A Death Stranding sequel is reportedly in development

By George Yang May 20, 2022

A sequel to 2019’s Death Stranding is reportedly in production. While no official announcement has been made, the game’s main character actor seems to have confirmed it.

In an interview with Leo, actor Norman Reedus was discussing his career. The interviewer, Ilaria Urbinati, asked about Reedus’s book, the final season of The Walking Dead, and of course, Death Stranding.

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Referencing Death Stranding, Reedus answers, “We just started the second one.” This indicates that a sequel is already in development and that it has perhaps entered the motion capture and filming phase.

..Norman Reedus seems to have confirmed that a Death Stranding sequel is in production in a new interviewhttps://t.co/aBU85dAJjT pic.twitter.com/iT30YyqEct

— Nibel (@Nibellion) May 20, 2022

Shortly after, Reedus reiterates the “second part” of Death Stranding. “It took me maybe two or three years to finish all the mo-cap sessions and everything. It takes a lot of work,” he says. “And then the game came out, and it just won all these awards, and it was a huge thing, so we just started part two of that.”

Reedus goes on to explain how he got involved with the first Death Stranding, noting that Kojima showed him Silent Hill, which was most likely PT at the time. He was blown away by it, saying, “It’s not Ms. Pac-Man; it’s so realistic, it’s so futuristic, it’s so complicated and beautiful, and I was completely blown away.”

This is the first time we’ve heard of any plans for a sequel, and neither Hideo Kojima nor Kojima Productions has mentioned anything about the possibility of there being one.

In our Death Stranding review, we said, “Death Stranding can be a slog at times, but its innovation and compelling story will see you through.”

Death Stranding is available on PlayStation 4, with the Director’s Cut version available on PlayStation 5 and PC.

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PlayStation Plus Premium needs a stronger selling point

Miles drops his phone while swinging in Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales.

Sony finally revealed how it's combining PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now, and the reworked service lines up with exactly what we had heard in leaks. So far, we know PlayStation Plus Premium, the highest tier, will offer access to around 700 games that come from almost every PlayStation platform, but Sony has only revealed a small, underwhelming number of titles for the service. On top of that, PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan already declared that putting new first-party PlayStation titles on the service on day one is "not a road that we're going to go down with this new service."
Many fans and industry pundits (myself included) have previously compared PlayStation Plus Premium to Xbox Game Pass. While the services are definitely competing as subscription offerings from major console manufacturers, it's clear that Sony doesn't plan to match Microsoft's offerings one-to-one for the time being. With so many question marks around what games will be included, Sony has yet to give players a strong sales pitch for PlayStation Plus Premium.
Content is king
With game subscription services, content is king. Xbox Game Pass draws eyes because there are plenty of excellent AAA and indie titles available on the service, many of which are on there day one. Microsoft has managed to make Xbox Game Pass a compelling service that many gamers talk about because the games on it are diverse and intriguing. Currently, PlayStation Plus Premium doesn't elicit that same response.

While most of the games currently on PlayStation Now will presumably be part of PlayStation Plus Premium, the following titles are the only ones to be confirmed for the service so far:

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Have a Nice Death is like The Office as a morbid roguelike

The Grim reaper drinks coffee in Have a Nice Death.

Upcoming Steam early access game Have a Nice Death isn't just an action roguelike starring the Grim Reaper. It's a workplace comedy inspired by The Office.
Have a Nice Death | Death, Inc. New Hire Orientation Video
In this new indie game from Unruly Heroes developer Magic Design Studios, players control a personification of Death who's burnt out from being the CEO of Death Incorporated. It turns out that the underworld is run by a dreary corporation that drains the life out of its employees just as much as the ones on the mortal plane do. Overworked and underappreciated, players track down the Sorrows, which are Death Inc. executives ignoring their duties to cause chaos on Earth. Death has to show them who's boss and possibly make their job a little more enjoyable.
In practice, Have a Nice Death is a side-scrolling action-roguelike that takes place in the various departments of Death Inc., which include addiction, pollution, and more. This game will grab players' attention thanks to its wonderful animation and bombastic abilities, but has the potential to be much more relatable on a deeper level thanks to its setting and themes.
Gamifying burnout
Envisioning the underworld isn't exactly a new concept in games -- Death's Door and Hades both had a similar approach to portraying the afterlife -- but the developers of Have a Nice Death made it clear that this is a game more about workplace struggles and burnout than dying. Death can't actually die. To him, RIP actually means "rest in paperwork."
To realize this vision, the developers at Magic Design Studios had to draw from their own experience and hope players will do the same. "We started to think about our own experiences as employees in corporations," narrative designer Mérédith Alfroy tells Digital Trends. "Everybody knows what it is to work, so we can assume the player will understand what we want to talk about."
Discussing the realities of the modern workplace can obviously get quite depressing, but there is one show is famous for addressing these topics in a funny and approachable way: The Office.
"We're particularly big fans of The Office USA TV show," Alfroy says. "We definitely wanted to go in that show's direction with the humor."
At a basic level, The Office is a show about feeling stuck in a dead-end job at a company that doesn't matter, but it captivated audiences by mining the humor out of all of the quirky relationships that emerge from that misery.
While Have a Nice Death's premise might be uncomfortably relatable, its developers are learning from The Office and making something that might make the endless grind of working a little more bearable. The main way it can do this is by making the player feel powerful as they fight the Sorrows and their minions around Death Inc. Have a Nice Death's combat looks exhilarating, and the game was intentionally designed to be short but sweet.
"We focused on making an action game, and the roguelike genre really fit with our vision of making fast and short bursts of action condensed into a single-hour run," Simon Dutertre, lead game designer, explains.

Why early access?
The American version of The Office did have to rebound from a first season that wasn't super-popular and much more dour in tone. Thankfully, its creators focused on the elements people liked, such as Michael Scott's loveable antics and the Jim and Pam's romance, and the show really managed to come into its own throughout season two. With Have a Nice Death, Magic Design Studios has a clear vision for what it wants to do, but is also looking for player feedback through early access to truly give players what they want.
"We know where we want to finish this game's story, but we really want to surprise players with the events in the game," Alfroy said. "We can also use the feedback from the community during access and maybe go deeper into the short stories of some NPCs or go even deeper with the main. We want to adapt to feedback, even if we know where we're going in the main story and want to surprise the player."

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Forget difficulty, video games have a communication problem

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When we talk about video game difficulty, that usually means one thing: “This game is hard.”

Hard can mean a few different things. In the case of a game like Dark Souls, it means that a game is physically demanding. It can require precise mastery of controls and superhuman reflexes. In a puzzle game, there’s more of a cognitive workout. Baba is You, a game where players essentially code the rules by pushing boxes, features notoriously difficult puzzles that require heavy brain power.