After far too many hours I have finished Death Stranding 2: Everyone In This Game Is The Worst Therapist Ever. I enjoyed it a lot - it was basically Death Stranding with more doodads and toys - but mostly I want to tell you this story.
See, the instant I was given the ability to make a truck (a 'pickup off-roader') I made a truck. I painted her the two most hideous shades of neon in my possession, named her the Shallow-Tar Cargo Vessel (SCV) Violence Is Neon, and hit the road. I stubbornly babied the Violence Is Neon back and forth (and up and down) across the entire continent. I patched her up and blinged her out; a couple of times I only barely managed to save her from rusting to death after prolonged exposure to timefall snow. But I did. I kept my first truck with me for the whole of the game.
Until endgame, anyway. There came a point when I had to fight my way across a long bridge full of enemies. Of course my truck came with me - my truck was Sam's purse full of backup weapons - and I'd drive forward a hundred meters, get out, fight dudes, get back in, and drive forward a hundred meters. Until the game decided to cutscene me, anyway, and a dude literally cut the bridge in half.
My truck vanished. Everything that had been in it was thrown into the tar. The Violence Is Neon, who had been with me since almost the beginning, had been destroyed. I'm pretty sure my next-door neighbors heard me yell "MY TRUCK!!"
I was so upset, you guys. But I finished fighting my way across the bridge and put Sam to bed. The next morning I dragged ass over to the terminal to create a new truck, knowing that it would never be the same, that it would feel hollow and sad.
The game told me that I had the maximum number of vehicles available and, if I continued, my oldest vehicle would be given to another porter.
The tiniest seed of hope bloomed in my heart. I ran up the ramp and looked out across the broken bridge and there, at the very limit of Sam's vision, I could see a tiny battery gauge. I bolted for it. I waded through the tar where the bridge was broken. And there, at the far end of the bridge, empty and damaged but still existing, was the Violence Is Neon.
My mind provided the swelling music and the slow-motion run with arms wide open, but they were there, I swear to you.
Anyway, what I am trying to say is that Death Stranding 2 may be a game that purports to grapple with themes of love, friendship, death, grief, suffering, and cooperation, but the most honest emotional reaction I had during the course the game was to the presumed destruction and miraculous rebirth of my truck.
I don't know if that says more about Kojima or about me.
