Death Stranding 2: On the Beach will be a much larger game than the original. The news came from Eurogamer, which recently had the chance to play around 30 hours of the game at Kojima Productions headquarters and relayed the info that this constitutes roughly 40% of the story. This means the game could last as much as 75 hours, nearly double the average playtime of the previous installment (40 hours).
It’s not too surprising when you consider that the first game was the debut project of a brand new studio. While it had Sony’s support, it was still a new IP from a new team, albeit led by a world-famous game designer. Following the first game’s successful release (Kojima Productions revealed last month that the game had reached 20 million players to date, although that counts players who checked out the game via their subscription services), Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is going the classic way of bigger and better, albeit still with Kojima’s unique twist.
One of the changes from the original will be the increased combat options. Kojima said that this was partly because of people asking him to make another Metal Gear title:
There are so many people all over the world asking me to make another Metal Gear, so I added more options for combat. When I was working out those mechanics, I was a little worried because many of the staff that worked with me on Metal Gear still work here, and we kept saying to each other, ‘Does this feel too much like Metal Gear?’ It wasn’t on purpose.
As a side note, the sequel will include some unreleased songs by the late Ryan Karazija, founder and lead vocalist of Low Roar. Kojima said he was contacted by Karazija’s family, who told him that the singer wished for these songs to be included in the new game (his work was heavily featured in the previous Death Stranding).
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach will be released on June 26, along with a new limited-edition DualSense controller. The game will initially be available for Sony’s PlayStation 5; however, given that Kojima Productions has purchased back the publishing rights from Sony, it’s fair to expect the game to launch on PC and Xbox (like the original) in the not-too-distant future.
