For years, big-budget games have been giving players the same formula over and over again. Same flashy icons, fast-paced action, live service grinds, and sequels that look and feel just like their predecessors. Somewhere along the way, AAA games seem to have gotten obsessed with polish and lost what makes games stay with a player long after they drop the controller: emotion.
But lately, a different kind of game is on the rise. The industry is making space for games that don’t fit the mold, slow things down, get a little weirder, and actually try to say something.
Games like Outer Wilds or Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 quickly found their audience and were surprising hits. These games aren’t just about shooting or looting, they’re about ideas and emotion.
They have their own atmosphere, and they trust you to engage with them in a way that’s not just reactive. Players are showing up for these games in a big way because, honestly, a lot of us are just tired of playing the same thing again and again. The industry might still be pumping out sequels and safe bets, but players are clearly hungry for something more.
And that’s exactly where Death Stranding 2: On the Beach comes in. Hideo Kojima’s sequel isn’t just a return to one of the most divisive games of the last decade. It’s a full-on statement about what games can be when you stop trying to please everyone and start creating something unique.
Creating games that go beyond what is expected
Before we dive deeper into what sets Death Stranding and its sequel apart, we need to talk about its creator: Hideo Kojima.
When he was younger, Kojima didn’t dream of making games. Instead, he wanted to become a movie director. He made a few films that he never showed anyone, and wrote novels and short stories. Even to this day, Kojima describes himself as “70% of [his] body is made of movies”. Among his inspirations, Kojima often cited George Miller, the creator of Mad Max, as his idol.
But breaking into the Japanese film industry wasn’t easy. When he saw Nintendo’s Famicom for the first time, Kojima realized there might be another way to tell his stories: video games. He joined Konami in 1986, despite the fact that it was frowned upon by his friends and family. In 1987, he directed, designed, and wrote Metal Gear, an action-adventure game that would later be defined as one of the titles that shaped the stealth genre.
With the Metal Gear series, Kojima brought movie-style direction to games. Not just cutscenes, but camera angles, edits, sound design, and pacing. He wanted players to feel like they were inside a film, but with the freedom to move and decide.
One example of how players could decide is the fight against The End in Metal Gear Solid 3. Usually, when players face a boss, there’s only one way out: shooting their way through the enemy, until their health bar reaches zero. But that’s not the experience Kojima wanted players to have.
Sure, if they want to blast away, they can. But they can also shut the game down and wait seven real-world days. When they boot the game after a week, The End would have died of old age. Not only does it give players new ways to play, it also makes them think about the game even when not playing it, just like a movie or a book can linger with you after finishing them.
After over 30 years at Konami, Kojima parted ways with the company and launched Kojima Productions as an independent studio. Back in 2012, Kojima said in an interview with IGN that his goal was to “do new things, things that nobody else has done before.” And that’s exactly what he did, over a decade later, with Death Stranding.
The creation of a new genre
Death Stranding is a game that’s hard to describe. It follows the journey of Sam Porter Bridges, played by Norman Reedus, a courier who explores a post-apocalyptic version of the United States to reconnect isolated colonies together.
Death Stranding is slow and kind of melancholic, with some people even comparing it to a walking simulator. To be honest, I was one of them, wondering why I’d spend hours running around to deliver packages. But then, the music kicked in, the UI vanished, and here I was, alone, in the middle of nature.
And that’s exactly what Death Stranding is about. The feeling of loneliness, with the goal of finding others to rebuild something broken. It’s not flashy, filled with action, and monsters to shoot through. Death Stranding forces players to take their time, look around, and appreciate the little details.
Kojima explained that Death Stranding was the first “strand game,” a new genre focusing on social interactions. While Death Stranding is a solo game, players can scavenge materials from other players’ fallen cargo, use roads and structures left behind by strangers, and rate each other’s contributions. And that gives quite a unique feeling in a video game: even if you play alone, others are here to help you.
There are almost no boss fights, no factions to join or betray, and no rush to save the world in time. Instead, it’s about human connection and the journey itself. In an interview with fashion designer Errolson Hugh, Kojima explained that by forcing the player to walk and endure boredom, he hoped they would see the poetic side of isolation and connection. That may not please all players, but it’s a way for Kojima to force players to stop and think, instead of looking for the next adrenaline rush.
However, this game direction was a risk for Kojima Productions. Death Stranding asked players to slow down, take their time, and literally walk for hours. That kind of pacing isn’t just niche, it’s the opposite of what most blockbuster games are selling. If players didn’t like it, Death Stranding would have caused Kojima Productions to go bankrupt.
Luckily for the studio, the game found its audience. Some players were skeptical at first, not quite sure what to make of its strange world and story. But over time, many came around and started to get what Kojima was aiming for.
Kojima proves that games are art
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach continues Sam’s story, eleven months after the end of the first game. Just like its predecessor, On the Beach is filled with references to cinema. From popular actors like Norman Reedus, Léa Seydoux, Elle Fanning, and Mads Mikkelsen leading the cast, to the inclusion of movie directors like Guillermo del Toro and George Miller, Kojima’s inspirations are all over his work.
Even the trailer for Death Stranding 2 looks more like a preview for an auteur movie than a sneak peek at an upcoming game. The video is over ten minutes long, leaving players with more questions than answers, but with the need to uncover more about what this new game is about.
Scoring the apocalypse
In addition to his well-known love of cinema, Hideo Kojima frequently expresses a deep connection to music. He often shares tracks he’s listening to on social media, regularly spotlighting lesser-known or emerging artists. This passion led him to launch KOJI10, a personal playlist series where he curates and posts songs that reflect his current mood or creative inspirations.
Music plays a key role in Death Stranding. It’s not just here as a background ambiance to avoid awkward silences. When Sam Porter explores the world, this vast and empty land, music is his only companion. So, just like you would pick an album to play in your earphones while walking, the choice of music matters.
Hideo Kojima picked artists he liked to feature in Death Stranding. He explained that “the natural connection (strand) [he has] with these people makes it possible to work together,” further cementing the idea of how human connection is key to everything.
In the original Death Stranding, Hideo Kojima featured the music of Low Roar, an Icelandic band. The game also features music from Silent Poets, Chvrches, and Apocalyptica.
Following the death of Low Roar leader Ryan Karazija in 2022, Hideo Kojima paid tribute to the artist, stating that “without Low Roar, Death Stranding would not have been born.” More than just music, Low Roar’s sounds shaped the entire experience, highlighting the struggles of Sam Porter and the feeling of loneliness when exploring the world.
For Death Stranding 2, Hideo Kojima reached out to Woodkid, a music video director and songwriter who worked with artists like Taylor Swift and Harry Styles, composed for the League of Legends series Arcane, and released two albums on his own. Woodkid spent three years working on the music for Death Stranding 2, crafting procedural songs that dynamically adapt to players’ actions.
Swedish composer Ludvig Forssell, who previously worked with Kojima on Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and the original Death Stranding, also created music for this sequel. In an interview with ScreenRant, Forssell mentioned that he wanted to “have the music be more gratifying when you’re playing it, and not just informative,” leaving a long-lasting impression on players that goes beyond the usual sound clues and default background music.
Overall, music in Death Stranding 2 is not just a tool to fill silences, but a way to make players feel the story more deeply, in addition to the actors’ performances, gameplay, and the overall plot. Kojima’s latest game combines various media to engage the player and make them part of the story, providing a unique experience that goes beyond what blockbuster games typically offer.
Death Stranding 2 isn’t made to please everyone
With a deeper focus on emotion, cinematic methods, and the use of music, Death Stranding 2 is one of the games that proves how games are art. It’s not the first game to do so, and hopefully not the last, but it further cements video games’ place among other art forms like movies, music, and literature.
But art can’t please everyone. Just like paintings or dance, art is polarizing: some will love it, some will hate it, while others won’t understand it whatsoever.
When the first test audiences’ results came in, reviews were largely positive for Death Stranding 2. While most studios would see that as a good sign that their games will meet their audience, that’s not what Hideo Kojima was looking for.
“We have a problem,” said Kojima to Woodkid. “I’m going to be very honest, we have been testing the game with players and the results are too good. They like it too much. That means something is wrong; we have to change something. If everyone likes it, it means it’s mainstream. It means it’s conventional. It means it’s already pre-digested for people to like it. And I don’t want that. I want people to end up liking things they didn’t like when they first encountered it, because that’s where you really end up loving something.”
So, halfway through the development, Hideo Kojima rewrote the script of Death Stranding 2 to make it more polarizing. His goal wasn’t to create a game that would sell well and be loved by a large audience, but to evoke genuine emotions that would eventually cause players to change their minds about a topic.
The rise of games with something to say
Death Stranding 2 isn’t the only game proving that players are ready to embrace something offbeat. In the past few years, a wave of story-driven, artistic games has been surprising hits, like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Death Stranding 2 is essentially the big-budget member of that club: it has the polish of higher-budget games, but all the oddball imagination of an indie.
Kojima’s popularity in the gaming industry, especially following the success of the Metal Gear series, brings in players curious to see what the auteur comes up with next. Not everyone will like it, but some may fall in love with a genre they didn’t expect.
That’s good news for the artistic side of the gaming industry: while these games are far from bringing mainstream gameplay and stories, it’s beginning to attract a larger audience. It gives room for more auteur-like games in the future, putting the spotlight on the fact that different doesn’t equal bad. If games are ever going to be truly accepted as art, 2025 might well be their moment, with Kojima’s latest creation leading the charge.
