Feeling Stranded on the Beach

When Death Stranding dropped in 2019, I took a week off work to play it nonstop and also quit weed.

I say this because when I describe my memories of the game, the fact that my brain was going through a metamorphosis at the same time is probably important background information. At launch, it felt like nothing I'd ever played before; building off of the asynchronous multiplayer popularized by FromSoftware, it provided a rough, untested but thrillingly new combination of factory simulation, stealth action and that unique combination of prescience, sincerity and flat-out weirdness that marks creator Hideo Kojima's signature narrative style.

There was a real feeling of struggle and community; the experience of trudging along a mountain ridge for ten or fifteen minutes and running across a generator or zipline placed by a familiar name was exhilirating. It wasn't always fun in the traditional sense but it was always interesting and fresh, and its ability to create a reflective system of game mechanics and narrative that played off of each other felt like being at the ground floor of something new.

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, released last week, is an evolution on the idea, a game that mimics its predecessor's structure both mechanically and narratively but can't mimic its novelty. It's hard not to compare it to Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, the last time Kojima tried to make a direct follow-up to a hugely successful first chapter (I know, technically Solid was the third game but the MSX games are largely preludes now). That game knocked me flat on my ass when I was 17; it gave you a technically upgraded version of the first game for the first hour before throwing you on a series of insane loops that both revolutionized gaming narrative (and metanarrative) and presaged basically the entire arc of information systems theory in the 21st century. Stranding 2... does not do that.

I haven't played the Director's Cut of the first game in detail, but this game mirrors a lot of the criticisms I've read about its gameplay tweaks. I don't think I ever felt stressed or in danger outside of a couple seconds in a couple boss fights in the entire 60-odd hours my normal mode playthrough took – not in combat, and not in traversal. Roads and flat-enough surfaces are plentiful to the point where I basically spent the entire damn game in my pickup truck and made the vast majority of my deliveries with 0% damage. Necessity is the mother of invention, and the game just never made me need to try anything else, so I was remarkably uninventive. More friction to trigger and inspire more invention would have gone a long way.

MILD/STRUCTURAL SPOILERS FOLLOW

What's shocking about Stranding 2, actually, is how deeply predictable it is down to the very end. It mirrors the first game's structure almost exactly, but without the second- and third-act swerves that MGS2 pulled to make its mirror image of the first MGS a funhouse one. Narratively it provides some interesting evolutions and counterpoints to the first game, integrating violence and its necessity tightly into both the gameplay and the story, pivotingly from the first game's pacifist bent in a way that feels earned. But it's still a cross-contintental adventure plugging in the Internet everywhere before a final act where you have to get back home without the benefit of teleportation just using the infrastructure you built, punctuated by three tight action setpieces set in otherworldly dreamscapes against a military man. (Which worked well in the first game as Kojima exorcising the ghost of Metal Gear's militarism – an exorcism that didn't go particularly well judging by the content of this sequel.)

It has a number of surprises and plot twists, but aside from the inciting incident a couple hours in that propels the plot forward, almost every big surprise – including the very final moments, even during and after the credits – is so heavily telegraphed that it's impossible to tell whether Kojima even thinks he's surprising you. The first game carried the weight of revelation, especially in its final moments; the terrifying sense of approaching the unknown and not knowing what you're going to find, and the thrilling, driving anticipation of finding out. In this sequel that's been replaced with the stark feeling of inevitability and watching things play out exactly, exhaustingly, as you expect, and Kojima's tone and direction don't make this seem like an intentional choice.

SPOILERS END

I'd also be remiss not to touch on what a huge missed opportunity the game's setting is. The first Death Stranding felt like an intelligent and pointed critique of America; this game does well with the first map in Mexico, but the bulk of the game in Australia makes the setting feel like an afterthought. You'd think that there would be something about the continent from a social perspective – aboriginal traditions and the blurring between dreams and reality, the continent's colonial history as an ex-penal colony – that would provide some level of flavor to the setting to distinguish it from America, but Kojima's main interest in Australia seems to be 1) where it sits as a continental plate and 2) the fact that Mad Max is set there and he gets an excuse to include George Miller. It's a level of incuriosity in his subject that's completely uncharacteristic of Kojima, and likely goes a long way towards causing the game to feel like a retread of its predecessor.

None of this is to say that Stranding 2 is a bad game. It's extremely polished, smartly written, has a deliciously bonkers final act (that will make, if they ever play it, a few sectors of Extremely Online people apoplectic) that goes a long way towards leaving a good taste in my mouth, and is chock full of secrets and objectives that I'm sure I'm going to spend a long time with now that I've already rolled the credits. It's got the heart, humanity and intelligence of Kojima's best work. But it feels depressingly repetitive, both of its predecessor and of Kojima's career as a whole. I'm glad Kojima's moving to new pastures with OD and Physint and hope that new beginnings lead to new innovations, but this one was, for better or for worse, just more of a good thing.