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Death Stranding 2 is a tough sell for many, owing to its core mechanics being based around the thrilling science of package delivery. But I like it! Kojima’s stories never interest me much, but on a mechanical level I appreciate the chill, podcast-friendly experience of trudging across pretty landscapes with a backpack full of stale pizza and science experiments, given a little zing by the occasional Metal Gear Solid 5 base infiltration sequence or robot fight. There’s something quietly satisfying about becoming ever more efficient in the simple task of moving parcels around, finding new methods of travel and laying down infrastructure as you trudge relentlessly across continents.
I was fine with that! Or at least, I thought I was. The problem is that Kojima’s instinct to give all ancillary characters their own moment in the spotlight – and ridiculous superpowers – has given me some serious action envy.
Warning: spoilers for Death Stranding 2 to follow:
I’m just an ordinary guy
Let’s be clear about something here: Death Stranding 2 is certainly not a game devoid of action, far from it, but that action isn’t necessarily the point. You kill the various bandits, ghosts and robots found across the outback only if they stand in the way of the main task, which is locating new bunkers and pushing their Netflix DVDs under the door. The game’s typically oddball story does add in the aforementioned mandatory combat encounters, but those don’t feel like the actual point of Death Stranding 2, only a recurring side activity. You’ll definitely spend longer lugging parcels around than you would choking out goons or ghostbusting.
And again, I was totally OK with that arrangement. At least until a moment where I saw Elle Fanning channeling the movie Serenity as she used various superpowers to teleport and rot enemies with a single touch, before backflipping away to evade a hailstorm of bullets.
Huh. That looks… really fun. Can I do that? No? OK, I guess Sam will just… sit in the periphery of the scene for now. Later on, there’s also a chonky super-samurai, a kung-fu pizza man, a woman who can summon time-altering storms, a Temu-brand Solid Snake who keeps reversing gravity to shoot at you from the ceiling, the director of Babe: Pig in the City flying a warship submarine, and of course Troy Baker in Marilyn Manson make-up, shredding a sci-fi guitar that shoots lightning and fire, as well as enjoying various necromantic and robotic superpowers.
And what does Sam bring to these sequences? Three airguns from a 3D printer and a furrowed brow, mostly. In fact, I can think of multiple occasions where other characters will be doing something outrageously cool, and Sam will simply be watching from the sidelines, massively outmatched and with nothing to contribute. Oh my god, I realized, I’m a background character in a Street Fighter game. I’m Jimmy Olsen. I’m Marcus Brody.
To be clear, I have nothing against a protagonist being less powerful than those around them. In fact, that’s a very common part of the hero’s journey: skill, cunning, empathy and courage closing the gap and allowing them to match those who have all the material advantages. But I do slightly object to a protagonist who’s less interesting than those around them. You can unlock a few of the Death Stranding 2 pizza martial arts or Higgs’ guitar, but neither lives up to the promise of those high-octane cinematics when placed in Sam’s fumbling, all-too-mortal hands. A tease at the end of the game that suggests a new, more potent protagonist will be taking the reins for Death Stranding 3 comes as a welcome relief, if a bit too late.
Hideo Kojima has been threatening to move into the Hollywood movie scene for years, but looking at those sequences and his generally eccentric, over the top style, it feels to me that what he really seems to want to make is a 1-on-1 fighting game, or something colorfully exaggerated, like a Devil May Cry or Bayonetta-style flamboyant brawler. I know he had minimal involvement in cult classic MGSR: Revengeance, but maybe getting it out of his system wouldn’t have been the worst thing. It certainly appears that there’s a similar game going on in the background of Death Stranding 2, and if they’re going to keep teasing it, I wish they’d let me play it.
Curious to find out more of our thoughts on the game? Check out our Death Stranding 2 review here!