Hideo Kojima treated gamers to a lengthy look at his highly anticipated Death Stranding 2: On the Beach Sunday night at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles, including multiple live gameplay demonstrations and intriguing teasers that gave just enough to leave fans chomping at the bit for the game’s June 26 release date.
“I don’t want to give any secrets away,” Kojima teased to the audience, which gathered at the L.A. premiere event as part of Summer Game Fest 2025. He was joined by Troy Baker, Shioli Kutsuna and composer Woodkid.
Death Stranding, released in 2019, was a somewhat prophetic story. The game is set in a post-apocalyptic United States after a cataclysmic event causes destructive creatures to roam the Earth, forcing people into isolated colonies that can only connect via wireless, digital communications. The player controls as Sam Porter Bridges, played by Norman Reedus, who is a courier risking his life via exposure to these deadly elements to deliver supplies to these fractured colonies.
Six months after its release, much of the United States (and the world) experienced such isolation when the coronavirus pandemic prompted lengthy, widespread lockdowns and entirely reframed social consciousness on in-person communication.
Kojima said it was the consequences of that loss of in-person connection that inspired the story for Death Stranding 2.
“We had we had this connection over digital during the pandemic, which was great, but it moved too much to digital, and we forgot about analog connection, to meet in person,” he said. “So I already had the DS2 idea, but I had to scratch that off, because I experienced the pandemic. So I rewrote because it’s a new connection after the pandemic…I wanted to everyone to experience that.”
Fans were treated to two short cut scenes from the upcoming game, the first of which introduces both Elle Fanning’s Tomorrow and Kutsuna’s Rainy, who are part of the DHV Magellan’s crew and help Sam on his missions. In the clip, Tomorrow inquires about Rainy’s pregnancy, because women do not carry their own children where she is from. The tender moment ends with Rainy and Tomorrow singing “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head.”
The second clip gave a glimpse at Tomorrow’s “special abilities,” as Kojima called it. In a battle sequence, Tomorrow shape shifts, melting into tar as she takes out an army of monsters nearly singlehandedly. Kojima remained tightlipped about the implications of that scene for Tomorrow, Sam and the rest of the story.
Next, the live gameplay demonstration delighted fans with the opening sequence of the game, which features Sam trying to get back home in an expansive, mountainous region. Kojima explained that, given the open world concept of the game, players will have to decide how to get there — only this time, the map will change in real time as natural disasters occur, impacting the route’s available.
The audience was also treated to the avant-garde nature of Woodkid’s composition for Death Stranding 2, as the score also ebbs and flows in real time depending on the route that players choose to take.
“It is so different for me. It’s just a very nerdy approach to music,” Woodkid said, explaining that he had to “reverse engineer the tracks and really build them through musical theory…almost building our own samplers so that the harmony builds based on the actions.”
In another live gameplay sequence, audiences got to see Sam take on Luca Marinelli’s Neil in an intense battle that Kojima says barely scratches the surface of the adversities the player will face throughout the course of the epic Death Stranding sequel.
To hold excited gamers over until its release date at the end of the month, Kojima also revealed Sunday that the Death Stranding 2 soundtrack will launch on June 13, including a special version of Woodkid’s “Into The Wilder,” the theme he wrote for the game, featuring Fanning.
