Star-studded video game Death Stranding 2 drops on June 26

PARIS – Japanese video game legend Hideo Kojima will release Death Stranding 2: On The Beach on June 26, a star-studded PlayStation sequel inspired by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Kojima, 61, has said the follow-up to the meditative 2019 game, in which The Walking Dead (2010 to 2022) star Norman Reedus played post-apocalyptic deliveryman Sam Porter Bridges, is about connection.

“The social situation was that everyone was divided” when development began on Death Stranding in 2016, Kojima said as he presented the new instalment at Los Angeles’ Summer Game Fest on June 8.

“I said, let’s get connected. Right after that, we had the pandemic, and my fiction became a little reality” as people communed over new digital channels, he added.

Death Stranding 2 (DS2) reflects his hope that people will rediscover analogue ways of being together following the years of isolation, he said.

The first Death Stranding was a hybrid between a hiking simulator and classic action game. It was set in a gloomy, fantastical universe, where characters are aged by the rain and carry foetuses that warn them of dangerous ghostly creatures nearby.

Reedus’ character Bridges had the job of reconnecting the last outposts of civilisation in a devastated United States following a disaster.

This time, Bridges’ adventures will take him to Mexico and Australia.

The story was completely rewritten in the light of Covid-19, said Kojima, creator of the Metal Gear (1987 to present) stealth action saga.

“I already had the DS2 idea, but I had to scratch that off because I experienced the pandemic. So, I rewrote,” he said. “It’s a new connection... I put that in the game system and I want everyone to experience that.”

French actress Lea Seydoux – star of films like No Time To Die (2021) and Inglourious Basterds (2009) – returns in 3D form, alongside Reedus.

New big-name talent is also along for the ride, including American actress Elle Fanning and the likeness of Mad Max (2015) director George Miller.

French singer Woodkid composed the score for the new episode.

Kojima Productions, the eponymous studio the developer founded in 2015 after leaving Japanese giant Konami, said in March that the first Death Stranding had more than 20 million players.

And the franchise is broadening out to other media, with a feature film in development with American studio A24 as well as an animated film.

Kojima is already turning his energy to other projects, including a horror game, OD, co-written with American director Jordan Peele, and developed in partnership with Microsoft.

He is also returning to the world of spy games in the vein of Metal Gear with a new espionage title, PHYSINT. AFP