While story spoilers are not mentioned here, this article does discuss a mission objective and a weapon in Death Stranding 2.
The kangaroo is out of the pouch. Death Stranding 2: On The Beach takes place on our fine continent of Australia. Anybody who has followed the twenty minutes of trailers put out so far for the game will no doubt have suspected that Sam would be delivering somewhere that wasn’t America. You might have even had some suspicions if you’ve followed all the reveals closely. But having played the game for an enormous amount of time at Kojima Productions in Tokyo last month, it’s obvious that a lot of care has gone into creating our very own Death Stranding-ified version of the great southern land.
We spoke to Kojima at Kojima Productions about this decision, which turned out to be a lot more practical than thought. Speaking about the sequel’s original concept, the setting almost wasn’t going to be Australia.
“The first idea I had was that you would have to go around disconnecting everything you connected, because you learn that connecting was a big mistake. But that didn’t feel right, as it would just be reusing the same environment. I wanted an area that was sprawled from East to West like America and also somewhere that faced the Ocean to the North and South. In that case, Eurasia or Africa felt like too big of a continent, but in terms of size and scale, I felt that Australia was a good fit.”
If you’ve been following, it was obvious there was an Australian connection to the game. The most obvious is the fact that George Miller, director and writer of the Mad Max films, appears in the game as Tarman, the captain of the ship you’ll be using as a base of operations in the game. But like Heartman and Deadman before him, Tarman isn’t voiced by the actor he’s based on. Instead, Tarman is voiced by Marty Rhone. Rhone himself is also Australian, having enjoyed a brief career as a pop singer-songwriter in the 70s. Other little tidbits have insinuated a link to Australia too. From a Quokka Hologram being a pre-order bonus to the enigmatic Rainy being played by Japanese-Australian actress Shioli Kutsuna and, finally, the fact that Elle Fanning’s involvement was revealed by scanning a QR code at PAX Australia in 2022. The clues were there, we just had to pay attention. And some people did.
But it’s not just about Australians appearing in the game – it’s about how the world and culture of Australia are transposed into and realised in the context of Death Stranding’s post-apocalyptic world. Upon being thrust upon the continent, you’ll have to make your way from the bottom left of the country all the way to the east coast. I was able to only connect most of Western Australia and the Northern Territory during my nearly forty hours with the game at Kojima Productions in Tokyo, but it was a great little tour that I can’t wait to continue when the full game is released next month.
Beyond that, the most striking thing to me is how much of the unique vernacular that we use in Australia is incorporated into Death Stranding 2: On The Beach. It’s especially obvious that somebody working on the localisation team is Australian. The portrayal of Australians in Death Stranding 2 feels anything but stereotypical, with many of them prefixing their nouns with “bloody” and one of them even mentioning they’ve got “buckleys” when it comes to assessing chance. It feels beyond surreal to hear Troy Baker, in his reappearance as the scene-chewing Higgs, proclaim that Sam is going “walkabout” during a pivotal scene. But it feels especially surreal to hear many of the other preppers you encounter talk to you in a way that you’d talk to your mates.
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I naturally had to get to the bottom of this and posed the question to the development team about how this version of Australia came to be. Takayuki Uchida, Lead Environmental Artist at Kojima Productions, said they wanted to convey the idea of a primordial Australia in Death Stranding 2. The team took inspiration from regions like Alice Springs and the greater Northern Territory when designing this version of Australia, though the development team told us Kojima was also especially fond of an area in the north of Victoria that he referred to as “The Lost City”. The Press Start team has thought about where this could be but came up blank, though there is a location in the Northern Territory also called The Lost City that seems to have heavily inspired the locales of Death Stranding 2.
That being said, it’s worth mentioning that the environments aren’t meant to be one-to-one realistic in their recreation of Australia. For one, upon landing in Australia, a giant polar-capped mountain in the middle of Western Australia is blocking you from progressing across the country too early. The team earnestly apologised for this humorously when talking about their take on the country. But there are so many little moments in Death Stranding 2 where the sense of place really takes hold. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’d be running across a dry red desert and stop to see a little echidna or bilby shuffle across my screen. It’s not just those little moments either; you’ll even save a kangaroo from a bushfire, too.
But it doesn’t end there; so many other aspects surrounding the game are distinctly Australian, too. Sam can pick up toys to deliver to preppers, and inspecting them in the menus reveals them to be cute and cuddly Platypus plushies. You can even collect “Yeast Paste” for delivery, which is mentioned in the game’s codex, the Corpus, as “an acquired taste”. And finally, and perhaps most impressively, you will even be gifted a boomerang, infused with Sam’s blood to help do gnarly damage to BTs when bullets are scarce.
All in all, these are some minor and major touches to the world, but an incredible little insight into how our own local worlds have been interpreted through a somewhat different kind of lens. I come away from my time with Death Stranding 2: On The Beach excited to see not only what more the game has to offer, but also just how much more of Australia’s unique character and personality shines through.
Death Stranding 2: On The Beach launches on June 26th 2025 for PlayStation 5. The cheapest copy is available for $99 with free shipping from Amazon.
The author travelled to Tokyo, Japan, as a guest of Kojima Productions.
