Hideo Kojima's sequel to Death Stranding seemingly confirmed to be in the works at Kojima Productions, it is very unlikely that the main mechanic in the game will change very much. There will almost certainly be new delivery methods introduced, and giving the player control of a party of couriers could expand on the rather lackluster management seen in the BRIDGES delivery bots.
The game itself takes a lot of patience to play, as it tasks the player with undertaking long treks through difficult terrain, which is often a solitary experience. The main storyline is about forty hours long, and with around five hundred optional deliveries, doing it all alone can be kind of a drag. The multiplayer in Death Stranding works as a nebulous social network, where players can see and use other players' structures and even deliver lost cargo that has been left behind. Delivery bots are introduced in the game as a way of taking care of some smaller deliveries while Sam Porter Bridges focuses on other orders, but they don't help much. Instead of expanding the breadth of what players need to manage, a party system could introduce a revamped gameplay loop while keeping the mechanics relatively intact.
Sam Porter Bridges is known as the best porter according to many NPCs, and it is fair to assume that he will be given some higher privileges and responsibilities in any Death Stranding sequel that is in development. During the events of the first game, NPC porters are briefly mentioned and rarely seen. They mostly appear as holograms providing ing greetings to encourage the player to keep up the hard work. While players can use ladders, bridges, zip-lines, and other materials placed by other porters (mostly other players), that's about where the interaction ends other than occasional appearances by NPCs on deliveries.
A Party System Would Expand Death Stranding's Gameplay
If an order has an excess amount of items that need to be delivered and will inevitably weigh and slow Sam down, introducing a system with other porters could take the load off of the player. Distributing entire orders and divvying up individual items could increase efficiency for time-sensitive orders or allow Death Stranding players to carry more weight for orders that award bonuses based on the amount of cargo delivered. One of the more useful functions of the random spawns comes during boss fights encountered in the storyline, where they will usually pop up from the black sludge that floods the battlefield, providing Sam with useful items such as blood bags and weapons. Having multiple characters to control during such fights could put a satisfying twist on how they play out, letting the player strategically split up their party to gather resources or use a wider arsenal of weapons.
There are many aspects that players have strong criticisms about, mostly revolving around the pacing and tedious nature of the game's main mechanic, which often label Death Stranding a walking simulator. The game focuses around rebuilding America and bringing people back together. Recruiting other porters from different regions of the makeshift country and giving the player control of the delivery service could streamline the process, especially if different areas Death Stranding's massive map can be accessed at the same time by several entities.
