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FEATURE GAMING

Along with Mexico, Australia is the primary location for Death Stranding 2: On the Beach . Kojima explains… Sam’s journey of connecting the Americas from east to west was inspired by the American frontier. With the UCA established, we wanted the sequel to take place in a location that shared a similar geography with the Americas - stretches from east to west and borders the sea in the north and south. Eurasia is too large, and Africa didn’t really fit the bill either. Australia checked all the boxes, but the next issue we faced was how to connect the North American continent with Australia. After a lot of discussion, we decided to implement the ‘plate gate’ to connect the two continents. AUSTRALIA YOU’RE STRANDING IN IT!

and heatmaps to rework the feature based on our findings. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach further builds on that, so we have a better understanding of player behaviour.

internet. At the same time, I saw more people starting to disregard in-person connections and interactions, and that went against my

belief around human communication. Only by venturing out can you meet people by chance or stumble upon unexpected places. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach was already in the works before COVID, but we revisited the overall concept of the game after COVID. The predecessor was

Mad Max series director George Miller lends his appearance to BY GEORGE!

The core themes of the games shifted from ‘connecting people’ to ‘should we have connected?’ Was this due to your views on social media evolving over time? Death Stranding was in development before COVID hit, and I felt like there was a global divide happening around then, especially following talks of Brexit. The theme of the game reflected my notion at that point in time, that humanity needed to connect and unite to avoid disaster. COVID happened three

ship captain Tarman in-game, while he’s voiced by another Aussie, popstar/actor Marty Rhone.

inspired by the fear of social fragmentation and isolation, but after experiencing COVID, I started ruminating over the dangers of being ‘too connected.’ I left a lot of clues in the game, like the stick and rope theory, so I think players will connect the dots in the end. You’ll encounter characters that

will speak my thoughts in the game, too. What does it mean to be connected? Should we have connected? Play the game to find out!

months after the game’s launch, and the world ended up getting fractured, like the game. However, we survived thanks to the

• Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is out Jun 26

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