Composer Ludvig Forsell Previews the Experimental Music of ‘Death Stranding 2: On the Beach’ [Interview]
Fans of the first Death Stranding are still humming the game’s soundtrack to themselves nearly six years after its original release, so it makes sense that the sequel to this post-apocalyptic epic promises to deliver even more musical thrills when it releases later this month.
That’s why we decided to reach out to Death Stranding 2: On the Beach composer and frequent Hideo Kojima collaborator Ludvig Forsell so we could find out what to expect from the sequel’s music. Presented below is our exclusive chat with Ludvig Forsell.
Bloody Disgusting: First of all, I’m a huge fan of your work. A Phantom Pain was my feel-good song of the summer back in 2015, and the Boy Kills World soundtrack kicked all kinds of ass, so thank you for making time for us.
Ludvig Forsell: No problem, happy to be here!
BD: So, your partnership with Kojima began over a decade ago, working on Metal Gear Solid V and the ill-fated Silent Hills, but Death Stranding began development when the team migrated to Kojima Productions. Apparently, the company was still in the early stages of setting up shop when you began working on the game, and I imagine that must have been a very chaotic work environment. Can you tell us more about this journey towards where you guys are now?
LF: The first Death Stranding was definitely a new experience for all of us, in that we were setting up a new company as we were trying to figure out the game that we wanted to make once we actually got going. We were in rental space offices for a good 5 to 6 months in the beginning and I came in maybe 2 months after the company had been officially announced. We were spending a lot of time just figuring out how the company was going to hire people and then figuring out floor plans. I was working with the company to build a studio, so it was a long process of trying to get a foothold so we could actually start working.
It was a weird time. We even had Actor strikes, with Union regulations meaning that we had to record a lot of motion capture in Japan before we could even start working with Norman [Reedus] and the others in person. But it all came together in the end. The game came out and was received pretty well, and I think it’s gathered more and more of a following. It feels really good to be able to come out with something that we could really take our time to create. The sequel is building on top of all that previous work, starting as far back as late 2015.
BD: For the first Death Stranding, Kojima approached you with examples of the kind of cinematic synth music that he wanted in the game, with the most notable being Disasterpeace’s soundtrack to It Follows. That retro horror vibe then served as a starting point before the project evolved into something else. With that in mind, are there any specific movies that served as a musical inspiration for the sequel?
LF: Musically, I think I draw my inspiration from everything I watch in daily life. I don’t go out of my way to seek inspiration. We had some clear pointers for the first game’s soundtrack. Mr. Kojima loves movies, so he did point out It Follows among other movies back in the day, but now I think it’s more of this conceptual idea of how I want to create music after having experienced so many films and video games in the years since the first [Death Stranding] came out.
This time, I wanted to make something that felt more satisfying to listen to on its own rather than just being the eerie, avant-garde ambience that we focused on in the first game. It was a process of feeling like “oh, I want to take this approach” or “I want to do more of that” in order to have the people who are playing the game really pop off with the music rather than having it be mostly informative.
Conceptually, I think this really comes through in the soundtrack if you listen to it on its own after playing and think about how it relates to the game. I feel like the soundtrack itself is much more of its own experience this time around.
BD: It’s rumored that the initial bumpy development process of the first Death Stranding resulted in a lot of music not making it into the final game. Was that really the case?
LF: Some of the stuff on the soundtrack was written before it had a place in the game, and some of that was then re-edited and actually got used in the end. So yes and no.
BD: So you guys really use every part of the Buffalo.
LF: Yeah, like I said, we spent a lot of time figuring things out with building the studio, and at the same time I was trying out a lot of writing and thinking about what the soundtrack was going to be. Of course, there are things that never got released at all, but also ideas that I kept and might appear in future projects. But there’s also stuff that I wrote that didn’t fit the beginning of the project but later found a place as an edited-down version of the original idea. We tried a lot of things out, and that’s how the timbre and the sound of it all came together in the end.
BD: Speaking of experimentation – you incorporated a lot of foley/sound design into the music of the first game by extracting sounds from household objects. Was that still the case in the sequel?
LF: I tend to do that in everything I write. I try to use everyday objects to add different flavors to things. We sampled a bunch of stuff that we bought from Home Depot in the first one and made a sound library out of that. That was one of the key conceptual things that we used for the first game that we’re still using in the sequel to sort of keep it in the same world.
But I also wanted to move beyond that and do something experimental in the second one. One really cool thing that we did was organize small vocal ensemble sessions where we recorded a few cues using weird and avant-garde voicework, which I then resampled and used for a bunch of other tracks. That really gives the second [game] and its soundtrack a more human feeling and grounds it in an analog sense. That and all of the found sounds from Home Depot combine into something that tells a more emotional story the second time.
BD: I guess you’re no stranger to emotional music. I remember all the way back in MGSV with Quiet’s Theme, and then the BB lullaby in the first Death Stranding – those are some serious tearjerkers! Can we expect more songs like those in the sequel?
LF: Oh, yes! A lot of what I did is going to be interesting for people to hear, but I think people are also going to react strongly to the stuff that Woodkid came up with involving some of the characters and their moments in the game.
BD: The first Death Stranding had a lot of third-party music from bands like Low Roar and Silent Poets, with the score and soundtrack kind of melding together into a cohesive musical experience. The sequel is set to include even more bands, so how did you guys connect all of that to the score?
LF: For the first one, we definitely had Low Roar as a big part of everything from the get-go, and that very much inspired me in how I approached the acoustic side of the soundtrack to make sure that it all fit together in the same world – so that really drove me as a composer. However, all of those songs were existing tracks from the Low Roar discography, and this time around Hideo got the chance to do more direct collaborations that weren’t really possible in the first game because of time constraints and budget. Obviously, Hideo is constantly playing the game and figuring out these spots where he’d like an emotional hint of something and adding songs to those moments, so there’s a lot more of these bespoke songs in the sequel.
BD: And what was your favorite part of the musical process in Death Stranding 2? Do you have a favorite track in the game?
LF: I think my favorite part was the challenge of standing on my own shoulders and creating something that goes beyond what the first one was. That was definitely the most satisfactory part of creating the soundtrack, and I personally really enjoy all of the music in all of its facets.
A stand-out point for me personally was the music I wrote for Luca Marinelli’s character, Neil. That’s definitely something to check out on the soundtrack. There are multiple tracks using his theme, and he’s sort of the new version of what Mads Mikkelsen’s character represented in the first one, so there are multiple sides to the character which I tried to convey through his theme music.
BD: Before we go, is there anything that you’d like to tell fans about upcoming projects?
LF: Yeah! I’d like to invite everyone to the Strands of Harmony World Tour that begins later this year, starting at the Sydney Opera House on November 8 and then playing at 19 different locations around the globe. Hopefully I can meet as many of you as possible while on the road, so please look for more information around the launch of Death Stranding 2.
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach releases June 26, 2025.
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