Who should you pick to be Charlie's face in Death Stranding 2?

Death Stranding 2 Charlie face and voice choice options: Heartman, Lockne, Die-Hardman, and Deadman — (Image credit: Sony)

Choosing Charlie's face and voice in Death Stranding 2 seems like a nice opportunity for you to (sort of) bring back one of four characters from the first game, but your choice is actually restricted. Charlie, the mysterious patron of Drawbridge, initially presents themselves as a mannequin head with an animated face in Death Stranding 2 but then gives Sam the chance to choose their face and voice to match someone more familiar and trustworthy.

You then get to choose between Heartman, Lockne, Die-Hardman, or Deadman, but you'll quickly find that only one is acceptable, making the choice quite redundant. If you want further details on this Episode 3 decision, I've explained the Charlie choice in Death Stranding 2 in a bit more detail.

Be aware of some spoilers below, though you should already know about these if you've reached this point in Death Stranding 2

All options for Charlie's face in Death Stranding 2 explained

Death Stranding 2 Charlie talking with Die-Hardman's/ Tommie Earl Jenkins' face and voice — (Image credit: Sony)

Despite there being four options for Charlie's face and voice in Death Stranding 2, Die-Hardman is the only acceptable option.

If you pick Heartman, Lockne, or Deadman, Charlie will give you an excuse as to why picking them is wrong and will present the choice again with their name greyed out, preventing you from picking them again. The reasons you can't pick these characters are as follows:

Heartman: There's no point as he shows up later in the game.
Lockne: Mama's Ka occupies Lockne's body and Charlie reckons that adding his persona to that would get confusing.
Deadman: He recently died and Charlie says it's too soon.

The ending of Death Stranding 2

If you've played the game before or want to know what's ahead, find out our (spoiler heavy) Death Stranding 2 ending explained guide here!

Overall, this choice has a bit more of an impact than the Death Stranding 2 "I won't do it" choice at the start of the game, determining how Charlie presents themselves. It's also quite similar to your Death Stranding 2 birthday which has a minimal effect on gameplay and is mostly for flavor.

After making this choice and more cutscenes, you can finally head out into the Australian wilderness, letting you meet up with the likes of the Death Stranding 2 Lone Commander and eventually enter the Death Stranding 2 Motherhood passcode.

CATEGORIES

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.