Death Stranding 2 was written before the pandemic, but illness and isolation had a heavy impact on Hideo Kojima and pushed him toward games that "don't already exist in the world"

Death Stranding 2.

With Death Stranding 2: On the Beach right around the corner, we're ready to dive back into the post-apocalyptic world Kojima Productions first introduced in 2019. As we enter this next chapter, director Hideo Kojima finds himself reflecting on the unexpected parallel between the first game's continental rift and the real-world coronavirus pandemic that soon followed.

In a conversation with Edge magazine, Kojima discussed how he had already written the sequel by the time the pandemic hit, only for the state of the world to horrifyingly reflect the story he had told in Death Stranding.