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What does your Death Stranding 2 birthday do?

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Your Death Stranding 2 birthday affects your DOOMS abilities, but this doesn't seem to mean much

Death Stranding 2 birthday Sam firing popper at the camera during party
(Image credit: Sony)
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Choosing your Death Stranding 2 birthday is one of the first choices you make when starting the game, but, despite what's explained, its effects seem to be minimal. Exactly like your Death Stranding 1 birthday, the date you pick apparently affects your DOOMS abilities, the mysterious condition that allows Sam to sense BTs and Fragile to perform Beach jumps.

Most importantly, playing Death Stranding 2: On The Beach on the date you set lets you watch a suitably bizarre birthday cutscene and even get some minor gifts for celebrating another trip around the Sun – it's not quite Mads Mikkelsen giving you a bouquet of flowers, but it's fun nonetheless. If you want to know exactly what the point of setting your Death Stranding 2 birthday is and how to get this bonus cutscene, I've explained everything you need to know below.

Death Stranding 2 birthday and DOOMS explained

Death Stranding 2 birthday set date screen

(Image credit: Sony)

Your Death Stranding 2 birthday is, ultimately, not that important of a choice as it has no obvious lasting gameplay effects.

As in the first game, Death Stranding 2 says that your date of birth can "determine a person's experience of DOOMS", which is the condition that allows Sam to sense BTs and Fragile to teleport. After setting your birthday, you'll also be told that "those born under constellations with a great connection to the Beach – including Cancer, Pisces, Cetus, and Delphinus…" are more likely to have DOOMS. This doesn't appear to be reflected in the game at all, especially since Cetus and Delphinus aren't real-world astrological signs and therefore have no corresponding dates – but if you're interested in trying anyway, the date range for Pisces is February 19 to March 20 and for Cancer it's June 21 to July 22.

One thing your birthday does affect is the Death Stranding 2 Motherhood passcode, which lets you get inside a base to complete a mission-critical delivery. This isn't made clear at first, but reading the Corpus entry for "The Motherhood" reveals that the passcode is indeed your date of birth, and you can follow a button prompt to show the passcode if you've forgotten your in-game birthday.

The overall point is that any gameplay changes resulting from when you set your Death Stranding 2 birthday to are very minor and not worth worrying about. It's more impactful than the Death Stranding 2 "I won't do it" choice, but not by much. My advice is to set your in-game birthday to match your real birthday to make it easy to remember or, if you're desperate to witness the special birthday cutscene, set it to a few days after you start playing the game.

Death Stranding 2 birthday cutscene and rewards

Death Stranding 2 birthday Sam eating birthday pizza

(Image credit: Sony)

In classic Hideo Kojima game fashion, you can witness a special cutscene to celebrate your in-game birthday in Death Stranding 2.

To unlock it, you must have access to the DHV Magellan ship, which becomes available after the start of Episode 3 – Drawbridge, which can take several hours to get to. Then all you need to do is head down to your private room using the Magellan's lift and the cutscene will start, which sees Sam walking to the Magellan's bridge in darkness before a surprise party with the rest of the Magellan crew starts.

I won't spoil the whole thing but once the cutscene is over, you'll wake up in your private room with a couple of nice gifts. Here's everything you get after the Death Stranding 2 birthday celebrations:

Death Stranding 2 birthday gift Heartman's star-shaped glasses on Sam

(Image credit: Sony)

Once the cutscene is over, you'll wake up in your private room with a couple of nice gifts. Here's everything you get after the Death Stranding 2 birthday celebrations:

  • 900 Death Stranding 2 Likes from Drawbridge
  • A slice of birthday pizza on your bedside table which increases your stamina by 10% when eaten
  • Heartman's Star-Shaped Glasses which you can wear by accessing the Customize Look menu

And that's the main effect of setting your birthday in Death Stranding 2, so now you can get back to expanding the Chiral Network and avoiding horrific Death Stranding 2 BTs.

Since getting this birthday cutscene relies on having access to the Magellan, you should know about the Death Stranding 2 Charlie's face choice and how you can use the ship for Death Stranding 2 fast travel.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

Will Sawyer
Will Sawyer
Guides Editor, GamesRadar+

Will Sawyer is a Guides Editor at GamesRadar+ with over five years of experience in writing online guides, news, and features, and has a BA (Hons) in Journalism. Starting as a freelancer, Will contributed to startmenu and Game Rant before joining the GamesRadar+ team in August 2021. Since then, he has written hundreds of guides about a huge range of games, with shooters and action games being his areas of expertise. Outside of writing about games, Will hops between multiplayer shooters with friends, such as Darktide and Helldivers 2, and delves into whatever has been on his backlog for far too long. He also tries to get through his never-ending Warhammer pile of shame of grey Tyranids, Aeldari, and Chaos Space Marines.

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