Beach does not break that trend. In the stagnating copy-cat world of video games, I'm happy that he is out here, still getting bazillions of dollars to make weird shit that nobody else can or dares to make.