Death Stranding 2 Will Make Boss Battles Way Less Tedious
Beating the odds.
Death Stranding is one of the most unique games Hideo Kojima has ever created, and that’s saying something. It’s an almost meditative experience about picking your way through dangerous environments as you deliver vital packages to survivors in a post-apocalyptic America, a kind of supernatural mailman simulator. But it can be jarring when a massive boss battle with a hideous creature breaks up that contemplative flow, a problem Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is hoping to address with a new feature that lets players skip boss battles.
Death Stranding 1’s first boss battle comes as a pretty big shock. You’ve been trying your best to avoid the terrifying invisible creatures known as BTs for over a dozen hours for fear of having your packages damaged. You finally get a grenade that lets you deal with the monsters, and then just an hour or so later, you have to throw a dozen of them at a giant octopus as it chases you around a city of buildings floating in goop. The game introduces the tools and gameplay techniques to tackle bosses properly, but it’s easy to see how these moments might feel out of place for anyone who just wants that low-key simulation stuff.
Death Stranding doesn’t feature much combat, so its boss battles can feel like they come out of nowhere.
Speaking on his radio show, Kojima explained that a new feature will let players skip boss battles but still get descriptions of how the battle played out. X user Genki_JPN interpreted Kojima’s comments:
“For boss battles in DS2 (presumably in Easy Mode) there will be an extra option on the Game Over screen below the ‘continue’ option. This option will let you clear the boss battle and show you image and text descriptions of the battle like a novel instead, to let you clear the boss battle more easily.”
That sounds like a visual novel, but it seems like players will at least need to attempt the boss battle before getting the option to move on. It will be interesting to see how the feature is implemented, and how in-depth these novel-like sections go. Previous Kojima games have sported a visual novel-esque style in story moments, like Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops and Peace Walker, so this isn’t coming from out of the blue. The Metal Gear Solid HD Legacy Collection even included a Digital Graphic Novel that retold the events of Metal Gear Solid 1.
Combat in the first game largely focused on subduing enemies, but that doesn’t seem to be the case in Death Stranding 2.
But the choice to let players skip boss battles is still an interesting one, especially considering Kojima has real intentionality behind every design choice he makes. This does, however, tie into what we’ve heard about the sequel, and how it might have a much greater focus on action than the first game.
Back in February 2024, Norman Reedus said in an interview, “I feel like the first game there was something very passive about it, something open and calm. And I feel like this one [Death Stranding 2] has a bit more violence.”
That was before we really knew anything substantial about the sequel, but that sentiment can be seen on full display in the pre-order trailer released this March. While the trailer still has some of the quiet vistas we’re used to, it also gives a glimpse of some explosive gunplay and combat, and features a much darker tone.
With all that in mind, it seems smart to give inexperienced action players a way out of boss battles, especially if their scope and difficulty are going to be amped up. Making a game more approachable is always good, but it’s especially interesting to see that Death Stranding 2 will still provide the narrative context. We still have questions, but we’ll find out soon enough how these sections feel.
