As jam-packed full of gaming news as Summer Game Fest 2025 was, it was up to Hideo Kojima to end the weekend with a bang. Or, rather, an explosion. At a presentation hosted by Geoff Keighley late Sunday night, Hideo Kojima and a few of his collaborators brought a tiny taste of Death Stranding 2 to the festival, which also happened to include the very first scenes of the game.
In it, we get narration from Lea Seydoux’s Fragile explaining her love of porters traveling through rain, sun, sleet, and hail to deliver their packages, until one of the several new songs from French artpop artist Woodkid starts to build up. It’s reminiscent of the first game’s intro until you realize this isn’t the murky wasteland of the first game, but a desert, teeming with creatures the realms of the living and dead. One of those new living creatures happens to be the wee baby Lou, the stillborn bridge baby our hero Sam was carrying around in the first game, now an adorable 11-month old because…well, look, a lot happened in those final three chapters in DS1. Die-Hardman is president of America now. While still wearing the skull mask. We don’t have time to unpack all that.
We get our first snippets of gameplay after, showing off the advanced terrain physics at work, with a minor earthquake, a colony of chiral tarantulas, and a dynamic music system Kojima and Woodkid seem especially proud of. It’s genuinely impressive, and it won’t make the wait for the game’s release on until June 26 any easier. You can pre-order the game right here.
