TheRetroArcade
Veteran
Posts: 2,013
Joined: Feb 2026
Joined: Feb 2026
Some players complained that Death Stranding 2 was too easy. The new "To the Wilder" difficulty is Kojima Productions' answer.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
Want to add more newsletters?
Every Friday
GamesRadar+
Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you're going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them.
Every Thursday
GTA 6 O'clock
Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts.
Every Friday
Knowledge
From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon.
Every Thursday
The Setup
Hardware nerds unite, sign up to our free tech newsletter for a weekly digest of the hottest new tech, the latest gadgets on the test bench, and much more.
Every Wednesday
Switch 2 Spotlight
Sign up to our new Switch 2 newsletter, where we bring you the latest talking points on Nintendo's new console each week, bring you up to date on the news, and recommend what games to play.
Every Saturday
The Watchlist
Subscribe for a weekly digest of the movie and TV news that matters, direct to your inbox. From first-look trailers, interviews, reviews and explainers, we've got you covered.
Once a month
SFX
Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month!
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 t...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
Want to add more newsletters?
Every Friday
GamesRadar+
Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you're going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them.
Every Thursday
GTA 6 O'clock
Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts.
Every Friday
Knowledge
From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon.
Every Thursday
The Setup
Hardware nerds unite, sign up to our free tech newsletter for a weekly digest of the hottest new tech, the latest gadgets on the test bench, and much more.
Every Wednesday
Switch 2 Spotlight
Sign up to our new Switch 2 newsletter, where we bring you the latest talking points on Nintendo's new console each week, bring you up to date on the news, and recommend what games to play.
Every Saturday
The Watchlist
Subscribe for a weekly digest of the movie and TV news that matters, direct to your inbox. From first-look trailers, interviews, reviews and explainers, we've got you covered.
Once a month
SFX
Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month!
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 t...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?