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Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
2025 video game From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Death Stranding 2: On the Beach[b] is a 2025 action-adventure game written, produced, designed and directed by Hideo Kojima, developed by Kojima Productions and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. It is the sequel to Death Stranding, and is the second game from Kojima Productions as an independent entity, as well as the studio's second collaboration with Sony. On the Beach features the previous game's central characters, including Sam Porter Bridges, Fragile, and Higgs, reprised by Norman Reedus, Léa Seydoux, and Troy Baker, respectively. They are joined by a cast consisting of Elle Fanning, Shioli Kutsuna, Luca Marinelli, Alastair Duncan, Alissa Jung, Debra Wilson and Tommie Earl Jenkins, as well as special appearances from George Miller, Fatih Akin, Guillermo del Toro and Nicolas Winding Refn, the latter two reprising their roles from the first game.
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is set primarily in Australia, eleven months after the events of the first game, in a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by otherworldly creatures. The player controls Sam Porter Bridges, a freelance porter, as he and his companions set out on an expedition across the Australian continent to connect isolated survivors and colonies to the wireless communications "chiral" network in order to save humanity from extinction.
Kojima began writing On the Beach some time prior to 2020. He reworked the narrative from scratch to reflect the effect of COVID-19 on the worldwide population. After the story was completed, hints of Death Stranding being developed into a series by Kojima Productions had been insinuated, before the sequel game was confirmed as in development by Reedus in May 2022. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach was announced in December 2022 alongside confirmation of the new cast members. The game was released for the PlayStation 5 on June 26, 2025 to generally favorable reviews.
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Gameplay
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Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is a third-person action-adventure video game. It takes place primarily in Mexico and Australia, both of which are large open worlds that can be freely explored by the player.[1][2] The core gameplay loop revolves around delivering packages to scattered preppers and survivors. Players need to navigate difficult terrain, while balancing the weight of the cargo on Sam's backpack. Players will unlock vehicles early into the game, which allows them to travel through the world quickly. Vehicles can be customized extensively. For instance, additional batteries can be installed to extend its use, while gun turrets can be added for defense.[3] The world is frequently ravaged by natural disasters such as earthquakes and sandstorms, which will affect the landscape and force players to pick alternate delivery routes.[4] Players are involved in rebuilding destroyed infrastructure and reconstructing roads and bridges. Eventually, players can construct a monorail system connecting isolated colonies, allowing them to transport a large quantity of goods quickly.[3]
On the Beach has a greater focus on combat. Players can choose to engage in direct combat against enemies, use stealth tactics, or avoid enemy encounters altogether by choosing to navigate rougher terrain.[5] Sam has a large arsenal of tools and gadgets that allow him to attract or divert an enemy's attention. The game features a dynamic day-night cycle which affects enemy behaviours.[6] As players progress, they can unlock enhancements from the Automated Porter Assistant System, which serves as the game's skill tree. The skill tree is divided into five categories: porter, combat, stealth, servicemanship and bridge link, which focuses on Sam's ability to deliver packages. Sam's attributes will gradually increase as players complete ordinary actions. For instance, the more packages Sam delivers, the better his delivery skills will become.[7]
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Synopsis
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Setting
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach takes place eleven months after the end of the first game. The United Cities of America is fully connected via the chiral network and the logistics company, BRIDGES, has become defunct with deliveries now being handled by an automated system called APAS that uses unmanned "delivery bots", putting human porters out of work. Transcontinental portals called "plate gates" begin manifesting across the world in areas with high chiral density, most notably one linking Mexico to Australia. The ongoing extinction event continues to negatively affect the world: Beached Things (BTs) have become more powerful, with some gaining the ability to see. Natural disasters, such as "gate quakes" and floods, exacerbated by increased chiralium levels, have warped the environment and occur frequently. Bandits and armed terrorists torment survivors, and the Australian continent is populated by hostile supernatural robotic enemies called "ghost mechs".
Plot
Retired porter Sam Porter Bridges (Norman Reedus) lives a secluded life in the southern UCA with his adopted daughter Lou. Fragile (Léa Seydoux) interrupts their tranquil routine to inform Sam that she has formed a new company, Drawbridge, which has been contracted by the UCA to extend the chiral network to Mexico. Fragile asks Sam to cross the former US-Mexican border and activate the chiral network terminals BRIDGES left behind, just like he did in the United States, with the incentive being that both Sam and Lou would be pardoned by the UCA. He leaves while Fragile takes care of Lou. After connecting all of Mexico, Sam arrives at a lab headed by his old best friend Deadman (Guillermo del Toro/Jesse Corti)[c] and views a recording left behind by Deadman explaining that he had discovered an anomaly in southern Mexico dubbed a "plate gate", which acts as a portal to Australia where other Death Stranding survivors reside. In addition, Deadman found out that for unknown reasons, Lou was assigned a BB ID number that belonged to an already decommissioned BB, meaning that Lou is not actually registered in the UCA's system. Furthermore, Deadman reveals his lifespan is running out, and has decided to travel to his Beach. Sam returns home to discover that it had been assaulted by an unknown armed group. While Fragile managed to survive, Lou was killed.
One month later, Sam continues to grapple with Lou's death when he is invited by Fragile, as an effort to remedy his depression, to board her ship, the DHV Magellan, to travel through the plate gate so they can link Australia to the chiral network. Lou suddenly returns as a BT entity in Sam's BB pod. On board, he meets Fragile's crew, Tarman (George Miller/Marty Rhone)[d] and Dollman (Fatih Akin/Jonathan Roumie),[e] Drawbridge's mysterious benefactor, Charlie, and the leader of the Automated Public Assistance Company (APAC), the President (Alastair Duncan). The President explains that by connecting all of Australia to the chiral network, it should activate additional plate gates that will be able to connect the rest of the world's continents together. Drawbridge members Rainy (Shioli Kutsuna) and Heartman (Nicolas Winding Refn/Darren Jacobs)[f] later join the crew. Sam commences his mission, but is impeded by the apparent return of Higgs (Troy Baker), who commands an army of "ghost mechs" that terrorize the Australian survivors. In addition, Sam is drawn into "tarfall" anomalies where he is forced to fight a spectral soldier named Neil Vana (Luca Marinelli) who apparently has connections to Lou. After his first encounter with Neil, Sam recovers a chrysalis containing an amnesiac girl Fragile decides to name Tomorrow (Elle Fanning).
After several encounters, Sam is finally able to defeat Neil permanently. Neil gives him a memory device left behind by Sam's late wife Lucy (Alissa Jung). The data inside explains that Lou is actually Sam's biological daughter who was thought to be killed along with Lucy in a voidout. As the daughter of a repatriate, Lou was secretly abducted by BRIDGES and designated BB-00, the very first Bridge Baby. Neil himself was a smuggler who helped smuggle braindead pregnant women from Mexico into the UCA to meet their demand for BBs. He happened to be a childhood acquaintance of Lucy and attempted to help her and Lou escape from BRIDGES. Both Neil and the pregnant Lucy were shot and killed while trying to flee the BRIDGES facility, with Lucy's unborn child, Lou, being extracted from her discretely and, for unknown reasons, secretly put into storage until Sam came across her. Following the revelation, Fragile solemnly reveals to Sam that his BB pod has been empty throughout the entire expedition and that Lou was never there, even as a BT, and that Drawbridge allowed Sam to hallucinate and delude himself so he could grieve and recover on his own terms.
Meanwhile, Higgs lays siege to the final network hub needed to complete the Australian chiral network. Sam and Drawbridge fight their way through Higgs' mechs and activate the hub, completing the Australian chiral network. After the network's successful activation, the President betrays Drawbridge, revealing that he is in fact an amalgamation of four thousand deceased human souls connected to APAC. He explains that he intends to use the expanded chiral network to forcibly seclude all humans away in their Beaches to completely negate the risk of encountering BTs, thus protecting them from the Death Stranding. He adds that he brought Higgs back and provided him the ghost mechs to act as a threat that would force Australia to adopt the chiral network for protection. Charlie then reveals himself as Die-Hardman (Tommie Earl Jenkins), and explains he was already aware of the President's plans and secretly reprogrammed the network via Sam's Q-Pid so that the President can be disconnected from APAS and the chiral network, removing his threat to humanity.
Despite the President being defeated, Higgs returns and captures Tomorrow, revealing that she is actually adult Lou. Since she is Sam's daughter and has a connection to Amelie (Lindsay Wagner),[g] she is the next Extinction Entity, and Higgs intends to use her to continue his original plot of ushering in the Last Stranding to destroy all of humanity. Sam and Drawbridge pursue Higgs to the Beach containing APAS, and Sam is able to defeat Higgs, who is subsequently killed by Lou. Fragile dies shortly after, revealing she had actually been killed by Higgs when he originally assaulted Sam's home. Fragile's Ka managed to cling to life until she could ensure Lou's safety. As Drawbridge returns to the world of the living, Sam views Neil's memories and sees that Lou herself survived Higgs' attack on their home, and Fragile actually teleported her to Neil's Beach and entrusted her safety to Neil's ghost, where she was encased in the chrysalis and was subjected to accelerated aging. Having recovered all of her memories, Lou has an emotional reunion with Sam.
A post-credits scene then shows an older Lou who has become a porter like her father, preparing to enter a plate gate.
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Development and marketing
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In March 2020, Norman Reedus, who portrayed the main protagonist, Sam Porter Bridges, alluded to the possibility of continued collaboration with Hideo Kojima, who wrote, directed, produced and primarily designed the game.[8] On the Beach was revealed to be in development in May 2022, when Reedus participated in an interview with the outlet Leo Edit to discuss his work on the game. In response, Kojima posted a series of photos on Twitter, cheekily depicting him punishing Reedus for confirming the game's existence.[9] In October, following a series of teasers shared by Kojima on social media, Elle Fanning was announced to join the cast for an upcoming Kojima Productions game.[10][11]
Kojima unveiled the game at The Game Awards 2022. He shared that he had written the original story sometime prior to 2020, but decided to rework the narrative when faced with new story concepts that reflected the impact of COVID-19 on the rest of the world.[12] The trailer additionally confirmed that Léa Seydoux and Troy Baker would reprise their roles as Fragile and Higgs, and that Fanning would appear in an undisclosed role. Shioli Kutsuna was announced to have joined the cast.[13][14] Artist and mechanical designer Yoji Shinkawa and composer Ludvig Forssell were confirmed to return to their respective roles.
During the January 2024 PlayStation State of Play, Kojima revealed in a 10-minute trailer new information such as Fanning's character, special appearances by George Miller/Marty Rhone as Tarman and Fatih Akin/Jonathan Roumie as Dollman, as well as new gameplay.[15] Filming and motion capture were completed by May 2024, with Kojima adding that the game was in an "adjustment phase" that would take about a year to complete.[16]
The release date was announced with a trailer at SXSW on March 9, 2025. The trailer revealed the reprisal of Nicolas Winding Refn/Darren Jacobs as Heartman,[17] the new castings of Luca Marinelli as Neil,[18] Alissa Jung as Lucy, Alastair Duncan as The President, and Debra Wilson as Doctor, as well as Woodkid's role as co-composer of the soundtrack, his original song "To the Wilder" being featured in the trailer.[17] On May 29, 2025, Kojima Productions announced the appearance of Hololive virtual YouTuber, Usada Pekora, as a cameo, playing as a "data scientist".[19]
Approximately half-way into development, Kojima decided to re-write the script in order to make it more polarising after it performed very well with test audiences.[20] Kojima explained to co-composer Woodkid:
We have a problem. I'm going to be very honest, we have been testing the game with players and the results are too good. They like it too much. That means something is wrong; we have to change something. If everyone likes it, it means it's mainstream. It means it's conventional. It means it's already pre-digested for people to like it. And I don't want that. I want people to end up liking things they didn't like when they first encountered it, because that's where you really end up loving something.[21]
On May 9, 2025, it was announced the game has gone gold, signifying that development has completed.[22] On June 8, 2025, a premiere event was held at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles following Summer Game Fest, featuring a panel discussion, a live gameplay demo, and the announcement of Woodkid's soundtrack album.[23][24]
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach was released for the PlayStation 5 on June 26, 2025.[17] Special edition versions granted in-game and physical items, with pre-orders of these versions offering bonus digital items and early access to the game two days before it officially released.[25]
Music
The soundtrack was composed by French singer-songwriter Woodkid and Swedish composer Ludvig Forssell, the latter of whom previously composed the score for the first game and worked on Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. After ten years of working as the in-house composer for Kojima Productions, Forssell left to tackle freelance projects. When he returned to write music for the sequel, he said his independence helped him to focus better. Forssell decided to make music that was "much more lyrical and melodic" than the first, with more "human facets".[26] An album of Forssell's original score was released on June 27, 2025.[27]
Woodkid was initially approached to create original songs for the game, following the death of Ryan Karazija of Low Roar, whose songs appear often in the first game.[28] Woodkid worked in-studio and in-person at Kojima Productions in Tokyo across a span of three years composing new music alongside the development of the game.[29] Many of Woodkid's songs are procedural, and dynamically adapt to the player's actions in-game. The released album condenses the procedural tracks, usually a number of hours long, into a few minutes each.[30] The single "To The Wilder" was released alongside the pre-order trailer on 9 March 2025.[31] Woodkid released his full soundtrack album for Death Stranding 2 in collaboration with Hideo Kojima on 13 June 2025.[32]
All tracks are written by Woodkid unless otherwise noted.
The game includes songs, some original and some previously released, from artists like Low Roar, Caroline Polachek, Grimm Grimm, Silent Poets, Magnolian, Hania Rani, Chvrches, Daichi Miura, Gen Hoshino, Usada Pekora, and Kunio Miyauchi.[33][34][35]
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Reception
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![[icon]](#/media/File:Wiki_letter_w_cropped.svg){kind=small} | This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (July 2025) |
Reception
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach received "generally favorable reviews", according to review aggregator website Metacritic.[36] OpenCritic determined that 95% of critics recommended the game.[37] In Japan, four critics from Famitsu gave the game a total score of 39 out of 40, with three critics awarding the game a perfect 10.[40]
Simon Cardy of IGN described Death Stranding 2 as "a more accomplished achievement in nearly every facet" over its predecessor, and that it is "an inventive journey packed full of both shock and awe, the sort of bold work that deserves to be encouraged".[44]
Accolades
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach was nominated for the Most Wanted Game at the Golden Joystick Awards in 2023.[50] The game was nominated for the Most Anticipated Game at the Game Awards 2024.[51]
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See also
- On the Beach – the inspiration for the game's subtitle
Notes
- Additional work by Guerrilla Games
References
External links
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