Death Stranding 2: On the Beach has been living rent-free in my head these past few days. After giving it the respect it deserves in my review, I came to a stark realization: this game is basically Kojima’s version of RGG’s Yakuza. And that’s not a bad thing at all.
In the Yakuza games, there are moments where things swing from intentionally stupid to deeply heartfelt, often leaving us in tears. That same delicate balance is on full display in Death Stranding 2: On the Beach. And one quest in particular had me laughing my ass off: delivering pizzas for The Pizza Chef, played by none other than Mamoru Oshii, director of the Ghost in the Shell movies, Angel’s Egg and more.
There are light side-quest spoilers in this piece, so you have been warned.
The Pizza Chef Experience
In the second half of the game, which is around the 30-hour mark, things start ramping up in intensity. Delivery routes become more challenging as Sam struggles through snowy mountains and hostile Bandit encampments. Then, in the middle of nowhere, I stumbled upon a weird little Prepper shack, and that’s when I met The Pizza Chef.
Mamoru Oshii appears as a chiralgram, lending only his likeness, not his voice. And he ropes you into what might be the wildest quest in the game: delivering pizza to The Architect in under five minutes, all while being surrounded by hundreds of BTs.
It was a nightmare. My heart was pounding when I realized it wasn’t just one or two BTs, but hundreds of Watcher BTs floating everywhere.
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+ 3Somehow, I managed to deliver the pizza with just one minute to spare. Clearly, this was Kojima’s latest way to troll us, just like the infamous pizza quest in the first game. Only this time, it’s even more out of hand. Five minutes to trek across half of Australia for pizza? Absolutely ridiculous.
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Meeting The Pizza Chef
After that grueling delivery to The Architect, I returned to The Pizza Chef’s bunker. The door was open. I walked in, only to get ambushed by two Ghost Mechs sent by Higgs. The whole thing felt like a horror movie. After taking them down, I pushed through the kitchen door and finally met the man himself.
What followed was one of the most hilarious things I’ve ever seen in a Kojima cutscene: a one-on-one Karate fight with Mamoru Oshii’s character. It went on for about three minutes, and I had to stop laughing just to catch my breath.
click to enlarge + 3Turns out, Oshii’s character was being held hostage by Troy Baker’s Higgs and forced to make terrible pizzas while smuggling weapons to other Preppers. Fortunately, I arrived just in time to save him.
As a reward for my perseverance and elite pizza delivery skills, The Pizza Chef taught me Pizza-Do Karate, granting Sam flashier and more dangerous melee attacks against human enemies. After all that chaos, The Pizza Chef officially opened his pizza business.
click to enlarge + 3Don’t get me wrong, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is by no means a dumb game. It’s meditative, even therapeutic. But it absolutely benefits from these bursts of absurdity to keep players engaged. Kojima remains a master of tonal whiplash.
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