Understanding the narrative events of the PlayStation 5-exclusive sequel Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is no easy task. But frankly, if you’re totally unfamiliar with the first game, 2019’s Death Stranding, you’ll be likely to toss your hands (and PS5 controller) up in surrender anyway.
So let me start with a very abbreviated overview of this action-adventure game’s knotted story.
Everything takes place in the future after a devastating apocalyptic event called the Death Stranding has crushed all of humankind. Not only has this disaster dissolved the world’s physical infrastructure—ridding the land of roads, railways, and cities and isolating pockets of humanity in underground seclusion—it’s also made the barrier between the living and the dead as porous as a sieve.
The result? Terrifying, invisible ghost people, called BTs, wander the Earth. And acid rain-like storms instantly age anything they drench. Recently dead people who aren’t cremated can become BTs and deliver land-cratering explosions. And this is a world where everyone dies. Except, that is, for someone like Sam Porter Bridges, the character you play.
Sam is a rare oddity called a “repatriate,” a person who reconstitutes after death. So, with the otherworldly help of a special pod baby—a child oddly connected to the land of the dead—Sam can venture forth to reconnect the remaining remnants of America’s hidden-away humanity.
Not only does Sam deliver vital packages, but he connects isolated people via the Chiral Network, a super-fast version of the internet. By story’s end, however, Sam is betrayed by a paranormal entity version of his adopted sister … and he runs away after taking that pod baby out of her glass container and adopting her as his daughter.
That pretty much covers the surface events of the first game. Of course, there’s also a dark, swirling mire of strange spirituality; battles with the living and the dead; a huge cast list of people with wrenching emotional dilemmas; and a whole lot of grinding package delivery in the gaming mix.
All of the above carries over into Death Stranding 2. Things pick up from there as Sam attempts to connect people in Mexico and Australia to that Chiral Network, and he deals with the many, many, many strange events and entangled traumas along the way.
This is primarily a single-player game. However, while there is no direct co-op play, Death Stranding 2 does offer an online play option called Asynchronous Multiplayer. This allows gamers to share resources and interact with structures, items and signs left in the game world by other online players, even though they’re not visible to one another.
Sam’s main objective is to connect mankind and save it from the deadly Death Stranding events and the evil machinations of others. He and his friends push back against those seeking undeserved power as well as and those who simply seek carnage.
And if there’s one central message to glean from the story, it’s that communication, connection and comradery have helped humankind survive and overcome great disasters before. When we love and rely upon those around us, great things can happen, the game declares.
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach also delivers well-rendered cinematic visuals. Those images can intensify some of the emotional moments in the game as recognizable actors—such as Elle Fanning, Léa Seydoux and Guillermo del Toro—play out their roles.
Throughout his travails, Sam is a dedicated father figure, who’s protective of his adopted daughter.
To say there’s a lot going on in Death Stranding 2 is an understatement. And that can be a problem. The convoluted story and its many, extremely strange plot threads is hard to follow and understand. And most of it is drenched in bloody gore and twisted spirituality.
On the violence front, Sam gives third-person battle to a wide spectrum of humans, robotic foes and large ghostly apparitions. One corrupt and deadly specter looks like a huge skull with tendrils and tentacles, for instance.
There are sniper rifles, pistols and machine guns in the mix along with things like blood bombs and an odd “battle guitar” that unleashes powerful blasts and a strange otherworldly flame. That fiery attack, for instance, is used as a means of prolonged torture at one juncture as Sam is burned alive and “repatriated” over and over into the same flesh-burning agony.
In general, battles are sometimes frenetic and feature blood splatter and cries of pain. In other carnage, a man has his hands lopped off, and someone else gets cut in half by a large machine. People and objects are quickly aged to rotting and crumbling effect.
We hear foul language in the many dialogue interactions, including uses of f- and s-words, milder crudities and some profane uses of God’s name.
As mentioned above, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach also packs strange spiritual elements into its many-flanged tale. The Death Stranding itself is a spiritual/physical disaster that lets dark things seep from a deadly otherworld into ours. And the game appears to draw inspiration from a variety mystical and occult traditions.
The “beach” in the title, for instance, refers to a metaphysical limbo space that sits between life and death. Each individual is said to have his or her own unique beach that’s based on their memories, emotions, regrets and hopes. People can be trapped there in perpetual purgatory or torment.
Resurrection and reincarnation are ingredients in the spiritual stew, too, along with inky black tormentors from beyond. Souls are combined and collected. And the pod babies are born of mothers who died in childbirth, giving the infants a connecting link between the living and the dead. Etc.
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach has gotten a lot of attention thanks to its groundbreaking creator, Hideo Kojima. The game’s visuals and movie-like aspects are undeniably impressive.
But the game also unleashes a convoluted and complex tale of dark and painful things, blended with twisted spirituality and dull, grinding gameplay.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.