When Death Stranding 2: On the Beach dropped, I had one question in my mind: Do I need to replay the first game or play it at all before diving into the Death Stranding 2 sequel? By surfing the web, I find out that so many players are confused about the same point.
You don’t necessarily have to play Death Stranding 1 to enter the Death Stranding 2 storyline. You won’t be locked out of content, and the sequel makes an effort to catch you up. There’s even a six-minute recap video right on the main menu, plus an in-game glossary called The Corpus, which updates as you meet characters and unravel plot points.
Mechanically, it’s friendly. The tutorials are better, the UI is cleaner, and the traversal systems are introduced freshly, whether you’re a returning porter or new to strand-type weirdness. But just because you can doesn’t always mean you should.
Should You Play Death Stranding 1 Before Death Stranding 2?
Death Stranding 1 wasn’t for everyone. It was slow. Introspective. Sometimes confusing as hell. But it did something rare—it built a bizarrely poetic, post-apocalyptic world that felt deeply personal. Characters such as Fragile, Higgs, Die-Hardman, and Deadman return in the sequel. Although the new game gives you the broad strokes of who they are, what you miss are the emotional scars they carry, the stuff that doesn’t get mentioned in recap videos.
Take Fragile, for example. In DS2, she plays a major role, but without knowing her past struggles (i.e., rain trauma and betrayal arcs), her motives might seem flat or overly cryptic. Same with Sam’s connection to BB, it involves a story that hits very differently when you’ve lived it firsthand.
Read More:
- How Many Chapters in Death Stranding 2?
- Will Death Stranding 2 Be Released on PC, Xbox, or Game Pass?
- Where to Find Fragile and Lou in Death Stranding 2
If you’re interested but not ready to commit to a full 40-hour trek across ruined America, play the Director’s Cut of Death Stranding 1 on PS5 or PC. It runs smooth, fast, and includes extra scenes to digest the original narrative. Alternatively, if you’re a “tell me the lore while I cook dinner” type of player, watch some recap videos on YouTube that present content deeper than the in-game summary. Either way, you get more context than simply hitting “New Game” in DS2 blind, and I think it’s worth it.
Here’s what you’ll miss by skipping the first game:
- DS2 revisits connection, isolation and grief but builds on them rather than re-states them. You won’t get the layered resonance if you don’t know what Sam, Lou and the rest have been through in the past.
- Terms like Chiral Network, Strands, BBs, or DOOMS aren’t deeply re-explained in the sequel. You’ll sure pick up on them over time, but it’s not different than watching “The Witcher” from season two – though you get the plot, but miss the subtext.
- Traversal tools including the Magellan, upgraded ziplines, and new cargo systems are great; way nicer if you remember how bare-bones things were back in the rocky terrain of Death Stranding 1.
There is one good element for returning players; if you set the same in-game birthday in DS2 as you did in the previous game, a Sam’s birthday celebration cutscene plays out with a few cosmetics or rewards thrown in. It’s a gentle nod to all of us who’ve been walking these roads since 2019.
