Death Stranding 2 devs thought 'Brutal' mode was hard enough, but pushed the game to 'the upper limit' with its new difficulty option on PC

Death Stranding 2's PC launch on Thursday may have been overshadowed just a bit by Crimson Desert, but as I wrote in my review, it's a great game, whether you're in it for the Hideo Kojima story or the delivery sim sandbox. Folks who especially love the latter, though, like PC Gamer's Morgan Park, almost universally have the same complaint: it's too easy. Though Death Stranding 2 lets you challenge yourself by making deliveries on foot, the vehicles, upgrades, and shared infrastructure from other players can trivialize making flawless deliveries.

For the PC release Kojima Productions added a new difficult option called "To the Wilder," which was created specifically to address player feedback, the studio said in an interview with PC Gamer this week.

"To the Wilder as a design concept was a way for us to provide more difficult ways to play missions through harsh environments," said lead level designer Hiroaki Yoshiike. "Originally we had the Brutal difficulty, which in our opinion was enough. But it turned out that some users thought we could've done more. So To the Wilder is basically the upper limit that we, as developers, could provide [for] an experience that's a challenge as well as something we can enjoy. We think that it's a way for you to experience the world of Death Stranding 2 in a very realistic way."

Yoshiike said that the effect of Timefall, which gradually ages and destroys anything it touches, is "particularly pronounced" in To the Wilder, making resource management crucial—"almost a requirement." He emphasized the need to plan out missions in advance and think about what tools will be best suited to the job and testing out combinations that may not have been important on lower difficulties.

"For players who have already beaten the game once, I'm sure there are times where they think 'oh, I never use this item,'" he said. "But in To the Wilder those items can be key sometimes. So if they can give those a try, I think that will be particularly fun to test out."

When Yoshiike told me that the developers had played through To the Wilder from start to finish and that there were "some items that [they] absolutely needed to unlock," I asked for an example. Sorry, fellow porters—Kojima Productions wants you to learn the hard way.

"Some things were items that were used for deliveries, some were weapons, some were other items, but we don't want to elaborate on what exactly they were. We want to have users figure that one out."

Yoshiike did offer one tip, though. The in-game social media, the Social Strand System, as well as the "Strand Agreements" you can make with other players online, are "particularly important" for easing your passage across this harsher version of Australia. So if you're playing To the Wilder, make sure to visit that section of the menu and start strengthening those bonds with other porters.