Death Stranding 2: On The Beachis everything I wanted from the sequel toHideo Kojima’s utterly bizarre post-apocalyptic delivery simulator. In essence, that means it doesn’t change all that much. It instead chooses to iterate upon traversal, exploration, and combat with nice quality-of-life improvements to its myriad systems that make it much more fun to play.
After spending 50 hours working on the single-player campaign, I’ve already gone back for more and begun the journey of getting each and every porter to the coveted top ranking. I’m going to be here for a while, and I’m totally okay with that. But despite my praise for the things the game does well, the narrative still unfolds in the same annoyingly predictable ways.
For one, please stop sending me to my private room for a nap whenever you want to hurl out some exposition. It’s tired, obvious, and the storytelling is capable of so much more.
Sam Porter Bridges Doesn’t Need To Nap So Much In Death Stranding 2
Your base of operations in Death Stranding 2 is the DHV Magellan, a vessel piloted by the one and only Tarman, who can use this ship to swim through underground tar currents and travel the world. It’s also what Sam, Fragile, Tomorrow, Dollman, and everyone else call home. When a mission is over, you come here to rest and regroup, before taking another order from its central terminal.
This is where the primary private room is situated, a place you return to in order to sleep, wash your face, soak up exposition, and do other things whenever you fancy. I loved it, and filling it with all manner of trinkets, both practical and sentimental, made it Sam’s one and only home, which felt even more important since his Mexico shelter had been ransacked.
There’s nothing better than jumping into some VR missions or taking a well-deserved shower after being demolished by a bunch of ghosts, and the fact you get to watch as Sam gets all clean is the cherry on top. But it isn’t the multitude of things you’re able to do in the private room that bothers me, it’s how I am thrown in there again and again under the same predictable pretense.
Unfortunately, Sam no longer gives you the middle finger or punches you in the face when you try and stare at his crotch. A net loss if I’m being honest.
Upon completing a main order, 99 percent of the time, you will see Fragile appear as a blue hologram to encourage Sam to return to the private room for a rest before taking on new orders and progressing the narrative. Sometimes you won’t even have a choice, and you’ll be thrust into major cutscenes and a stint in the private room.
When playing through the game for review with someone watching it unfold beside me, we started to predict this forced injection of dialogue and groaned in bemusement whenever it became a reality.
Hideo Kojima Is Capable Of Far More Natural Storytelling
For a game that is so daringly unconventional in everything else it does, it sucks that, upon returning to my private room, I knew I was going to be fed a gradual unfolding of the story with Dollman or Fragile spewing out exposition, or new characters aboard the Magellan with an otherwise compelling backstory compartmentalised into a series of quick scenes and bone dry dossiers with an isolated ship acting as the grand stage.
Kojima Productions were wise, giving the player a hub area that grows with time and centres on a crew you come to care about, but it’s so strange that none of them seem to exist outside of it. Why do cutscenes have to take place within its walls? Isn’t there a more natural way to encourage going back to it than demanding Sam needs a rest? This guy sleeps more than anyone I’ve ever known.
There is a tremendous late game twist that recontextualizes why Sam sleeps so much and why his allies are so worried about him getting enough rest, but I’m not sure this narrative is strong enough to forgive an otherwise frustrating element of game design.
It harkens back to the jumbo jet you returned to at the beginning of each act inMetal Gear Solid 4to receive a briefing on the next mission all while new characters joined, left, and grew with the times. It works within the confines of a more linear stealth adventure, but being pulled from an open world constantly to have a quick kip just flies in the face of Death Stranding 2’s ambition.
Private rooms can also be accessed through select locations and shelters, and these even come with their own unique design and a handful of other cool features like photos which can be projected onto the walls. Mine is a VTuber.
What sucks is that the overarching narrative is largely thrilling as it manages to tell a deeply personal story about grief, growth, and societal connection that tears your heart out before piecing it back together again.
Longer scenes outside the DHV Magellan and big set pieces are some of the best I’ve ever seen, so it’s doubly underwhelming that other scenes are all housed within such limited circumstances. Please let me know if you also find its clumsy way of working you in a private room again and again to be absolutely hilarious yet incredibly frustrating.
