How long it takes to beat Death Stranding is largely up to the player. It’s one of those games where the total playtime is going to be widely different from person to person. However, Death Stranding is divided into chapters (called episodes in-game) that give you a bit of a hint on how close you are to the end.
We’ll tell you how long it takes to beat Death Stranding on average, and how long it will take for a competitionist run. We’ll also show you how many chapters there are, and the names of each Episode.
Note: There are minor spoilers below. The Death Stranding episode names, in particular, might give away more than you want to know.
How long does it take to beat Death Stranding?
The time it takes to complete Death Stranding is going to mostly be left up to you. There’s plenty to do in the game, and it’s a game where you can spend hours without progressing the story. Alternatively, you can zip right through and just follow the plot.
I’ve played through the game twice so far, once on hard, and once on very easy. For my very easy run, I did plot only, and besides a few Lost Cargo deliveries and Standard Orders, I kept focused entirely on story. My total time on this save was around 28 hours.
My main save is my hard run and I’ve done almost everything you can do in the game. I’m a few memory chips off from platinuming it at the time of writing. On this file, I’m hovering right at 90 hours. When I finished the story I was at around 60 hours, that’s with doing a lot of the side content.
So I estimate the time to beat Death Stranding is:
- Story only: 28-32 hours
- Story + Some Side Content (Average Player): 55-65 hours
- Completionist: 80-100 hours
Most people are going to fit in the middle category. If you’re looking to platinum the game, most of your time is going to go into five-starring everyone’s connection level.
How many chapters are there in Death Stranding
There are 15 chapters in Death Stranding and a prologue. They’re called episodes in this game, but for all intents and purposes, they work like chapters do in other games. One thing to note is that episodes aren’t all of equal length. Some of them can be over in 30 minutes or so, while others can last tens of hours depending on your actions.
The titles of each episode in Death Stranding are:
- Prologue: “Porter”
- Episode 1: “Bridget”
- Episode 2: “Amelie”
- Episode 3: “Fragile”
- Episode 4: “Unger”
- Episode 5: “Mama”
- Episode 6: “Deadman”
- Episode 7: “Clifford”
- Episode 8: “Heartman”
- Episode 9: “Higgs”
- Episode 10: “Die-Hardman”
- Episode 11: “Clifford Unger”
- Episode 12: “Bridges”
- Episode 13: “Sam Strand”
- Episode 14: “Lou”
- Episode 15: “Tomorrow is in Your Hands”
One thing to note is that Episode 15: “Tomorrow is in Your Hands,” isn’t actually a story chapter. It’s just the post-game, where you get to free roam and complete any tasks left unfinished. This means the story is actually just 14 episodes (plus the prologue) long.
Once you reach Episode 15, you’re free to enjoy the world of Death Stranding at your own pace. While the main story is over, there are plenty of mails and interviews left to discover (if you didn’t do so during the course of the plot) that expand on the background information in Death Stranding.
The important thing to remember, of course, is to enjoy the game as you’re playing it. Don’t stress about how long it is, just sit back have an amazing experience.
