Death Stranding 2: On the Beach has an official June release date locked in, and judging by the new trailer, a few nods to the Metal Gear Solid series that Hideo Kojima worked on during his tenure at Konami. During the new look at the game, a character by the name of Neil–played by Italian actor Luca Marinelli–was introduced. While his dark past with the Bridges organization was teased, it’s the brief moment where Neil dons a bandana that had Metal Gear Solid fans pointing at their screens:
As seen in the image above, Neil looks remarkably similar to Solid Snake once he dresses up for a fight. Back in a 2020 Instagram post, Kojima mentioned that Marinelli would be the “spitting image” of Snake if he ever decided to wear the character’s bandana, and it looks like that prediction has come true in Death Stranding 2.
What’s also interesting to note here is that the character is flanked by several soldiers, similar to how Death Stranding’s antagonist Clifford Unger would surround himself with troops whenever he appeared in the game. That suggests that Neil has died and has become a post-death entity, someone who finds himself driven to complete his unfinished business and can journey to battlefield beaches.