New Death Stranding 2 footage revealed at Summer Game Fest premiere

Kojima Productions’ Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is mere weeks away from official release. As such, video game auteur Hideo Kojima showed off some near-final footage at Summer Game Fest on Sunday at the Los Angeles Orpheum Theater.

Joined by host Geoff Keighley and his own translator, Hideo Kojima welcomed the audience before bringing out several special guests, including Troy Baker, Shioli Kutsuna, and Death Stranding 2’s music producer, Woodkid. Elle Fanning, who plays Tomorrow, also appeared via video message.

After talking about the development of the original game, the inspiration behind the sequel, and conducting interviews with the guests, Kojima at last unveiled some gameplay footage. One includes Tomorrow and Sam (played by Norman Reedus) singing to Rainy (played by Shioli Kutsuna) and her unborn baby. Another cinematic showcased Tomorrow’s feral and fast-paced combat abilities (which also hyper-focused on her feet).

Fans are also treated to the opening cinematics of the game alongside Lou and the game’s open world tutorial section in the rocky desert border of Mexico and the UCA. The graphics are photo-realistic, and the mechanics are just as defined as ever. But something else interesting is the utilization of dynamic music: the score will shift and change to showcase that players are moving in the right direction; if combat becomes chaotic, the music will follow suit.

Lastly, we see a new character, Neil (Luca Marinelli), in a firefight against Sam as fireworks light the night sky, showcasing the enemy intelligence, how they flank players like the original, and alert each other to Sam’s position. But the fight doesn’t actually start before Neil puts on a bandana similar to Solid Snake’s beforehand, eliciting the audience’s cheers.

Neil and Lucy (Alisa Jung) are two new characters featured in a trailer shown earlier during Summer Game Fest. They have a relationship that feeds into the narrative of the sequel, and when pressed for more information, Kojima said Neil will be like playing the role Madds Mikkelson did in the original title.

Like the original Death Stranding, On the Beach blends distinctive hiking-based gameplay with dense exposition, Yoji Shinkawa’s bold character designs, and a surreal sci-fi story about forging human connections in a bleak, isolated world where the boundary between life and death has collapsed.

There have already been a few trailers released that help connect some narrative dots. The first trailer shows Fragile caring for Lou, the BB Sam freed and revived in the original Death Stranding. Sam and Lou are attacked in their bunker, forcing them to flee, but Lou is killed and returns as a BT in her old pod.

In the second trailer, this BT version of Lou accompanies Sam on his new journey as a BB again. The game takes place sometime after the original, with the chiral network now fully operational and human porters no longer essential. Sam’s Bridges team has disbanded.

Death Stranding 2 is slated to launch first on PlayStation 5 on June 26. If the sequel is anything like the first, it will come to Windows PC and Xbox Series X eventually.