A recent leak might have revealed the release date of Death Stranding 2. Announced at The Game Awards by the celebrated video game director Hideo Kojima himself, the enigmatic sequel will make its debut in 2024, according to a character artist's profile.
The leak comes from ArtStation profile of Frank Aliberti, a character artist who is serving as a senior artist in a couple of upcoming projects, including Death Stranding 2. In the Productions section in Aliberti's ArtStation, Death Stranding 2 is listed as a working title that will be released in 2024. It is worth noting that the section listing the upcoming titles has been changed, though a screenshot before the profile update can be found on a ResetEra thread.
Albertini serves in an upcoming first-person shooter title that is set to arrive in 2024 as well. Alongside Kojima Productions' curious sequel, the senior artist for PlayStation Studios Visual Arts has also listed Firewall Ultra, another FPS slated to arrive in the same year, as one of the projects to which he is attached.
While 2024 sounds like a reasonable release window for Death Stranding 2, it is best to take this new info with a pinch of salt. That's because the year 2024 can mean a lot of things other than a release date. It can also mean the length of the artist's duty on the project or a production wrap-up for the sequel, marking the start of the post-development process. In any case, the sequel is probably far off the horizon, and it is a bit unlikely for Kojima Productions to deliver the anticipated title anytime soon.
While there is no definitive word on the release date of the sequel, we do know that Kojima has completely rewritten its story after the pandemic. Based on his words, he had planned how the whole story would play out before the virus hit. But after witnessing the pandemic, the famous game director rewrote the whole story to "avoid predicting the future again."
In other interesting Death Stranding news, the recent release date leak has coincided with Epic Games Store's free giveaway of the first game. Even though the debut title of Kojima's studio was not present in Epic's 15-day Christmas giveaway campaign, Death Stranding became free to claim on the store. In fact, the Director's Cut version of the critically acclaimed title went free for a few hours, which was then changed to the base game only. Those who couldn't grab Death Stranding for free on Epic Games can head to Steam, as it is now on discount as part of the Winter Sale.