Our Most Wanted Games of 2025 – #5 Death Stranding 2: On The Beach

thesixthaxis.com:

As we head into the top five of our Most Wanted games for 2025, we return to the oeuvre of Hideo Kojima with Death Stranding 2: On The Beach.

As one of the most popular video game auteurs out there, Kojima has kept himself incredibly busy in recent years. After the success of Death Stranding in 2019, the game gathering up a multitude of Game of the Year awards and enjoying continued success with its PC port and eventual expanded Director’s Cut over the following years, a sequel was always highly likely. However, Kojima has also been working on a game titled OD for Xbox, and at the start of 2024, also confirmed that he will be creating a new action-espionage game with Sony.

But the plate that he and the team at Kojima Productions will stop spinning first is Death Stranding 2: On The Beach – announced in 2022 and with big gameplay reveals coming last year ahead of a 2025 release.

While the first game was already oddly prescient, the themes running through it working surprisingly well in the context of the pandemic and lockdowns that rolled around the world in the years following its release, Kojima threw out his narrative for Death Stranding 2 and started over to better reflect the effects of COVID-19 on the worldwide population.

Death Stranding 2 will take place outside of North America, as Sam and the DHV Magellan look to expand the Chiral Network, doing so with the backing of a private organization known as APAC. Sam, of course, will take the lead and trudge across vast landscapes, ride on futuristic vehicles and all the rest while trying to deliver packages, through increasingly exotic and alien landscapes, and confronting all sorts of monstrosities, such as a giant inky black hand that feels like something out of a Soulslike.

There will be a lot of returning characters and actors for Death Stranding 2, with Norman Reedus reprising the role of Sam Bridges, and Léa Seydoux and Troy Baker reprising their roles as Fragile and Higgs. There’s also plenty of new stars