Few games have made me stop and stare more thanDeath Stranding 2: On the Beach.Kojima Productionshas created an achingly beautiful tale defined by isolation in a natural world that is slowly but surely eating itself alive. But there is something undeniably gorgeous about that grim definition, and the role we play reconnecting its communities and filling the countries of Australia and Mexico with signs of life once again.
By connecting a single porter to the chiral network, you fill wastelands crawling with decay and the undead with structures that ache to grow, change, and reconnect. To try to appreciate a natural world that, through necessity, we had no choice but to leave behind. We could have seen Death Stranding adopt a generic post-apocalyptic vision of the future, but instead we’ve been treated with something lonely, luscious, and so realistic that at times it is bordering on not just lifelike, but alive.
Death Stranding 2 And Decima Engine Are A Match Made In Heaven
Ahead of production on the original Death Stranding, Hideo Kojima embarked on a world tour of sorts where he visited a number of international development studios. One of the most important stops on this tour wasGuerilla Gamesin Amsterdam. Kojima was eager to find both a game engine and a publishing partner for his first independent title, andhe found both in Decima and PlayStation.
Used to powerKillzone: Shadow FallplusHorizons Zero Dawn, andForbidden West, Decima was capable of supporting richly detailed open worlds and intimate character interactions, both of which would be the bedrock of Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding. Three years later, the unorthodox adventure was in our hands.
I didn’t realise the level of improvement present in Death Stranding 2 until I saw a side-by-side comparison of Norman Reedus for myself.It’s quite something.
Following the early access release of Death Stranding 2, a lot of the reasoning behind its excellent visuals and obscenely fast loading times has been simplified down to the fact it runs on Decima. While that was definitely a factor, it feels uncharitable to the development team to suggest a gameplay engine did all the work.
It was more than that, with hundreds of talented programmers, artists, and production staff spending years creating a game that pushed Decima to new heights while simultaneously optimising the experience to run like a dream on PS5 and its Pro variant. Decima was a part of that process, but if Death Stranding was running onUnreal Engine 5 I still think the results would have been groundbreaking. But whyarethe graphics so good anyway?
It all comes down to consistency and scale.Fans have been comparing the visuals between Death Stranding and its sequel only to find themselves blown awayby the increased detail in both characters and environments. I recall the original setting new standards five years ago with its vision of America that looked an awful lot like rural Iceland, but this odd dissonance between the setting’s narrative and visual intentions was easy to cast aside when it looked and felt so good.
This was like an alien world, or a loose interpretation that Kojima Productions could do whatever they liked with. Each rock felt hand-placed, with man-made structures few and far between yet always serving a practical purpose. You are discovering and building so many parts of this world on your own terms, making it impossible not to appreciate.
Should I Play Death Stranding 2 In Quality Or Performance Mode?
Kojima Productions almost makes creating a triple-A blockbuster of this scale look easy. It released half a decade after the original, despite a global pandemic taking place during the interim alongside internally developed PC and PS5 versions of the PS4 original, only further elevating the studio’s standing among a growing fanbase. And yet, Death Stranding 2 is still a bigger, better, and more ambitious experience that listens to the majority of complaints we had about the first.
It is a constructive labour of love not only in terms of gameplay, but also its graphical capabilities. I would argue it’s the best looking PS5 game I’ve played, at least across the triple-A landscape in which we tend to judge things by the same cutting edge metrics.
I’m blown away by how much of it just works without compromise. You can take on an order and step into a world with a rapidly changing weather system that not only influences how an environment you explore looks and feels, but how characters operate within it.
Fellow porters will rush to shelter once a timefall shower begins, or wobble on their feet in response to quakes that rock the environment. Sandstorms, avalanches, showers, and more have a big effect on the gameplay experience while looking tremendous. You can play in the Quality or Performance modes and won’t feel shortchanged,although Digital Foundry has reported the quality mode is largely redundant on PS5 Pro.
Death Stranding 2 runs at a solid 1440p/60fps even on the base PS5, with Pro able to push that benchmark a little further.
Sam is a changing figure as well, and refusing to shower in your private room will reveal to us a smattering of blood and tar stains, while he also picks up sunburns and painful bruising reflective of loads he has been tasked to carry. There is a lifelike aesthetic to everything in Death Stranding 2 in spite of its bizarre premise, making it much easier to buy into everything it presents.
You witness so many moments in which you’ll spend minutes making your way up an incline as another tantalising view awaits just beyond the crest, or you have to look behind yourself to see exactly how far this journey has taken you. This sense of scale is immense, and never did it ever feel compromised or like I was playing a video game tearing at the seams.
The small things blend effortlessly into the grandiosity of it all to create an immersive world. Sitting in Sam’s private room is the perfect time to appreciate the little touches, such as the blemishes on Norman Reedus’ immaculately rendered face or the smaller details dotted across the silly trinkets found at your bedside.
A look around the room reveals all manner of gear alongside general surroundings that change in response to progress throughout the campaign. Take a look into your inventory and zoom into any item, and you’ll be exhausted by the detail, but I’m most impressed by how every single element feels like it belongs in this world, no matter the level of silliness it imposes.
You could argue this visual dedication is excessive, or time could have been better spent in other areas, but I’d argue the opposite is true. Death Stranding 2 is deceptively sparing with its overall design intentions.
The open world is dominated by nature, with structures made by players few and far between, while we seldom see other NPCs during gameplay because so many of them are trapped underground, most represented by holograms. Most of the heavy-lifting is done by cutscenes, while the graphical splendor of the world and vast detail of individual objects, vehicles, and weapons pull the player in and never let go.
I’ve grown so complacent with video game graphics in the past few years as everyone tries to reach the same tired benchmark of realism over and over, but Death Stranding 2 not only meets that lofty goal, but is willing to experiment with it and achieve something truly special.
