Norman Reedus confirms Death Stranding sequel: 'We just started the second one'
He just blurted it out.
Death Stranding is a pretty popular videogame—you may have heard of it before—and pretty good, too: "Slow, weird, and indulgent, but a true original, and a journey that will linger in your mind long after it's over," we said in our 85% review of the original PC release. (The expanded, "definitive" Director's Cut arrived earlier this year.) And now, as revealed by star Norman Reedus in a Leo interview, it seems that a sequel is in development.
"We just started the second one," Reedus says in response to a question about his work on Death Stranding.
That's pretty blunt and hard to misread, but just in case there's doubt, he repeats the claim a second time—but not before re-telling the story of how he came to meet Death Stranding director Hideo Kojima in the first place.
"Guillermo Del Toro, who gave me my first movie, called me up and said, 'Hey, there’s a guy named Hideo Kojima, he’s gonna call you, just say yes'," Reedus said. "And I go, 'What do you mean just say yes?' He goes, 'Stop being an asshole, just say yes'.
"Then I was in San Diego and Hideo came with a big group of people, he’s from Tokyo, and he showed me what he was working on on a game called Silent Hill. I was blown away by what he was showing me, and I was like, 'Yes, let’s do this.' It’s not Ms. Pacman; it’s so realistic, it’s so futuristic, it’s so complicated and beautiful, and I was completely blown away."
And then, the kicker: "It took me maybe two or three years to finish all the MoCap sessions and everything. It takes a lot of work. And then the game came out, and it just won all these awards, and it was a huge thing, so we just started part two of that."
It's not surprising that a Death Stranding sequel would happen, given the success of the first—in fact, Reedus hinted at the possibility way back in 2020—but it is a little unusual that its existence would be revealed in such a casual, off-the-cuff, "Oh yeah by the way we're doing another one" comment in an interview that otherwise has nothing at all to do with videogames. It makes me wonder if Norman is going to be getting another phone call from Hideo Kojima in the very near future.
I've reached out to Kojima Productions and Death Stranding publisher 505 Games for comment, and will update if I receive a reply.