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When Hideo Kojima—the person long-established right into a online game auteur out of his work on Steel Gear Stable—launched his debut title below the newly fashioned Kojima Productions in 2019, Dying Stranding arrived shrouded in thriller and hype. Each Dying Stranding trailer was stuffed with cryptic imagery and spectral apparitions, and its stacked solid that includes Norman Reedus, Léa Seydoux, and Mads Mikkelsen set expectations sky-high. It was additionally the primary title to return from the creator following a messy and public exodus from Konami. Would Kojima as soon as once more rewrite the foundations of sport design?
Upon launch, Dying Stranding didn’t disappoint a lot because it defied prediction. At its core, it was an immersive, slow-burning post-apocalyptic courier simulator. Gamers took management of Sam Porter Bridges, a pulp comics-esque naming conference of a protagonist affected by aphenphosmphobia, an excessive concern of being touched, tasked with finishing a herculean cross nation trek throughout haunted landscapes by plagued eldritch horrors with the assistance of a child in a container on his chest—avoiding environmental hazards and balancing parcels on each obtainable piece of actual property on his physique to “reconnect America.” Reductively, Dying Stranding is regarded in gaming circles as a “triple-A” indie sport, with a bizarre (however not overly confusingly dense) world-building serving because the connective tissue propelling each cautious footstep on Sam’s odyssey. What Dying Stranding lacks in typical thrills, it made up for with sheer conceptual weight.
And sure—it eerily echoed actual life in methods nobody anticipated. The sport’s premise, centered on isolation, bunkered survivors, and the life-or-death position of supply drivers, landed eerily near residence mere months earlier than the world locked down on account of a world pandemic. It was dubbed “the sport that predicted 2020,” not a primary for Kojima, and never unfairly.
Within the Case of the First Dying Stranding
Being a “large concept sport” comes with its personal set of challenges. Its narrative usually will get buried beneath a gradual drip of precise story development, unraveling throughout lengthy stretches of gameplay that make the standard open-world promise of “you see that mountain, you possibly can go there” really feel surprisingly perfunctory. Former Kotaku author Tim Rogers as soon as likened it to consuming your greens earlier than dessert, however I’d argue it’s nearer to gaming’s purest instance of the carrot-on-a-stick design—besides right here, the carrot is a 10-minute cutscene stylized as gaming’s navel-gazing at eager to be cinema, and the stick is a seven-hour hike.
Kojima’s eccentric roster of superpowered, trauma-scarred outcasts sometimes interrupts the lonely, meditative rhythm of traversal with dense lore drops laced in pun-heavy dialogue. At occasions, it’s profound; at others, it teeters dangerously near groan-worthy. A lot of Dying Stranding‘s script leans into Kojima’s newfound signature use of homonyms and wordplay—an method that always thrives in Japanese, a language wealthy in double meanings and visible punning via kanji. There, it in all probability lands with layered nuance; in English, it falls someplace between a dad joke and a freshman poetry slam stanza.
Nonetheless, regardless of its lengthy stretches of powerwalking monotony, the challengingly Steel Gear-esque moments of tactical espionage, Monster Power product placement, and the memes about Norman Reedus and his funky fetus that spawned limitless parody, there’s a wealthy, unusual magnificence to the primary Dying Stranding. It’s a sport value experiencing as soon as, after which revisiting vicariously via those that have dissected its mythos in in-depth essays and lore movies. Its legacy is secured not simply as a daring experiment however as a haunting artifact of the pre-pandemic world—one which resonates otherwise, and perhaps extra profoundly, in hindsight.
Personally, whereas I appreciated the high-concept ambition of Dying Stranding, I struggled with it and in the end misplaced curiosity. It felt extra like a conceptual artwork piece than a totally realized sport. An mental train whose concepts overshadowed the expertise and gratification of taking part in it. As somebody who values inventive works that marry emotional gravity with speculative cultural context, I usually discovered Dying Stranding‘s narrative throughlines reaching additional than they may totally grasp. The worldbuilding fascinated me way over the story it was constructed to help.
Now, six years later, with Dying Stranding 2: On The Seaside, set to launch later this week, I spent 65 hours to hit the credit (with hours left of pending deliveries nonetheless in transit, and roads unbuilt) of the extremely anticipated sequel and really feel practically the other. The place the primary Dying Stranding felt like a conceptual temper board come to life, this sequel is extra narratively grounded. It’s like a musician remixing their biggest hits with a tighter manufacturing—fewer self-indulgent lyrical bars, extra emotional readability. Granted, it’s nonetheless a narrative that’s bought its foibles. However this time it lands extra usually than it drifts into the fake profundity of its predecessor.
A Sophomore Effort Redefining “Strand”
Set 11 months after the occasions of the unique sport, Dying Stranding 2: On the Seaside picks up with Sam and his bridge child, Lou, dwelling off the grid. Fragile (Seydoux) arrives on his doorstep with a job that pulls the freelance courier again into the sector. This time, the mission is to combine Mexico into the United Cities of America’s ever-expanding chiral community. Basically, Sam is tasked with lacing up his boots and trekking throughout the continent, linking his USB canine tag key fob to bunker mailboxes and connecting settlements to their supernatural strand-based Wi-Fi.
The sport is self-aware sufficient to confess its acquainted name to motion—extra trekking, extra connecting—however framed with a wink. Rebuilding the world, one footstep at a time, shouldn’t be too tough because you’ve finished it earlier than and got here out straight… till it’s. Simply as Sam nears the tip of what looks like a modest fetch-quest, the story swerves dramatically, widening its scope to increase the community to Australia as effectively. From right here, the narrative spirals into one thing much more bold, involving the return of Sam’s rival Higgs (Troy Baker) and his newfound mech-ghost military, in addition to a brand new antagonist not-so-subtly modeled after Steel Gear Stable‘s Snake, Neil (Luca Marinelli).
Becoming a member of Sam on this escalating journey are contemporary faces like Tarman (modeled after Mad Max director George Miller), Wet (performed by Deadpool Yukio actor Shioli Kutsuna), Dollman (modeled after director Religion Akin and performed by Jonathan Roumie), and a mysterious woman named Tomorrow (Elle Fanning), alongside returning allies appreciated Deadman (modeled after director Guillermo del Toro and performed by Jesse Corti) and Heartman (modeled after Nicolas Winding Refn and performed by Darren Jacobs).
In Dying Stranding 2, managing Sam nonetheless feels such as you’ve adopted a rugged, soft-spoken post-apocalyptic Tamagotchi. You’re consistently tending to his hygiene with showers and potty breaks to get the blood, dust, and gunk of the day without work his individual, recalibrating his loadout in a Tetris-like stock grid that may shortly collapse like Jenga if a BT±the inky monstrosities that stalk the lands, injecting bursts of pulse-spiking horror into On The Seaside‘s strolling sim vibes on a dime—knocks him and his tower of cargo off steadiness.
Between encounters, Sam wants snack breaks—munching stamina-restoring larvae, taking swigs from his canteen, or tapping into blood baggage that function makeshift well being kits throughout particularly sticky scuffles. It’s a loop that’s each ritualistic and irksome, however weirdly intimate. As soon as I settled again into its rhythm, fastidiously balancing weight by holding down triggers, preplanning my cargo, and eyeing each misplaced parcel, and negotiating whether or not I ought to add it to Sam’s burden as humanity’s pack mule as a result of it’s vacation spot is “on the best way,” I began to embrace the unusual zen of all of it.
Not like my first go-around with its predecessor, there’s one thing endearingly relatable about overloading Sam with gear, teetering below the burden of ambition and generosity like a dad decided to hold all of the grocery baggage in a single go, somewhat than humoring a second journey. It additionally didn’t harm that finishing deliveries rewarded me with instruments to make traversal much less tedious by offering me materials to assemble roads to make traversal much less of a ache within the ass, and tracks so as to add to a playlist so I can whistle as I work (as long as I used to be in areas I’ve given chiral community protection to). This grew to become much more manageable when automobiles and ziplines got here into play, turning multi-trip dread right into a cross-country journey with a rig constructed for warfare, or trucker hauls to construct extra pavement between settlements like I used to be Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Dollman serves as Sam’s ever-present companion all through On the Seaside, functioning like a clip-on belt attraction meets mountain climbing buddy. He fills the silence of On the Seaside‘s usually monotonous strolling with commentary, assists with surveillance when makes an attempt at stealth run sideways, and even affords suggestions while you get sidetracked hyperfixating on constructing roads, by reminding you of your important goal. He’s principally to Sam what Mimir was to Kratos in God of Warfare, however filtered via Kojima’s eccentric lens. Whether or not it’s reconnaissance for fight or offering emotional ballast in the course of the journey, Dollman’s low-frame-rate presence is as purposeful as it’s oddly comforting.
Whereas most of Sam’s allies don’t accompany you bodily, they continue to be current in quieter, digital methods—checking in via social media-like SMS updates and snapshots of their day-to-day whilst you’re en path to the subsequent locale. These messages arrive as you slog via treacherous terrain, constructing roads, bridges, and mills throughout a panorama slowly being formed by your personal arms, like creating pure trails on a nature path, and by the footprints and constructive efforts of different gamers within the sport’s on-line asynchronous community. You may like their constructions, learn stray bits of encouraging indicators, and even borrow their automobiles, making a mushy echo of camaraderie amid the isolation.
It transforms what might have been a dreadful, monotonous string of fetch quests into one thing quietly significant. My deliveries and infrastructure work stopped feeling like solo busy work and as an alternative grew to become half of a bigger, shared mission—a collective effort tethered to the sport’s thematic core. What’s extra, not like the primary sport’s narrative, which leans extra into summary meditations on connection, Dying Stranding 2 is anchored in a leaner, plot-driven momentum, planting seeds of hope as you journey with Sam to his extra private story of overcoming loss and navigating a future for himself. I used to be reminded, in each delicate story beats and asynchronous multiplayer gestures, that I wasn’t hauling this burden alone. Whether or not it was an anchor left on the aspect of a mountain that another person left behind, or a message warning me of hazards on my route, there’s a persistent sense that others, digital or in any other case, had my again when a climb started to really feel insurmountable.
However amongst this broader feeling of connection it’s Seydoux’s Fragile who’s the actual anchor to On the Seaside this time round. She captains Drawbridge, a submersible airship that doubles because the mission’s hub and lifeline for Sam’s motley crew, making her position really feel much more central and emotionally resonant than earlier than. And whereas Sam’s band of allies largely hold their presence to cutscenes, they’re not simply digital marionettes of Kojima’s extreme lore dumps. They really feel extra like an evolving discovered household—built-in into the narrative and Sam’s mission, not simply orbiting round it. There’s a higher sense that they’re within the trenches with him, not standing on the sidelines posing dramatically for movement seize posterity.
If the entire above has sounded overwhelming… it’s. Kojima Productions has saved it in thoughts, with each a recap video that summarizes the broad strokes of its first sport to get new and previous gamers on top of things, and the inclusion of an interactive actual time glossary that pings on the highest proper nook of the display screen with the introduction of latest correct nouns and phrases, making it simple for gamers to maintain Dying Stranding‘s ever-expanding lexicon and story developments straight by referring again to Corpus, its closely annotated digital database tome.
Away from its dense worldbuilding nonetheless, from the primary body of Dying Stranding 2 Kojima is totally in his cinematic bag. The opening scene of the sport is so photorealistic that I needed to blink twice making an attempt to decipher when it transitioned from drone footage to an in-engine render of a mountainside, which instantly requested me to stroll from the highest of a mountain to Sam’s hidden abode.
Dying Stranding 2‘s tone is wealthy and indulgent, usually bordering on decadent. There’s a self-aware messiness to the way it picks up the narrative shards of its first sport. Some characters, like Mama (Margaret Qualley) and Die-Laborious Man (Tommie Earl Jenkins), are benched, whereas others, like Fragile, are additional expanded upon. Most prominently, On the Seaside‘s plot reimagines its linear development in favor of crafting a brand new odyssey that’s much less “pandemic prophetic” and extra centered on connections strengthened by the method of grieving, and rebuilding after struggling a tragic loss. Whereas the sport is actually about bringing humanity complete once more by your lonesome, this time round its about uniting your complete globe as Sam terraforms Australia and Mexico, constructing bridges to reconnect the straggling, hikikomori vestiges of humanity.
The Man Who Delivers
Gameplay-wise, On The Seaside continues to oscillate between a meditative mountain climbing simulator and a sprawling cinematic spectacle stuffed with hype moments and aura—the latter dangling like a shiny reward on the far finish of a grueling pilgrimage. I routinely tiptoed via ruins, mercenary outposts, and ghost-drenched wastelands, cradling Lou with every stumble or misstep as my fastidiously stacked tower of weaponry threatened to topple over. Its geometric minefield of picturesque terrain continues to be as oppressive because it may very well be within the first, if no more so, as I discovered myself dangling off cliffsides, braving torrential rivers, and inching up icy escarpments, one calculated motion at a time (albeit usually adopted by an improvised one). On The Seaside is sequel-scaled, sure—however purposeful, not padded.
What lands otherwise this time is Sam himself. He not marches ahead because the gruff, unflinchingly obedient, and politically agnostic mailman resigned to his destiny that he as soon as was. As an alternative, he shocked me by questioning the very basis of his mission. Not in deliberately sly (however groanworthy) meta jabs of the primary sport, the place he compares himself to Mario in search of his “Princess Seaside,” however with honest ethical unease. Reconnecting the world doesn’t sound as noble when it begins to seem like he’s simply doing the legwork for post-apocalyptic imperialism for America, which he surprisingly calls into query within the sport’s early levels.
The seeds of battle in On the Seaside plant between reconnection and overreach, therapeutic and haunting, and so they give it a extra chaotic, extra human pulse. It’s messier, much less summary, and much more emotionally legible than its predecessor. Second-to-moment, the traversal stays the core attraction of On the Seaside. You’re not simply transferring, you’re mapping, adapting, and experimenting. Suppose The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom‘s improvisation meets Phantom Ache‘s stealth improvisations when issues break unhealthy, and also you’re immediately cornered with out the correct instruments to get from level A to level B. The gunplay fight continues to be there. Crank the problem up a notch to the very best issue, and the enemy AI will get surprisingly savvy and savage, permitting for Dishonored-style stealth and tense firefights that really feel genuinely earned while you defeat waves of enemies.
However that’s by no means actually the place the guts of On the Seaside lies. The place the primary sport made you slog for hours earlier than it let its story moments rear their head, On the Seaside hits its tempo sooner. Whereas selecting up the items of world tragedies, such because the pandemic, continues to be within the DNA of On the Seaside‘s pathos, gone is the heavy reliance on it as an allegory. As a replacement is one thing extra introspective, present-minded, common, and grounded than it’s speculative. Much less “look how prophetic and sensible we have been” and extra, “how can we choose up the items and correctly reconnect?”
When you get used to the terrain puzzles of every of On the Seaside‘s landmarks—when your instincts kick in and the map turns into muscle reminiscence—these fetch quests begin feeling therapeutic in a approach. The traversal, not the fight, turns into the sport’s engine. Positive, the Silent Hill-coded BT encounters and MGS-inspired skirmishes inject stress and pleasure, but it surely’s the quiet rhythm between them that defines the journey.
Sam now feels extra like a protagonist in his personal story. Now not a cipher for Kojima’s pun-laden essays on connection, he lastly clicks into place as he navigates the subsequent steps in his journey alongside the mission he’s been saddled with. The true drama, whereas compelling, isn’t the firefights with Higgs or sussing out Neil’s deal; it’s whether or not Sam has the arrogance to belief his legs, his gear, and the chart he’s set for his journey.
The Carrot on the Finish of a Masochistic Stick Is Well worth the Ache
Within the lead-up to On the Seaside‘s launch, Kojima confessed that early playtest suggestions made him uneasy, not as a result of it was unfavourable, however as a result of it was too constructive. He purportedly nervous the sport would possibly come throughout too mainstream, so made changes, presumably with the intent to make Dying Stranding‘s friction extra impactful, and infrequently extra hostile, to its gamers. Across the 70 p.c mark of the sport, I felt the burden of that philosophy first hand, when the considerably simple crusing of On the Seaside‘s gameplay as much as that time turned downright oppressive. There was a second the place I hated the sport for a stable five-hour stretch, on account of how granularly tedious, and outlandish, the supply calls for grew to become.
I nonetheless don’t solely love On the Seaside having navigated that momentary frustration, both. Nevertheless, I do admire the way it made me worth the issues I didn’t like concerning the first, particularly the sense of place earned in Dying Stranding‘s world by navigating it by yourself two ft. I might by no means have imagined the sport would have me go from abandoning a tower of weaponry on my backpack, to carrying an emu throughout a haunted mountain vary, gazing from its crest to catch the dawn, and listening to a rooster crow as if I had reached a sacred checkpoint. It’s absurd. It’s poignant. It’s Kojima. New tracks so as to add to your playlist cue when close to your vacation spot, like divine applause. I began treating Sam like a Tamagotchi—testing his limits, struggling with him, studying to pivot when every thing collapses. Your hubris turns into your technique. Your journey turns into a ritual that I couldn’t assist however love, albeit in a masochistic sense, as a participant.
On the Seaside‘s narrative speaks louder and clearer than its predecessor. Its story, whereas nonetheless unusual, is extra coherent—its symbolism much less cluttered by its vocabulary. At occasions, it performs like a proof-of-concept for Kojima’s inevitable foray into filmmaking. However there’s magnificence in its damaged pacing. After surviving that five-hour gauntlet of pure punishment, the ultimate act delivers in spades. Sure, the sport is maddeningly back-loaded—but it surely’s value it.
What’s most shocking is how Kojima’s signature penchant for weirdness, as soon as a defend for abstraction, now seems like scaffolding for one thing extra emotionally grounded. It’s tighter, and stronger for it, and even prepared to poke enjoyable at itself to point out it’s realized from expertise, to the purpose there have been occasions I felt like I used to be sincerely laughing with Kojima, not at his trademark absurdity.
On the Seaside nonetheless calls for a ton of endurance. It nonetheless punishes, but it surely additionally rewards, with a story that feels sculpted somewhat than splattered. The place its predecessor felt like a rambling, late-night textual content, On the Seaside is what occurs when these ideas are carved into marble for all to see. The glossary breaks, the fight struggles, the limitless geometric trek, and, most of all, the distinctive appearing on show from its stellar solid—all of them contribute to a finale that lands with shocking magnificence.
If On the Seaside proved something, it’s that Kojima—eccentric, indulgent, sensible—nonetheless is aware of easy methods to make the absurd really feel resonant. This sequel isn’t simply an echo of the primary. It’s the payoff. It’s the unusual, painstaking journey I hoped for the primary time round—and someway, towards all odds, it sticks the touchdown regardless of all of it.
Dying Stranding 2: On the Seaside releases on PlayStation 5 June 26.
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