The vehicles. Death Stranding 2 expands the traversal options significantly, and this session is where the game starts rewarding the investment in infrastructure — roads built, connections made, the world becoming navigable at a pace that the first game's slow deliberate walking never allowed. Look at you, speed demon is affection and irony simultaneously, the game acknowledging that Sam's relationship with momentum has evolved from survival necessity into something that looks almost like joy.

The speed demon comment is probably Lou. The relationship between Sam and Tomorrow — Lou grown into a child, no longer a BB but still the person he crossed the country for — is the heart of DS2, and the small moments of domestic normalcy inside the apocalypse are where the game earns its larger emotional claims.