“Come on now, if we all pull together, we can lift up the weight of the world from your shoulders.”
This is a line from the song “Glorious You” by one of my favorite musical artists, Frank Turner, and it’s a lyric that constantly comes to mind as I play Death Stranding 2: On The Beach.
For those who haven’t played either of the games, you are, regardless, likely already familiar with the series’ core concept: You play as a porter who delivers packages between outposts in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Ahead of the first entry’s launch in 2019, game director Hideo Kojima stated that Death Stranding was to kickstart a new “Strand” genre. “By incorporating the concept of connection(strand), it’s [a] totally brand-new genre called action game/strand game(social strand system),” tweeted Kojima earlier that summer.
