It doesn’t take too long into Death Stranding 2: On the Beach for nature’s role in proceedings to become amply clear. Whether it’s the copious amounts of detail lavished on each bit of gravel being displaced underfoot, the rockslide caused by a relatively innocuous earthquake or the way the scenery comes to life through the ‘Peter Jackson camera’ (an ultra zoomed-out camera angle that encompasses entire mountain ranges with protagonist Sam Bridges at the centre of the shot), a lot more time and effort seems to have gone into turning the natural world from a setting into a character. The events of this game take place in Mexico and Australia, so for starters, there’s a whole new set of terrains and environments to experience.
That, of course, isn’t to say that Death Stranding, the first of its name, didn’t have stunning vistas — from lush green plains to snow-capped mountains. But apart from the punishingly steep inclines and a few deep rivers, the world (not to be confused with its inhabitants) around Sam didn’t always seem to be out to get him. This time though, when it’s not armed humans or metaphysical BTs after his life and/or cargo, he’s trying to avoid swollen rivers, floods, landslides, earthquakes, forest fires, bolts of lightning falling from the sky and even severe sunburn.
Obviously, in the interest of not spoiling too much for you, most of the visual depictions will be non-contextual images created with On the Beach‘s rather spiffy photo mode. But getting back to nature’s fury, and it’s a step forward for the series that even in moments of relative down-time, you can never really take your eye off the ball, so to speak. If it’s not a dust storm blinding you to human threats in your vicinity, it’s a quake or rapidly rising river that will knock and wash (respectively) you and your precious cargo away.
That said, there are moments of serenity to be found in some truly eye-catching locales. The image above, for instance, depicts one of the most peaceful areas in the game. And while you’re walking around, it’s all perfectly safe. Get into a vehicle though and you’ll really need to watch where you’re going. Why? The ever-present threat of running over a cute and cuddly marsupial of some sort. Yep, running over a wallaby will cause you more psychological pain than falling off 10 cliffs ever could. Tread lightly.
It isn’t as though nature and the other threats operate in silos. Sometimes, a regular storm can transform into a windy timefall downpour teeming with BTs that would like nothing more than to drag you into tar. If all that wasn’t bad enough, the eerie red hue that lights up the Australian sky will put the heebie-jeebies up you. It certainly did to me.
Overall, Hideo Kojima and his team have gone to great lengths to truly bring the natural world alive in this game, and it shows. Textures, even on a base PS5, really stand out and each blade of grass behaves like it would out in the real world. We’re still reviewing the game and will undoubtedly run into more and more examples of the juxtaposition of beauty and brutality in this world. Stay tuned for our final analysis in the days to come.
