Death Stranding 2: On The Beachis an elegant and intimate story, heavily laden with grief and loneliness… and then jam-packed with self-insert jokes and silly Easter eggs from Hideo Kojima himself, because no one else at Kojima Productions wanted to add them.
Kojima is widely considered a modern gaming auteur. His signature influence is ingrained into every game he creates, and Death Stranding 2 has his indelible imprint in every chapter.
No other creator could present us with such strange and unusual characters as Die-Hardman,Hot Coldman, and yes, even you Fatman, and place them in completely serious and dramatic events with such a stoic expression. To be a Kojima fan is to not only delve into the psychological and physical tolls of war or the lingering effects of grief and separation, but to embrace the absolute “Kojima-ness” of fighting a man who shoots hornets out of his hands, or taking some sweet delivery jobs from Conan O’Brian while wearing an otter on your head.
Could Kojima Create Something So Unexpected That He’d Surprise Himself?
We Could Call It Kojima-Ception
In a recentinterview with GameSpark, Kojima talked about the making of Death Stranding 2, including the many references to himself scattered around the game.
“I put all of these things in. Even if I said to the staff, “Please put them in!”, they would just say, “Huh?” and pretend not to know (laughs),” said Kojima,as translatedthrough Google. “Some will only be noticed on a second or third playthrough. I designed them for those who like to explore and theorize.”
We already know about thenot-Solid Snake character, Neil, whose voice actor thought he was playing Snake, but many more are waiting to be found.
“At night in a hot spring, if you look up at the sky you’ll see a very beautiful celestial display. Zoom in there and a lot of stuff appears, so play around with it. Some people might be a little put off (laughs),” said Kojima.
Outside of Kojima-specific references, Death Stranding 2 follows the first game by adding many well-known (or not) faces to the character roster as preppers waiting to give you deliveries. Kojima said that many people would visit the studio and ask to appear in the game. So many people were scanned that not all of them have yet been put into the game, yet.
It’s going to be a while before the community finds all the Easter eggs put into the game, but I can’t wait to see what they find. Death Stranding 2: On The Beachis out now on Playstation 5.
