Death Stranding 2 has been announced, and Kojima rewrote the whole game

Kojima Productions officially revealed the sequel to 2019’s Death Stranding at The Game Awards. During the show, Hideo Kojima revealed in an interview that the COVID-19 pandemic caused him to rewrite the whole story.

The details:

• Following last week’s teaser from his personal Twitter account, Kojima’s Death Stranding 2 was revealed with a trailer, stylized as “DS2” throughout the show. It was also noted that the name of the project was just being used as the current working title.
• During an on-stage interview with Geoff Keighley, Kojima was asked if the pandemic had affected the game in any way. "I had the story written before the pandemic, but after experiencing the pandemic, I rewrote the whole thing from scratch," he said, following up with, "I also didn’t want to predict any more future, so I rewrote it.”
• The latter half of his answer is in reference to his reputation for predicting the future inside his games. Death Stranding, with its overarching theme of loneliness, arrived just months before the global lockdowns went into effect. His iconic Metal Gear Solid franchise—the second entry in particular—portrayed issues of fake news, data manipulation, and lack of digital privacy.
• There’s no official release date for the game as of yet, but without a final title, it’s likely quite far away.

What do we know about Death Stranding 2 so far?

• Although the full cast has yet to be revealed, Norman Reedus, Lea Seydoux, and Troy Baker are confirmed to be making a return from the first game. Actors Elle Fanning and Shioli Kutsuna will also be joining the cast, albeit in currently unknown roles.
• The game appears to have more nautical themes, which is in line with speculation resulting from the logos in Kojima’s cryptic tweet resembling a compass, bridge, and sea monster.
• The second logo in Kojima’s tweet has now been revealed as the logo of what appears to be a corporation known as Drawbridge. Some fans speculate that logo hints at the game being both a prequel and a sequel to the first game, playing into the rope and stick concept from Kobo Abe’s stories that inspired the first game.
• Kojima Productions has chosen to use Guerrilla’s Decima engine to power DS2. The engine was previously used for the Horizon games as well as the original Death Stranding. Guerrilla will also support the studio with anything relating to the engine.