Death Stranding 2's weird dummy is making Alan Wake 2 fans do a double-take

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach features one character that sure looks like a dead ringer for none other than Alan Wake himself.

Yesterday at the PlayStation State of Play showcase, Kojima Productions unveiled Death Stranding 2, now subtitled 'On the Beach,' complete with a new 9-minute trailer showing off the sequel's story. Among the details is a new puppet, who's making Alan Wake 2 fans do a double-take.

In short, everyone's making the same joke: this is Alan Wake seemingly trapped in the Death Stranding universe. Quite why Kojima Productions has arrived at a character design so eerily similar to the famed author is anyone's guess, but it's garnering a lot of attention around social media.

Well, technically, the newcomer to Death Stranding 2 isn't actually a puppet - it's a ventriloquist's dummy. But, again, we've got absolutely no clue what said dummy is doing in Kojima Productions' new game in the first place. That's just one of many questions we've got on our minds, and they won't be answered for a fair while yet. The one thing we do know is not actually Alan Wake, but is in fact a portrayal of Turkish-German film director Faith Akin, one of the many celebrity appearances that we can expect in Kojima's new game.

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is set to arrive next year in 2025, exclusively for PS5. The new trailer yesterday also showed off a ship that looks somewhat inspired by Metal Gear Rex, if you wondered what other antics Hideo Kojima has buried in the latest trailer for fans to pour over for at least the next few months.

Head over to our full upcoming PS5 games guide for a look at all the other exclusives Sony has pencilled in for the foreseeable future.