i was doomscrolling bluesky last night when i stumbled upon a video (thanks chris plante) showing how you can erect gravestones for death stranding 2‘s wildlife when they die from timefall. these animals — a collection of species native to australia including kangaroos, tasmanian devils, emus, quokkas, and koalas — are normally meant to be caught and delivered to an animal shelter for social currency. (fun fact: the sanctuary is run by scottish synth-pop outfit chvrches. like, literally chvrches, not original characters played by the band. god bless hideo kojima.)
unfortunately, this feature isn’t available if you were responsible for the creature’s death. i wrote an early version of this story as if i’d found an easy way to absolve my guilt for accidentally running over animals other than loading an old save and pretending it never happened. but after rushing to my game and hitting a wandering echidna on purpose so i could have a screenshot of the holographic grave to put at the top of the blog, i came to the shocking realization that death stranding 2 isn’t about to let you get away with turning cute animals into roadkill so easily. and now i’m sad all over again.
luckily, animals don’t have souls in the death stranding universe and thus don’t become ghosts and cause huge explosions.
while not as prevalent, i’ve noticed similar behaviors from the wildlife in death stranding 2 as the rabbits in red dead redemption 2. the latter of which are so suicidal that i wrote a whole humorous blog about my experiences trying to avoid their attempts to run under my horse’s hooves during my time at kotaku. i still think it’s very good.
anyway! animal graves are just the latest thing i’ve learned about death stranding 2 from folks online, which feels like a natural extension of the asynchronous multiplayer built into the game itself. much like the piece about hot springs i published yesterday, kojima productions hid a lot of wonderful things in this game you might not see if you tunnelvision on more obvious stuff like deliveries and road-building.
death stranding 2 asks, “should we have connected?” but it’s becoming more and more clear it’s one of those games that’s only enhanced by conversations on social media.
tell them i died 