The China Mail - Star-packed, Covid-shaped 'Death Stranding 2' drops this week

Kojima has said the follow-up to the meditative 2019 game, in which "Walking Dead" star Norman Reedus played post-apocalyptic deliveryman Sam Porter Bridges, is "about connection".

"The social situation was that everyone was divided" when development began on "Death Stranding" in 2016, Kojima said as he presented the new instalment at Los Angeles' Summer Game Fest on June 8.

"I said, let's get connected. Right after that, we had the pandemic, and my fiction became a little reality" as people communed over new digital channels, he added.

"Death Stranding 2", which drops Thursday, reflects Kojima's hope that people will rediscover analogue ways of being together following the years of isolation, he said.

The first "Death Stranding" was a hybrid between a hiking simulator and a classic action game.

It was set in a gloomy, fantastical science-fiction universe where characters are aged by the rain and carry foetuses that warn them of dangerous ghostly creatures nearby.

Reedus's character Bridges had the job of reconnecting the last outposts of civilisation in a devastated United States following a disaster.

This time Bridges's adventures will bring him to Mexico and Australia, in a story that 61-year-old Kojima -- creator of the equally fantastical "Metal Gear" stealth action saga -- said was completely rewritten in light of Covid-19.

"I already had the DS2 idea but I had to scratch that off because I experienced the pandemic. So I rewrote," he said.

"It's a new connection... I put that in the game system and I want everyone to experience that," Kojima added.

French actor Lea Seydoux -- a star of films like James Bond adventure "No Time to Die" or Quentin Tarantino's World War II romp "Inglourious Basterds" -- returns in 3D form alongside Reedus.

But new big-name talent is also along for the ride, including American actor Elle Fanning and the likeness of "Mad Max" director George Miller.

French singer Woodkid composed the score for the new episode.

Kojima Productions, the eponymous studio the developer founded in 2015 after leaving Japanese giant Konami, said in March this year that the first "Death Stranding" had more than 20 million players.

And the franchise is broadening out to other media, with a feature film in development with American studio A24 as well as an animated film.

Kojima is already turning his bottomless energy to other projects, including a horror game, "OD", co-written with American director Jordan Peele ("Get Out", "Nope") and developed in partnership with Microsoft.

He is also returning to the world of spy games in the vein of "Metal Gear" with a new espionage title, "PHYSINT".

A.Kwok--ThChM