Death Stranding 2: On the Beach's gorgeous open world can be easy to take for granted. After all, where once the prospect of free roaming through a large space was a novelty – like in GTA 3 – open worlds have now become a sort of genre default. It can sometimes feel more surprising for a new blockbuster game to not be an open world. Like many, I can sometimes feel a bit disenchanted with how expected open world games have become. Death Stranding 2 feels like a remedy, becoming one of the best open world games as far as I'm concerned.
We're living in an era where there are more games to play than ever, adding to a huge back catalog of terrific releases it feels like we'll never catch up on – 'open world bloat' can be a very real thing, whether it's repetitive missions, or the sense that moving from one mission point to the next is just filling the time between big moments of action. Admittedly, Death Stranding 2 is definitely in that mold. But because of how it presents it, Death Stranding 2 ends up feeling like one of the few open world games that truly justifies being designed in the way that it is.
