Death Stranding 2: On the Beach director Hideo Kojima has revealed that, while he does have ideas for a third game in the Death Stranding series, he won’t be making it.
Speaking to VGC, Kojima brought up the idea of using the new Plate Gates from Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, which could potentially allow for games in the Death Stranding universe to take place in other countries, and how he could make “endless sequels” with them.
“If I use this Plate Gate concept, I could make endless sequels,” said Kojima. “I, of course, don’t have any plans to do that, but I already have a concept for another sequel. I am not going to make it myself, but if I passed it on to someone else, they could probably make it.”
Kojima also spoke about how the ideas for the themes behind Death Stranding 2: On the Beach came to fruition. He explained that the state of the world during the COVID-19 pandemic is what gave him the idea for the sequel. While the original Death Stranding was developed and released before the pandemic, the sequel will instead focus on how the connectivity between people from the aftermath plays a hand in dividing them.
“We released Death Stranding before the COVID-19 pandemic,” Kojima explained. “The world was heading towards isolation and division, such as the UK leaving the EU. So I was saying, ‘Let’s connect. We’re headed for disaster if we don’t connect.’ That was the theme, story, and gameplay for Death Stranding.”
“After the release, just three months later, we entered the pandemic, and I was really surprised – it looked like Death Stranding, in a way. In the real world – the 21st century – we have something similar to the Chiral Network, which is the Internet. This was a little different compared to the 19th century, such as the Spanish Flu or the like. We survived the pandemic because of the Internet, and people were connected online.”
He brings up how, while in the real world, the connectivity humanity had access to in the form of the Internet has since also worked to isolate people from each other. This has taken the form of tools like video calls for schools, for example, where instead of hanging out with their classmates, kids stare at screens.
“What happened was, there are now people in our studio who work from home, and I still don’t know their faces,” he said. “Even music concerts were cancelled, and it all became online streaming. I understand this was unavoidable at the time of the pandemic. The same thing applies to schools; instead of getting to play with your friends or learning from teachers, you just look at a screen online, which isn’t any different from watching YouTube videos.”
“Everything was leaning into the metaverse. When you turned on the TV, everyone was talking about how it was the age of the metaverse now, and there was no need to interact with people. I felt that we were going down a terrible path. Communication between human beings is not meant to be this way. You meet people by chance or see sights you didn’t expect to see. With the way we were headed, you would lose all of that.”
Kojima also explained that, while he had themes and a story planned out for Death Stranding 2: On the Beach after the release of the original Death Stranding, the events around the world in the wake of COVID-19 ultimately changed his mind on what the themes for the sequel would be.
“It’s the strangest thing,” he said. “After I created a game with the theme of ‘let’s connect instead of division and isolation,’ we had the pandemic, and I began to think, ‘Maybe it’s not such a good thing to connect so much’.”
“It goes back to the stick and rope theory. There’s a lot of foreshadowing in the game, so I’m sure many of you will understand when you play the game, and you’ll know by the end. The things that I felt during the pandemic – there’s a character in the game expressing those feelings.”
“The logo is a hint: you can see in the logo of Death Stranding that the strands are coming from below the logo – with the theme of ‘Let’s connect.’ This time, in Death Stranding 2, you see that the strands are coming from above the logo. It’s like the Godfather logo.
“Even throughout the game, you see strands from many people, like Dollman and the mech soldiers. Those are all hints. When you really start thinking about what it means to connect, you start to wonder… That’s all I’ll say for now.”
While he has been quite vague about what we can expect from the story of Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, we can surmise that there may be some parallels drawn between the concept of ‘the stick and the rope’, characters like Dollman, the idea of strands, and the general concept of puppeteering and manipulation, much like we have seen in the real world through the use of social media.
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is in development for the PS5, and will be out on June 26.