The “pretend you won” option in Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is a small, but radical little choice. It pops after you fail a boss fight and lets you skip the encounter entirely with a brief text explainer telling you how things would’ve unfolded if you won. You might get a lower ranking or miss one or two non-essential scenes for choosing this option, but there’s no judgment, no restrictions, no downside to bypassing something frustrating and choosing to engage with the parts of the game you really like. It’s a brilliant, elegantly simple design choice, and I would be far less keen to keep playing Death Stranding 2 without it.

I’m not saying this as someone who hates boss fights in video games or who usually struggles with them, either. I beat

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