Electric guitar battles are cool, but Death Stranding 2's real secret weapon? The fear of slipping down a sandy dune

What we've seen of Death Stranding 2: On The Beach makes it feel like Hideo Kojima has been listening to people calling his game bonkers for years and has decided to, almost tongue in cheek, lean into it. Dialling up the weirdness for the first game and turning around to the audience to check, he's throwing in airships that come out of freaky babies' mouths, stop-motion living puppets, and electric guitar battles. But my biggest question is: how is all that sand going to affect my meticulously planned hiking journey when I'm delivering packages twice my size?

Don't get me wrong, I understand all that strangeness will doubtless get the Death Stranding curious to prick up their ears. But the real delivery sickos like me were instead leaning forwards as each new region (this sequel has Sam Bridges expanding the UCA network outside of the US) revealed new complications for the true heart of the series: holding tight onto your backpack and trundling forwards to make your package deliveries. Steep cliffs! Sandy dunes! Floods!? Rockslides!? I'm scared, yet also… compelled.

Touch grass, feel sand

Many games have fancy, realistic looking environments. Hellblade 2 comes to mind, a game I didn't particularly enjoy but was still so good looking it made me feel like I was in an old timey cinema and a train was about to come through the screen and murder me in cold blood. Yet, there, it was mostly just for show, prettying up corridor-style design. The first Death Stranding felt truly fresh in that not only did it feature some beautiful Nordic-like mountains and fields, but every pebble on the road was integral to the minute to minute – nay, second to second – experience.

Combining deliveries to save time, loaded up with parcels many times Sam's weight, Death Stranding's core loop really does make you actually consider deeply whether you risk jogging down a steep hill, or carefully find a more forgiving incline. Whether to risk crossing a wide river, or follow it along to somewhere narrower with a tamer current. And how many pitons and ropes you need to bring to get out of jams while still having room to squeeze in just another delivery. Some of you might think that sounds boring. But, and just statistically speaking, some of you are also wrong. It's wild how quickly that loop is able to worm its way into your brain in the original game, and become an obsession. Few games have made a world feel as tangible and as vital to play, becoming so immersive as a result.

Every environment we've seen so far from Death Stranding 2: On The Beach looks to play with this feeling in a huge variety of new ways. The one knock against the original is that, once you get to the biggest main map, you learn what to expect from the environment quite quickly. There's the crags. There's the really rocky bit. The bit of woods. The snowy mountains.

Here, with the narrative hook of expanding the network to new regions, there's so much more at play. When I see those dunes, I'm already calculating just how devastating it's going to be to put one foot out of place and slide all the way down, my attached baby that's vital to how I survive (it's a long story) begins crying, and maybe one of the packages bonks me on the noggin and knocks me out briefly. Even a more built-out looking city area makes me wonder about hidden secrets, and the changing viability of vehicles across different zones.

These new environmental hazards look like they'll have some really sweeping affects on how you construct safer paths as well. The first game's crater-causing Voidouts were shocking at first, but few and far between for the cautious, having minimal longterm impact. But in Death Stranding 2, the likes of a flashflood seem to be able to knock out community built structures, collapsing a bridge across a river for instance.

A "strand game", certain objects and builds are shared between connected groups of players, with ladders or ziplines or the like appearing and being maintained by everyone. I'm left wondering how communities will respond to changing conditions. Will we rally around core infrastructure? Will some ground simply need to be off limits? Can we keep the generators online? And what will happen to the friendly holograms that give you an encouraging thumbs up?

Even the Death Stranding itself (the in-game world condition, not the title) seems to bear down on this intense hiking more than ever. Ghostly, invisible BTs, in the first game, attached in place, are at first very creepy, forcing you to pick through zones carefully. But they became predictable. The glimpses we've had of Death Stranding 2's new versions of BTs, and how they wander around strange areas, make them seem like a hazard you'll need to be more adaptable than ever to face, trickier to avoid.

We've also had more looks at how the Death Stranding will warp the environment as well, creating unusual formations to carefully navigate. It's unclear how integral those will be to your everyday routes, but the possibilities are enticing. Fragile, I hate to say it, but you can keep the door to the armory closed, and the mysteries of the Beach can remain unknowable. I just want to pull on a cap, strap on a ludicrously capacious backpack, and set off to conquer the dunes one delivery at a time.

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