i’m half a dozen hours into death stranding 2: on the beach and want to talk about an early moment where the game doesn’t entertain your nonsense.

spoilers ahead, obviously.

death stranding 2 begins with protagonist sam porter bridges living an isolated life of quiet happiness with his adopted daughter, lou. of course, that doesn’t last for long. former ally fragile shows up to ask sam to help connect mexico to the chiral network the same way he did with the united cities of america.

the player is asked to either accept fragile‘s job or tell her no after a short, expository cutscene. the former means continuing into the death stranding 2 story as normal, but i recommend choosing the latter dialogue option if you want to experience one of hideo kojima‘s classic meta gags.

upon turning fragile down, death stranding 2 immediately cuts to a previous cutscene rather than simply telling the player, “no, that’s not allowed,” like other games might. sam cleans up in the kitchen and sits down to feed lou while burt bacharach sings “raindrops keep fallin’ on my head” in the background. everything plays out as it did before until the camera returns to a shot of the shelter’s photo-covered wall. it slowly zooms into a new picture of sam and fragile speaking, allowing the player one more chance to accept her offer.

say no again, and the short cinematic restarts, only the wall photo it focuses on is from the game’s actual opening, where we meet sam and lou in media res during the tail end of a delivery and learn the controls as they return home. it’s here that i thought death stranding 2 was going to punish my bullshit by making me play through the entire sequence again before sam screamed and the game returned to his conversation with fragile once more, accompanied by an appropriate record scratch. this time, however, the only option it provided is saying yes to the job.

no matter how serious or convoluted his storylines get, kojima is always willing to provide a little levity along the way, especially if it means toying with the player’s idea of what games are supposed to do.