Death Stranding 2 ESRB Rating Suggests Players Can Actually Use THAT Melee Weapon From the Trailer

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach includes an unconventional melee weapon, according to its ESRB rating.

Warning! Potential Death Stranding 2 spoilers follow:

The U.S. Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) has once again dropped an unsolicited clue about an unreleased game, this time confirming in Death Stranding 2’s rating summary that as well as the anticipated “open-world landscape to deliver various goods and packages” as a courier “attempting to reconnect society in a post-apocalyptic world,” players will be able to bash stuff to death with a guitar.

This may not be the first time you’ve heard of this unique weapon — interestingly, Higgs literally shreds in the announcement trailer posted over a year ago now — but at the time, fans weren’t sure if that was just something Higgs got to indulge in. Now it seems we’ll either get to rock out as Sam with a guitar weapon of his own, or we’ll get to play as Higgs and use his. It’s not clear which. It could be both!

“This is an action game in which players assume the role of a courier (Sam Porter Bridges) attempting to reconnect society in a post-apocalyptic world,” the ESRB summary reads.

“From a third-person perspective, players traverse an open-world landscape to deliver various goods and packages. Along the way, players can engage in combat against human soldiers, battle androids, and ghostly apparitions. Players use melee weapons (e.g., battle guitar) and firearms (e.g., machine guns, sniper rifles) to kill enemies.”

Players can expect realistic gunfire, blood, and slow-motion effects, as well as stealthy takedowns “to incapacitate soldiers discreetly.” There will also be further sequences with “additional acts of violence and/or gore,” including some dude losing his hands and legs to a robot samurai, another who’s cut in half by an unspecified giant machine, and a man set alight “in a fantastical manner.”

Death Stranding 2 is, as you’d expected, rated Mature 17+.

Death Stranding 2 is out on June 26, 2025. Hideo Kojima is also working on a live-action Death Stranding film with A24, and we recently learned that a Death Stranding anime is also in the works. He’s also working on a PlayStation exclusive action espionage project called Physint, and called the upcoming Xbox-published OD “a game I have always wanted to make.”

Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.