Death Stranding 2 announced at Game Awards

Hideo Kojima’s next game has been revealed to be a sequel to the 2019 smash hit Death Stranding, in a strange new trailer at the Game Awards.

The Game Awards was filled with announcements, both for new games and updates to existing games, but none excited fans quite as much as Death Stranding 2.

The follow-up to 2019’s Death Stranding, developed by Kojima Productions and headed up by Hideo Kojima, was introduced with a very strange trailer, in typical Kojima fashion. The trailer focused mostly on Fragile, a character from the first game, who was portrayed by Lea Seydoux.

In the trailer, we see Fragile being chased by a mysterious unknown attacker and then, predictably, the trailer goes entirely off the rails. We see a very strange masked person with a weapon surrounded by robotic guards, an octopus in a BB pod, and a whole bunch of other frankly unexplainable stuff.

The trailer ends with a shot of the first game’s protagonist, Sam Bridges, who was and is seemingly still portrayed by Norman Reedus, looking a lot older than he did in Death Stranding. How big of a role this character will play in Death Stranding 2 is anybody’s guess.

It’s all very typical of Hideo Kojima’s style of storytelling. Kojima rose to fame for his work on Konami’s Metal Gear Solid series, a series with plenty of whimsical twists and turns, before leaving Konami in 2015 to start his own independent studio.

After the trailer was shown, Kojima took to the stage to talk a little bit about the game. He says that he started writing the game before the Covid-19 pandemic, but after having to live through events scarily similar to the first game during the pandemic, he scrapped what he’d written and started over.

Death Stranding 2 looks to be focused on Fragile, an important character from the first game. Picture: Kojima Productions

Despite the trailer ending with the text “DS2”, the official Kojima Productions Twitter account revealed that Death Stranding 2 is just the working title for the project, and that the title could change in the future. The game has been confirmed to be in development for PlayStation 5, and no other platforms have been announced.

Death Stranding 2 isn’t the only strange game to be announced during the 2022 Game Awards. Another game, Crime Boss, features a star-studded Hollywood cast, including Michael Madsen, Chuck Norris, Vanilla Ice, and many more.

It also wasn’t the only much-anticipated sequel to be announced at the show. The Armored Core series was revealed to be making a comeback with the announcement of Armored Core VI, developed by From Software, the studio who made Elden Ring, which won the Game of the Year award at this year’s show.

Written by Oliver Brandt on behalf of GLHF.