Death Stranding 2: On The Beach has officially released, launching exclusively on the PlayStation 5.
Hideo Kojima shared a message for the launch on Twitter:
DEATH STRANDING 2 is out now!
It’s raining today — maybe because I regard myself as the “Rain guy”, I guess.
Anyway, I hope you all enjoy the game.
During the pandemic, there were moments when I truly felt like we might never finish this game…
To have made it to this day is overwhelming.
Thank you all so much!
The game has already received a decent metascore, based on a strong showing on various review outlets. It has a MetaCritic score of 90 based on 109 reviews. On OpenCritic, it has a rating of Mighty, with a Top Critic Average of 90 and 95 % of Critics Recommending. This was certainly an interesting outcome, given how divisive the original Death Stranding turned out, but we do know that Kojima did make changes based on that critical reception.
This may have gone under the radar, but because of the pandemic, Death Stranding 2: On The Beach may be Kojima’s most personal project yet. He spoke about how he changed the game’s story as a consequence of the pandemic and how he reflected on it, as far back as 2023. But recently, Kojima revealed that he himself fell ill in that period, and how seriously it had affected his life.
In an interview with Variety, Kojima said this:
I planned “Death Stranding 2” before the pandemic and was already testing some things out, but after the pandemic hit, I fell quite ill. For the first time in my life, I thought I could never make another game, and I felt very isolated. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t even visit the hospital. I was in a crisis unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before in my life. But as the pandemic raged on, I knew I had to keep working on the game – for the sake of the company.
We’ll cut straight to the chase here – this is what Kojima decided should say by the time they restarted in-person game development in 2022:
By the end of 2022, we were allowed to travel to LA to do performance capture for the first time in about 2 years. That night, we went out to dinner with the actors, and I thought, “This is what we need.” We need to be together, shoot together, and celebrate together.
You can buy Death Stranding 2: On The Beach digitally on PlayStation Store here. You can watch the official final trailer below.
