Death Stranding 2: On The Beach review

Recommended

by bigbaddice

There is a powerful difference between the way this game begins and the opening of the first one. Whereas Sam once appeared as a broken man, deprived of everything that was dear to him, we now find him seemingly put back together, continuing his journey alongside Lou. The rupture that closes the first arc, however, inescapably returns him to the experience of loss. Sam then begins to carry an empty pod with him—an imposition that the game itself makes literally inescapable—but one still filled with the absences that guide his relationship with the world.

Absences, however, are not everything. Beyond them, Sam relies on a world that does not allow him to be self-sufficient. His ability to survive and care for others continues to depend on bonds and presences that go beyond his individual actions. There is, then, a counterpoint between the emptiness he carries with him and the constant support of those who still surround him. Sam can only move forward because he remains part of relationships from which he cannot separate himself.

It is these networks and contacts that allow him to share resources and transform individual journeys into an infrastructure that is, literally, shared. It forms between Sam, the world he travels through, and the other Sams controlled by other players. In Death Stranding 2, this overlap is expressed in a curiously direct way by the fact that it is now possible to briefly talk to another player, introduce yourself as Sam, and hear, from somewhere far away, that they are Sam too. As in the first game, this network works as a constant reminder of human interdependence—a fairly obvious condition, but one frequently obscured by the extreme individualization imposed by late capitalism.

This time, however, there is a forceful counterpoint to the power of this network, which also takes the form of an infrastructure of capture. Whether consciously or not, the game echoes a critique of contemporary algorithmic logic, in which the same systems that allow cooperation and interconnection also act, through data collection, to condition behavior and capture desires. The conflict, then, is no longer between connection and isolation, but between different projects of connection. On one side are those who seek to expand forms of collaboration and communalism. On the other are those who seek to instrumentalize the network for predatory ends.

This very ambivalence appears, in a way, in how the gameplay experience unfolds. The pace at which its systems progress is quite different from that of the first game, creating the sense that obtaining material rewards or gaining new abilities is less laborious, both in terms of difficulty and time. This greater ease makes it more convenient to expand the player’s possibilities, but it also reduces some of the immersive weight of the effort required to build and inhabit the network. In the first Death Stranding, by contrast, progression seemed less linear and predictable, making each new tool or upgrade carry a clearer sense of achievement.

In the second part of the game, especially in its final arc, what emerges is a more hopeful perspective on the struggle over the future. Tomorrow represents a form of continuity that does not derive from the exceptional status of the hero embodied by Sam, but from the human capacity to mediate what networks make inevitable, both in their promises and in their risks. She thus embodies the possibility of guiding the possibilities offered by infrastructures and confronting the dangers of networks whose objectives are, at times, barely transparent or not transparent at all.

In the end, and taking every care to avoid major spoilers, a certain frustration remains with the imposition of a biological foundation on a bond that seemed so powerful precisely because it had been built without that guarantee. By making this choice, the script somewhat reduces the strength of its own defense of connection as care, living together, and choice. This reservation, however, does not fundamentally diminish the greatness of the story, just as the ease of its progression does not erase the absorbing and tremendously fun immensity of the experience. Death Stranding 2 remains, in every sense, a connection worth making.