DEATH STRANDING 2 COMPOSER LUDVIG FORSSELL "GOES BEYOND THE BOUNDS" CONTINUING TO DO "WEIRD SHIT"

Death Stranding 2: On The Beach composer Ludvig Forssell speaks about breaking out as a composer in Japan, his work under Konami and Kojima Productions and returning to a world connected by strands.

- Eduard Gafton

Ludvig Forssell, the main composer on Death Stranding 2: On The Beach (2025), grew up in the northern Swedish town of Umeå, where he and his friends would often gather together to sing music by heavy metal bands like Black Sabbath and, eventually, even write their own material. Thanks at least in part to his love for Japanese pop culture, after graduating from a music high school in Sweden, he pursued the art of game scoring at HAL Tokyo — one of the biggest vocational schools in Japan. Not long after completing his studies, in 2011, Forssell started working as a composer for Konami, catching the attention of the one and only Hideo Kojima, the legendary game designer responsible for the stealth action franchise Metal Gear.

After Forssell impressed with his score for the first Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes (2014) trailer, Kojima attached him to not only this project, but also the two other titles that the latter was working on at the time, namely P.T. (2014) and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015). Following Kojima’s infamous fallout with Konami, Forssell joined him at Kojima Productions, a brand new marquee game studio which was set up and running in remarkable time. After making the move, Forssell took up the mantle of Kojima Productions’ audio director and began working in earnest on what would become Death Stranding (2019), the studio's debut release. His work earned him the “Best Score & Music” award at The Game Awards 2019.