I’ll be honest: It took me a while to enjoy Death Stranding. It’s not that I thought it was a bad game and that the masses had been deceived; I just didn’t get it at first. The dialogue was a bit too stilted. The worldbuilding was a bit too random. The gameplay was a bit too tedious. That’s why that “at first” is doing a whole lot of heavy lifting. After finally getting past the first few slow hours, I realized Hideo Kojima and his team had made an extremely strange, extremely dark, extremely funny, and extremely original sci-fi game that – to be completely fair – played differently than anything I’d experienced before.
Did I always love it? No. Am I glad I bought it on PlayStation and then bought it again on Steam? Yep! It was a triple-A game that actually challenged me to enjoy it rather than catered to my every dumb desire right off the bat. And, God, watching the new trailer for Death Stranding 2 only proves to me that we need more weird games with massive budgets.
Triple-A Games Are Growing Stale
I don’t want to be a downer, but triple-A games are in a tough state right now, folks. Studios are closing and it sounds like every person who’s actually part of the game making process has been fired by every person who has an office the size of a house. Sure, there are always going to be unending hits like Grand Theft Auto 5 or society-changing live service games like Fortnite. But we’re also in the era of Concord, which cost hundreds of millions of dollars and then shut down within days because nobody could actually tell it apart from any of the fifteen identical multiplayer shooters that also failed that year.
And while I love some of the Assassin’s Creed series, Ubisoft talks about Shadows as if it carries the entire future of the company. Which, you know, it just might. But outside of culture war fights that are basically find-and-replace-the-title repeats of previous battles, I’m not sure what it brings to the table. I’m certain it’ll be a fun game! It just happens to look like another triple-A in a familiar series with familiar gameplay. That’s not bad! Many fans want that! But maybe, just maybe, we need more big budget bonkers games.
Look at this way: the trailer for Death Stranding 2 is ten minutes long. And we all watched it, and it’s fascinating all the way through. Every single moment makes me wonder how it’ll affect the gameplay, what that means for the story, and what the hell is going on with that living puppet. I’m someone who can’t keep my attention on a YouTube video for more than two minutes, but I was glued to my screen watching this short film-length trailer for a bizarre sequel to another bizarre game.
It’s excited me more than almost any other game trailer I’ve seen in a long time and it’s one of the few game trailers that hasn’t left me expecting a bait and switch. You can say this for Kojima: His trailers may be bizarre works of art from a guy who clearly wants to be a movie director, but they rarely trick you or make you think the game is going to be something it’s not. He’s as honest as he is out of his mind.
Other Games Are Taking Swings That Are Paying Off
Kojima also proves that, even in sequels, triple-A games can reach hard for something very different. He did it with Metal Gear Solid. It looks like he’s doing it again here. Triple-A sequels don’t have to be, “More of the last game, but now in a new location and with a photography mode.” And perhaps that’s why it’s a struggle. Triple-A games usually cost a lot of money to develop, especially ones that brag about top-notch graphics and voice talent.
It makes sense that developers and publishers would be hesitant to reach for the stars with something that costs more than the GDP of some countries. A conventional sequel to a conventional series is a safe bet. As is a conventional game based on a conventional IP. Some of these sell well. Some don’t. But I’m just happy to see someone not treat their games this way. I love a giant, weird swing and that’s the only kind Kojima ever takes. What’s the last “safe” game he made? Boktai? Hell, that one requires you to go outside.
To be fair, there are a couple weird triple-A games also paving the way. Control and Alan Wake 2 come to mind as being weird as hell, which makes sense considering they’re made by the same people. Nor did these games suffer for it. Control was everywhere for a while and, according to Remedy, Alan Wake 2 is profitable after recouping its development cost and marketing budget. In other words, these did just fine even though they weren’t “last game, but in a new location.”
Don’t Copy Kojima, Be Kojima
Could they have done better? Sure! Will they sell as well as Call of Duty? Never! Does that mean every triple-A game should follow a stenciled pattern made by other games? Please, Lord, no. And, yes, I recognize that there are some very weird triple-A games that either disappear into the Game Pass abyss or just don’t find an audience at all. But the same can happen to plain vanilla triple-A shooters, so why not go big?
I’m not saying the triple-A problem can be solved by everyone making nonsense games filled with giant hand monsters attaching ships to their head. But there is something to be said about a singular vision driving Hideo Kojima’s games. He’s making the game he wants to make without intervention or demands from the brass to add loot boxes. True, part of that is because he’s Hideo Kojima. But he became the Hideo Kojima by making unusual choices in his game and committing to them.
There’s nothing half-assed or changed to impress a focus group. Death Stranding 2 is going to be a massive game, one of the biggest of the year, and part of the reason we’re going to remember it is that – and I’d put money on this – it will be weird as Hell. If you’re going to invest all the money on Earth into producing a piece of art, at least you can make it something so absurd that it breaks my brain.
- Released
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June 26, 2025
- Publisher(s)
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Sony Interactive Entertainment