Death Stranding Director’s Cut – 10 New Features You Need to Know

Death Stranding was a pretty unique game, to say the least, and though there were many who just couldn’t gel with the game, there were quite a few people who absolutely loved the experience that Kojima and his team had crafted. Soon, Death Stranding will be receiving a Director’s Cut launch on the PS5, promising various improvements and additions to further refine the original game. There’s less than a month left to its launch now, so here, we’re going to go over some crucial details that you should know about Death Stranding Director’s Cut.

NEW TOOLS

Death Stranding Director’s Cut is adding various new tools that you’ll be able to use for deliveries, and some of them are quite interesting. There’s the cargo launcher, for instance, which does exactly what it’s name suggests- launches parcel through the air across great distances. There’s also the Support Skeleton, which makes it easier to carry heavier cargo. There’s also a new pair of boots that increases fall damage. If Death Stranding Director’s Cut can ensure that players always have greater freedom in deciding how to handle their deliveries with a more robust collection of tools, that could have the potential to make significant improvements to the gameplay. Meanwhile, bikes will also now be more useful when it comes to jumping across chasms, thanks to ramps and boosts and what have you.

BUDDY BOT

Another new delivery tool that is being added to Death Stranding with the upcoming Director’s Cut is the Buddy Bot. Again, it’s got a pretty self-explanatory name, but the Buddy Bot is apparently going to be useful in more ways than one. Not only can Buddy Bot run alongside Sam and carry quite a few parcels, Sam also has the option of just jumping on the bot himself and riding on its back. That could potentially have some interesting applications, like when you’re traversing rough and treacherous terrain. And of course, there’s also the obvious advantage of just being able to carry more at any given time with the Buddy Bot at your side.

IMPROVED COMBAT

Combat was one of the areas where Death Stranding left a lot to be desired. And sure, it wasn’t exactly the sort of game where combat was even close to being an important part of the experience- but even so, it could have been a lot better. With Death Stranding Director’s Cut, it’s apparently going to make some improvements. Melee attacks are being expanded upon, first and foremost, with more attacks and finishers added in. New weapons are also coming, such as a mounted machine gun, for instance.

FIRING RANGE

Another way Death Stranding Director’s Cut is putting a greater emphasis on combat is with the firing range. As you’d expect, this is, of course an area where you can run practice rounds to test out weapons. Best of all, the Director’s Cut is also throwing in some competitive multiplayer elements as well, thanks to leaderboards and high scores in the firing range to compete for.

NEW MISSIONS

This, of course, is one of the bigger talking points here. On top of making various smaller changes and improvements, Death Stranding Director’s Cut will also bring completely new Delivery Missions for players to tackle, and based on what we’ve seen of these so far, it looks like they’ll be quite different from the sort of content you might remember from the base game. Stealth seems to be a much bigger focus, and we’ve seen Sam sneaking his way through a labyrinthine facility crawling with guards. Whether that’s just one new mission’s theme or an approach that all the new content takes remains to be seen- but we certainly hope it’s the latter.

OTHER IMPROVEMENTS

There are a few other relatively more incremental improvements coming with the Director’s Cut that deserve to be mentioned. A number of new songs are being added into the game’s playlist, for instance, and you can listen to them every time you’re in a private room. There’s also Fragile Circuit, a complete racing minigame in and of itself, where you can drive bikes and cars through a race track against ghosts of other players, or even perform tricks and stunts. Finally, players will also now be able to revisit older bosses at any time. The hook, of course, is that there will be high scores and leaderboards here as well.

PC CONTENT

This isn’t Death Stranding’s first re-release, having also been brought to PC by 505 Games and Kojima Productions, where it also got some new and exclusive content in the form of in-game Cyberpunk 2077 and Half-Life themed quest rewards. That content will be included in Death Stranding Director’s Cut as well. It’s not a huge chunk of content, of course, but it’s a nice bonus to have nonetheless.

MODES

Players will also have the option to choose between to graphics modes depending on whether you want to prioritize resolution or frame rate. Performance mode will run the game at an upscaled 4K at up to 60 frames per second, while fidelity mode will run at a native 4k, but lower frame rates. HDR will, of course, also be supported in both modes. It’s a little disappointing that ray tracing is not being implemented, but hopefully, visual improvements in other areas will do the job. Death Stranding was already an excellent-looking game even on a base PS4, so we’re excited to see what sort of improvements it will make on the PS5.

PS5 FEATURES

Death Stranding Director’s Cut will leverage the PS5’s hardware in other ways as well. Support for the DualSense’s haptic feedback and adaptive triggers has been confirmed. Haptic feedback in particular seems like the kind of feature that could really shine with a game like Death Stranding, so we’re curious to see how well that’ll be implemented. 3D audio support is also in, while interestingly enough, Sony has confirmed that the game will also offer ultrawide support.

PRICE

Sony’s pricing of games on the PS5 has been of a contentious topic of discussion of late, and Death Stranding Director’s Cut very much falls in that category as well. The game itself will be priced at $49.99, which is a good thing. That said, there’s no free upgrade option for those who already have Death Stranding on the PS4. To upgrade to the Director’s Cut, you’ll still have to pay an additional $10.