Death Stranding 2: Everything we know about Hideo Kojima’s next game

In 2019, Hideo Kojima — the creator of Metal Gear Solid, and perhaps Hollywood’s favorite gaming auteur — released his first game as the head of his own independent studio, after parting ways with Konami. Depending who you asked at the time, Death Stranding was either a visionary work or completely incomprehensible — or both. It’s an unforgettable experience, though, and subsequent editions have converted their fair share of skeptics.

Now Kojima is set to return with Death Stranding 2: On the Beach (yes, it’s really called that). Like its predecessor, it’s set to combine unique hiking gameplay with exposition-heavy cutscenes, Yoji Shinkawa’s striking character designs, and a deeply strange sci-fi plot about building connections between people in a lonely, hostile world where the veil between life and death has been torn down.

Read on for everything we currently know about Death Stranding 2.

What’s the latest Death Stranding 2 news?

Hideo Kojima took part in a special panel at SXSW 2025 on March 9 and revealed that Death Stranding 2 will be released in June. He also showed a new 10-minute trailer for the game that filled in some details on the plot and introduced several new cast members: Luca Marinelli as Neil (looking distinctly like Solid Snake at one point), Debra Wilson as Doctor, and Alissa Jung as Lucy. There’s also a cameo from Korean action star Ma Dong-seok.

What’s Death Stranding 2’s release date?

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is due to be released June 26, 2025, on PlayStation 5.

There’s no word yet on releases for any other platforms. A Windows PC version is expected but has not been announced, and could arrive as much as a year later.

Death Stranding 2 is just one of the reasons 2025 is set to be such a packed year for big games. And with its June release date, Sony and Kojima Productions have ensured it steers well clear of the expected late 2025 release of Grand Theft Auto 5.

Is Death Stranding 2 a PS5 exclusive?

At least to begin with, yes — but a later PC release is almost certain, and an Xbox release is possible. Like the original game, Death Stranding 2 is the result of a partnership between Kojima Productions and Sony, and in all likelihood, it will remain a PlayStation console exclusive for a while. So far, it has only been confirmed for release on PS5.

However, Death Stranding got a later release on PC, courtesy of publisher 505 Games. It would be surprising if the same didn’t happen for the sequel — either via an independent publisher like 505, or indeed via Sony itself, which has recently been releasing its biggest first-party titles on PC after a period of console exclusivity. Death Stranding was also eventually released on Xbox Series X in November 2024, five years after its PlayStation debut, so it’s not impossible that we’ll see the sequel on Microsoft’s console, too.

Why is it called On the Beach?

Oh boy. Right. In the game’s world, an apocalyptic event known as the Death Stranding has caused strange creatures called Beached Things (BTs) to roam the Earth. These haunting monsters are created from the dead, and if they consume a living person, they cause a devastating explosion. BTs are said to originate from the Beach, a strange dimension that’s a kind of afterlife, or purgatory. There’s a whole lot more to it than that, but those are the basics.

Why is this metaphysical realm called the Beach? Good question. Perhaps because it’s a transitional space between two different states: land and ocean, life and death. Also… it looks like a beach.

Who’s in the cast?

The main cast for Death Stranding 2 features three returning stars and several new faces.

• Norman Reedus returns as the main player character, Sam Porter Bridges
• Léa Seydoux is back as Sam’s co-worker, Fragile, now leader of the Drawbridge operation
• Troy Baker reprises the role of Higgs, the antagonist from the first game
• Elle Fanning plays Tomorrow, a new character who seems to have some kind of connection to the Beach
• Shioli Kutsuna plays Rainy, a Drawbridge operative who is pregnant
• Luca Marinelli plays Neil, a Mexican people-smuggler who indulges in some Solid Snake cosplay
• Debra Wilson plays Doctor
• Alissa Jung plays Lucy
• Ma Dong-seok appears in an unknown role

It also wouldn’t be a Death Stranding game without cameo appearances from some of Kojima’s favorite film directors; the first game had quite substantial roles for Guillermo del Toro and Nicolas Winding Refn. Three directors appear in Death Stranding 2 as their scanned likenesses, with the motion-capture and vocal performances being done by other actors.

• George Miller (Mad Max) appears as Tarman, a doctor and geophysicist who is also the captain and pilot of Drawbridge’s ship, the DHV Magellan. (Performed by Marty Rhone.)
• Fatih Akin (The Edge of Heaven, In the Fade) appears as Dollman, a former spirit medium whose soul is now trapped in a puppet. (Performed by Jonathan Roumie.)
• Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive) returns as Heartman, a researcher who has a heart attack every 21 minutes. (Performed by Darren Jacobs.)

What’s the story?

Kojima Productions has actually revealed quite a lot about Death Stranding 2: On the Beach across three lengthy trailers stuffed with cutscenes. But — as often happens with a Hideo Kojima game — the more you take in, the less it feels like you understand. That’s part of the fun!

The game’s first teaser trailer shows Fragile looking after a baby. This is Lou, the BB (Bridge Baby) that Sam released from her sarcophaguslike pod and revived at the end of the first game. Then there’s a new scene in which Sam and Lou are attacked in their bunker and flee, but Lou is killed, reemerging as a BT (Beached Thing) version of herself in her old pod.

In the second trailer, this BT version of Lou is seen accompanying Sam on his adventure as a BB once again. The trailer lays out the general setting of the game, which apparently is set some time after the events of the original. The chiral network Sam set up in Death Stranding is working, so human porters are no longer needed to connect the UCA (formerly America), and Sam’s former Bridges co-workers have gone their separate ways.

But a new organization called Drawbridge, led by Fragile and funded by a mysterious private benefactor, is working to connect areas outside the UCA. Sam goes to work for Drawbridge; his hair, which had turned white, turns brown again for some reason. They have a cool mobile base, the DHV Magellan, which appears to be able to travel through the black tar from which BTs emerge.

Higgs, the antagonist from the original game, is back, too. Despite having been left on the Beach at the end of the first game, he’s alive — sort of. He’s being carried around in a red coffin by a team of robots. He wears a creepy mask over an even creepier face, and has a weapon like an electric guitar. Lou takes control of his robots to fight him. The scene makes no sense, but it’s simultaneously ridiculous and absurdly cool, in classic Kojima fashion.

Back aboard the DHV Magellan, Fragile has a mask that looks like a pair of blue hands, and — in the company of Tarman — she rescues Tomorrow from another sarcophaguslike object filled with the black tar. (In a video clip released later, we learn that Tomorrow comes from another place, or dimension, where babies are never born, but remain in their mothers’ wombs.)

As well as Lou, Sam is accompanied on his travels by Dollman, who has the appearance of a talking wooden puppet animated in a stop-motion style. At some point he reencounters Heartman from the first game, and the crew of the DHV Magellan is joined by Rainy, a pregnant woman.

The third trailer introduces the characters of Neil and the Doctor, and fleshes out some details about the setting. Death Stranding 2 is set 11 months after the formation of the UCA. Servers line the beach and deliveries have been automated, ostensibly putting porters like Sam out of work. Chiralium from the Beach continues to warp the environment (and the cats!), just as a new faction is spreading its influence. But none of that, it seems, will stop Sam from doing his job.

Introducing the second trailer at The Game Awards 2022, Kojima said he had rewritten Death Stranding 2 to reflect the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Considering that the first game’s prophetic visions of lockdown and isolation have often been commented upon, it will be fascinating to see how these themes play out in the sequel.

What do we know about the gameplay so far?

The trailers are much lighter on gameplay details compared to plot, but what we do see looks pretty familiar. It seems as though Kojima Productions is iterating quite gently on the hiking, load-carrying, open-world exploration of the first game. Given how unique a prospect it remains, that’s no bad thing.

The trailers do reveal some new biomes (desert, as well as barren, black rocky outcrops) and dynamic landscape effects (flash flooding and a rockslide). There’s a new vehicle, too: a four-wheeled, tanklike buggy, with open seating high up on the body and armlike suspension at the front.